The Collection Chamber: VIRTUAL SURGEON: OPEN HEART

A LIFE HANGS IN THE BALANCE... AND SECONDS COUNT!

You decide to run a Cardiac Catheterization, suspecting a blockage in the coronary arteries. You select a scalpel from the tool tray and make a small incision. Once the catheter is in place, you advance it up the aorta to the coronary artery. The results confirm your suspicions: open heart bypass surgery is needed immediately.

You've never performed the procedure outside of med school... can you do it now? You'd better be sure, or the next place you'll see your patient is in the morgue.

Find out if you have what it takes to be a heart surgeon in OPEN HEART, the first game to put you in the control of one of medicine's most complex procedures. This intense simulation is based on the actual symptoms, tests and surgical procedures that cardiovascular surgeons face everyday.
Varying levels of difficulty to challenge gamers of all skill levels.
State-of-the-art interactive graphics, sound and full motion video actors immerse you in the life of a surgeon.
Fully rendered 3-D hospital environment.
Real surgery techniques and procedures; special emergency room cases.
Extensive online tutorials help you learn as you play.

~ from the back of the box

Hospitals have enjoyed a surprisingly healthy career in video games. From Bugs 'n' Drugs which ran on interactive hospital terminals that were designed to assist doctors and nurses back in 1977, to the classic chaos of Theme Hospital two decades later and its intergalactic spiritual successor of Galacticare almost three more beyond that, developers have found countless ways to make medicine entertaining. Or at least try. Very few, however, dare to show what actually happens once the patient reaches the operating table. Virtual Surgeon: Open Heart, developed by ISM, Inc. and designed by Life & Death creator Dr. Myo Thant, isn't interested in aliens, comedy or distracting residents from their duties. Instead, it delivers a remarkably serious simulation of cardiovascular medicine that expects you to diagnose patients, perform complex procedures and quite literally hold lives in your hands. And their blood and guts too!

Upon entering the hospital, you may get that classic, cosy vibe of a traditional first-person point-and-click adventure. You wander pre-rendered corridors, click on doors, chat with digitised doctors and nurses, and generally poke around an unfamiliar building one screen at a time. It won't be long until your tossed into the deep end with barely enough guidance to keep your scrubs clean. The staff do their best to point you in the right direction, but they deliver every line with the dead-eyed expression of people who've witnessed enough shit to last several lifetimes. It's stiff FMV acting, certainly, but quickly realise that this isn't trying to entertain you first and educate you second - it's the other way around.

Register at Human Resources to select you difficulty level and get your I.D. (left).
You'll need it to sign in at reception and begin putting people's lives in your hands (right).

Your first obstacle isn't surgery but hospital administration. Like any newly appointed cardiovascular surgeon, you're expected to report to Human Resources to collect your ID card before Reception will even let you sign in. Pick your rank - Fellow, Attending or Professor - to determine just how much hand-holding you'll receive throughout the game. The hospital itself spans three floors containing wards, laboratories, operating theatres and a surprisingly well-stocked medical library, yet it's compact enough that you'll soon learn its layout. Even so, its repetitive corridors and awkward navigation hotspots make finding your way incredibly annoying. Thankfully, right from the off, you have a map tucked away in the Help menu that instantly warps you to most departments whenever you're not in the middle of an emergency or surgery.

Life as a heart surgeon isn't as exciting as television would have you believe. Before anyone trusts you with a scalpel, you must make your rounds through the Critical Care Unit, examine patients, read their histories and decide what exactly is wrong with them. Physical examinations involve listening to heart and lung sounds with a stethoscope, percussing the lungs, reviewing medical charts and consulting an extensive diagnosis handbook before ordering treatment. The manual makes it all sound fascinating, but as I don't have four-to-eight years of medical education, nor the patience to read the included crash course, I found myself relying more on complete guesswork than genuine medical expertise. It doesn't help that the four patients that occupy the examination rooms appear to have been cloned from the same digitised actor. That, or they're quadruplets. It lacks visual variety at such a mundane moment that what should make you feel like House doing doctorly detective work is instead an endless procession of interchangeable cardiac complaints.

If you can't be bothered to walk the hospital halls, use the map to quick travel (left).
If you can't be bothered to read the medical texts, watch the how-to video mid-surgery instead (right).

Fortunately, the hospital is packed with diagnostic equipment to help narrow things down. Chest X-rays, blood gas analysis, echocardiograms, stress tests and even cardiac catheterisation are all available, and the game actively discourages ordering unnecessary procedures. Waste the hospital's money and the Chief of Cardiology will happily summon you to his office for a dressing-down. Ignore your pager when a Code Blue emergency erupts somewhere in the hospital and you'll have another problem on your hands entirely. These interruptions force you to sprint across the building to perform emergency resuscitation under a strict five-minute time limit, adding a welcome dose of urgency to an otherwise methodical simulation.

Eventually you'll find yourself in the operating theatre, which is undoubtedly the game's centrepiece. Before surgery begins you must scrub in properly, don your mask, prepare the operating room and familiarise yourself with its layout. Two separate instrument tables surround the patient alongside the anaesthesia machine, heart-lung machine and monitoring equipment, all of which you'll be expected to manipulate at precisely the right moments. Your chosen difficulty level dramatically changes the experience too. Fellows receive constant verbal guidance from senior staff, while Professors are trusted to remember every step themselves. Regardless of rank, though, the game won't let you improvise so don't expect to carve your name in their pixelated chest, no matter how much you want to.

Cleanliness is key. Be sure to scrub up and wear your mask before surgery begins (left).
Making the first incision. I hope you're not squeamish (right).

Surgery itself more or less plays like an incredibly laborious puzzle. Preparing the chest alone involves fitting a headlamp, making the correct midline incision, cauterising tissue, sawing through the sternum, attaching cannulas, operating the heart-lung machine and stopping the heart with cardioplegia before you've even reached the actual repair. Basic players perform coronary artery bypass grafts, while higher difficulty levels add full aortic valve replacement surgery alongside intricate cardiac catheterisation procedures. Every action must be performed in exactly the right sequence, with instructional videos in the hospital library (and the hand portable television on the operating table too) available should you become hopelessly lost. Even at a modest 640×480 resolution with 256 colours, it's an impressively uncompromising depiction of open-heart surgery that rarely flinches from the grisly details.

Virtual Surgeon: Open Heart earns enormous respect for refusing to simplify one of medicine's most demanding disciplines. Everything from diagnosing patients to responding to cardiac arrests and completing complex surgical procedures has clearly been designed with education foremost in mind, backed by medical professionals and extensive instructional material to ensure its accuracy. Unfortunately, authenticity doesn't always translate into entertainment. Much of your time is spent reading charts, navigating corridors and memorising procedures, making it feel less like playing a game and more like starting a new job at the hospital with an added dose of imposter syndrome. For aspiring surgeons or anyone fascinated by cardiac medicine, it's an absorbing and surprisingly ambitious educational simulator. Everyone else may admire its dedication from a safe distance - preferably somewhere well away from the operating table.

To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses the DOSBox-X build of DOSBox running Microsoft Windows 3.1 to get the game working on modern systems. Manual included. Read the ChamberNotes.txt for more detailed information. Tested on Windows 11.

File Size: 250 Mb. Install Size: 509 Mb. Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

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