Without a doubt, Autopsy Simulator is one of the most disgusting games I’ve ever played. However, the developers made it this way. Forgive my bluntness, but what do you expect from a game where you dissect cadavers like a reverse Ikea flat pack? No, you won’t ride a pony and eat candy floss here; you’ll be chopping up meat bags. Scientifically, of course.
I’m not particularly squeamish, but sitting with my legs dangled over the sofa while on the Steam Deck made me quite uncomfortable despite the lounge attire and sloppy posture. That’s the power of this simulator from Woodland Games (Hell Architect) and Team17 (Dredge).
Autopsy Simulator is the closest thing you’ll get to cutting up corpses (hopefully) without getting your hands wet. That sounds nasty; don’t give it any more thought. Anyhoo, you play as a pathologist with some emotional baggage, and that’s important, as this simulator is more of a walking simulator than something like Castle Flipper. Sorry, that’s all I could think of.
A tutorial follows that weaves its way into gameplay so that it doesn’t feel like too many hurdles – after all, it’s a tutorial – you have to go through these steps before you can flourish. Alas, flourishing as a pathologist is not really an option, as there’s not much in the way of freedom here. Back in the day, we had Life and Death on the Amiga (hello? Are you still there?). You’d make a diagnosis, then promptly kill the patient, intentional or not.
Autopsy Simulator doesn’t have that sort of agency as you’re along for the ride. Your character, Jack Hammer (no, I’m not correcting it), has lost his wife and is trying to get on with his life. Only the past continues to haunt him, and that’s where the horror element emerges. It’s not the scary type of game where your own guts will drop; it’s more psychological, and if you’re a narrative-driven fan like me, you might enjoy the ride.
It’s just a shame that Jack is quite the chore. While he isn’t a cliche gravel-voiced protagonist, his tones aren’t the best, and his frequent sighing can be more of a nuisance than anything. He likes the sound of his own voice and would be better suited in a different profession – perhaps as a DJ in Team17’s other outing, Killer Frequency?
Considering that, it would be unfair to dismiss Jack as he knows what he’s doing. The level of detail and schematics behind the autopsies are great. Gruesome, too. You’ll follow each step of identifying any distinguishing marks and making an assessment as to what killed the soul lying before you. If you don’t like handholding, then Autopsy Simulator might put you off as Jack essentially talks you through the lot, and that will irk many.
For me, as a narrative-driven whore, I saw it more as an interactive novel with biological mini-games of sawing through brains and xenomorphs by engaging with QTE-like events. Well, that’s adding a little excitement to it as there’s no such urgency with these parts, but interesting nevertheless.
Visually, Autopsy Simulator is decent – well, I did say earlier that it’s disgusting, but for the right reasons. The haunting ambience throughout the somewhat gothic place of work, to Jack’s cluttered apartment, set the scene, too. Unfortunately, the voice talent slightly mutes the impact and on-rails level of interactivity. Don’t get me started about the ‘let’s spin a 3D object about to pad things out’. Weirdly, items spin at lightning speed.
I played this almost entirely on the Steam Deck and was impressed with how well it initially ran. After turning off the god-awful motion blur, everything moved fluidly aside from the hotkeys for bringing up tools. In the case of the Steam Deck, I had to bring up the virtual keyboard a lot, which was a pain, but this isn’t promoted as a Steam Deck verified title. I would say it’s good to go, but after finishing my first day, it slowed to an unhealthy pace, and the ‘Deck started to pant quite vigorously.
Do note that Autopsy Simulator isn’t a conventional simulator of dead grandfathers leaving you their business. On the contrary, you’ll probably be opening up some dead grandfathers and seeing what they look like on the inside. In reality, this is a walking simulator with more interaction than is typical for the genre, and it’s clearly well-researched. However, those looking for a sandbox of slicin’ and dicin’ may be somewhat disappointed.
