About This Demo

Kessendorf is at war, one patient at a time.

The Watch marches out to hold the timber roads, the Ostrau company's hired pikes march east to the Vennmark, and plague smoulders in the Tanners' Rows. The old Hospice of Saint Ildra is the Watch's field hospital now, and you are Kreuzer, its new field surgeon: in the ward, in the muster camp, in the tents behind the battle line. The table is never empty.

Surgery the way it was done as a Sawdoctor.

Eight period instruments, each with its own motion: lancet, tongs, leech-pipe, gut thread, Saint's salve, tincture, cautery brand and scrying lens, and the bone saw when a limb is past saving. Ease an arrow through the muscle that grips it, rock a head loose from the bone, close a sabre cut muscle first and skin second, soften boiling pitch before you lift it, wind a tourniquet before you look for the bleeding vessel, and seal a sucking chest wound as the patient breathes out. Some soldiers are carried in still in their harness: cut the straps, soak the padding out of the wound, and lift the plate away before the real work starts. Every action is graded, and clean chains raise your rank.

Six peoples, six bodies to learn.

Humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, hornfolk and giants all come to your table, and no two cut, bleed or heal alike. A dwarf's hide is thick and his blood dark and slow; the lancet must work patiently. An elf's skin is so thin the lamp glows through it: easy to open, quick to bleed, and unforgiving of a slip. An orc's leather hide turns a hasty blade, his near-black blood clots fast, and tinctures barely touch him. A giant bleeds out slowly and heals slower still. Know your patient before you cut.

A prayer that stops the clock or could send you to the pyre.

Draw the five-pointed sign to invoke the Litany of Stillness and slow time for a few precious seconds, once per operation. Careful, if The Inquisitor of the Ash Tribunal sees, he would condemn you for witchcraft.

Plagues that fight back.

A heretic coven, the Hollow Choir, sings to the Mother of Plagues, and each of its hymns takes root in a host as a disease pushed past anything nature allows: the Vigil Plague, the Answering Pox, the Red Roll, Saint Ildra's Fire and four more. Each one flares in time with its hymn and its bell. Learn the rhythm, then cut it out. Every host you save, or lose, leaves its mark on the city.

A grim story told in candle smoke and ink. 

Story chapters between operations, set to an orchestral and medieval score: guild politics, witch hunts, field hospitals, black humour, and the question of what a healer owes a city that burns its sick.

Feature bullets

• Five chapters, over sixty operations, eight Malison Hours: a surgery-action campaign in a grimdark early-modern world

• Injuries surgeons really faced: arrows, sabre cuts, crushing mace blows, boiling pitch, severed arteries, amputations

• Eight period instruments with precise mouse-and-keyboard controls, controller and Steam Deck support

• Graded, combo-driven operations with ranks to chase in every case, plus Guild Trials and Challenge operations

• Assists and accessibility options: generous timers, simplified gestures, one-handed play, a Litany key, reduced flashing and gore settings