Anatomy of Mercy

A first-person game of medicine and dark fantasy · In development

Anatomy of Mercy

Every cure leaves a scar.

Become Julian, an outcast physician in Vespera, a city sealed by quarantine. Examine the sick, choose between treatments that each have a price, and take the material every cure needs from the only place it comes from: other people. Then answer for each of them.

Enter the world Discover the stories
Beyond the cure

The anatomy of a choice

A saved life does not cancel the cost.

The game does not only ask whether you will kill. It asks whether you will ask someone to sacrifice, whether you will tell a donor the whole truth, whether you will maim an enemy to spare his life, and whether you will spend on your own weapon the material a patient is still waiting for.

  • First-person
  • Single-player
  • Windows PC
  • No release date announced
  1. An inquisitor in a cracked white mask rests both hands on his cane and bows his head, a lantern burning beside him.

    Difficult choices

    The best donor for a dying girl may be the man sent to burn the ward.

  2. A bare hand rests on the forehead of a sleeping child holding a rag doll, in a chapel lined with sickbeds.

    People, not cases

    A patient keeps a name, a family and the right to refuse. Even after you have decided for them.

  3. A nursing sister in a blood-stained apron reads a sheet of paper by lantern light, rows of sickbeds behind her.

    Faith and medicine

    The Church of Light feeds the sick, nurses them, buries them and burns the streets it cannot save. It is right more often than Julian would like.

  4. Two inquisitors in white masks stand at a timber barricade hung with a red banner, a wet street behind them and a cathedral against the moon.

    A city in quarantine

    Gates close between districts. Red cloth marks a sealed house. Three strikes of the bell mean the street burns.

Vespera

The city still breathes. Something beneath it answers.

Vespera grew rich on trade, pilgrimage and medical scholarship. It is dying of the Crimson Plague, which turns blood and marrow to crystal; what the crystal breaks sheds a dust that infects whoever breathes it. The Church of Light calls the disease the Crimson Blemish and answers it with quarantine and fire. Julian calls it blood crystallica and answers it with a knife. In its last stage, the sick begin to see the same things.

Explore Vespera

What the game is built on

Three things the game will not trade away.

Scope can change and features can be cut. These three cannot, because without them this would be a different game.

  1. A story with an author

    Julian is a written character, not an empty avatar. You do not choose whether he wants to save people. You choose what he is willing to spend doing it, and whether he can accept being told no.

  2. Dilemmas without a clean way out

    No path saves everyone, and refusing to act is a choice as well. Every main road keeps a cost that cannot be undone: a body, a freedom, an obligation, or the trust of someone who was in the room.

  3. Anatomy as one language

    Fighting, taking and healing draw on the same knowledge and the same scarce material. Nothing here is a separate minigame bolted on: the graft that treats a patient and the weapon that keeps Julian alive come out of the same person.

Stories from the quarantine

Four witnesses. One wound seen from different sides.

Four stories from the world of the game. One night in a chapel turned into a ward, told by four people who were there.

  1. Story cover: a hooded physician in a beaked mask carries a lantern through falling ash, and below him a child sleeps in a lit window.

    Light Beneath the Ash

    Światło pod popiołem

    A father remembers the night a cure demanded something he has spent twenty years refusing to name.

  2. Story cover: an inquisitor in a white mask sits with one leg bandaged to the foot, holding a small portrait, papers and a wax seal at his feet.

    The Volunteer

    Dobrowolny

    A commander refuses to give up the living tissue a dying child needs, and watches one word enter the record against him.

  3. Story cover: a nursing sister raises a lantern and reads a blood-marked list in a chapel filled with sickbeds.

    The List of the Saved

    Lista ocalonych

    A sister running the ward records who leaves on the two carts, and who is written down as left behind.

  4. Story cover: a physician in a beaked mask holds a vial of red liquid up to the light above a workbench of instruments, an open book and a skull.

    I Will Fix the Rest Later

    Resztę naprawię później

    A doctor leaves behind notes that explain his methods more clearly than they explain his mercy.

For now, only the covers are revealed. The four Polish stories will come first. Then Vespera will speak.

Who is behind it

Anatomy of Mercy is in development.

Anatomy of Mercy is made after hours by two amateurs fascinated by games and programming, working under the name DominDev. There is no release date yet. For press and project enquiries, or simply to say you want to read the stories, write to us.

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