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Tech

Decide 'Who Must Die' in This Live Action Investigation Simulation

For a doctor, these are some pretty haphazard “medical” tests.
You’ll keep an eye on your patients using these eerie screens. Image: Antoine Gargasson.

Ready for a harrowing imaginary scenario? You're a doctor who's been given the extremely difficult task of determining who, among three unique patients, is infected with a peculiar virus. The fate of humanity rests in your hands as you analyze the patients in your care for specific symptoms and subject them to various experiments. You could make the guard perform the experiments required for the good of humanity if it's too disturbing for you, but in the end you're the one tasked with making the choice that's also the title of the game: Who Must Die?

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it's an engaging and totally unsettling simulation created with the game making tool Unreal Engine. Left with a piece of paper that explains your task in an extremely vague manner, you're faced with a few eerie screens displaying the human guinea pigs you'll have to test over the course of the game. Each comes with their own dossier, including names, ages, hometowns, and other pertinent information.

One of the most interesting aspects of Who Must Die is the fact that you're observing live action videos of actors filling the positions of each of the patients. While there are obvious loops in the screens, the game still does an excellent job of making you feel as though you're truly interacting with live feeds of real people, especially when you send through stimuli for them to react to.

You can send "stimuli" in the form of music, whether it's calming or "hard" tunes, turn the lights off, send guards in to shock them with cattle prods, and observe the patients until you've made some sort of decision as to which one will need to be executed.

The symptoms you're looking for, like "rage & violence," are tacked to a bulletin board on the wall and include, but don't leave you much to work with, so it becomes a game of deduction in order for you to figure out who needs to go.

It felt great to crack the case, but there wasn't much fanfare accompanying my triumph, which is probably for the best. Who Must Die is very interesting, it's worth checking out, but torturing real people like this probably shouldn't be "fun."

Who Must Die is available now via itch.io for free.