by It’s been five years since support for the last entry in the Dr. Mario series, the mobile title Dr. Mario World, was shut down.
As a result, people have mostly had to revisit older entries for their daily dose of medicine-themed puzzle-solving. Out of the shadows, however, it appears that a new doctor is now ready to take on patients — one that doesn’t have a killer moustache, a penchant for psychedelics, and a famously life-or-death obsession with the monarchy.
Annalynn MD is a new falling-block puzzle game coming to Steam from the developer Cruise Elroy, who previously developed the 2021 platformer Annalynn (inspired by Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., and early Namco arcade games).
It pays tribute to the 16-bit era and features the protagonist of the previous game ditching her mining clothes and pickaxe for a lab coat and medicine bag. As with Dr Mario, the game is played inside a piece of medical apparatus, which is in this case a test tube, with the developer adding a three-dimensional twist on the puzzle play by having you twist and turn the contents to take out germs and "make the world...a little bit healthier."
Players can take on medical challenges alone in an arcade mode, go head-to-head with friends as one of the 15+ playable characters, or embark on a roguelike-esque campaign mode, where they will unlock new game-breaking effects (50 in total) from the apothecarium to give them the edge on their rivals.
The full game isn't expected to come out until next year, but there is already a "pretty substantial" Steam demo, which is available to play right now as part of the latest Steam Next Fest. This doesn't include any multiplayer, but features full access to the arcade mode and partial access to the campaign (including "7 rivals to face against and 25 effects for you to strategise around").
Our friends over at our sister site Steam Hype recently checked out the demo, praising the modifiers in the campaign mode for making the game more complex and making them think about how to approach the levels, but left them wanting "an alternate view mode" due to difficulties visualising the entire play-field.
Here's a link to the Steam page where you can wishlist the game, and try out the demo for yourself.