Game review: Healing Blade Defenders of Soma

What is Healing Blade?

Healing Blade is a two-player fantasy battle game that reminds us of iconic deck building games like Magic: The Gathering. However, instead of a fictional world, this battle takes place in the fascinating real-world setting of the interactions between bacteria and antibiotics. One player takes on the role of pestilence, trying to kill three villagers before the end of the game using the ‘Lords of Pestilence’, whilst the other player is an apothecary and defends the villages using the ‘Apothecary Healers’. Both the lords and healers are constructed as fantasy heroes and creatures, complete with beautiful artwork.

Is it Fun?

Wow, yes, it is! This game is a rich and strategic battle and impossible to convey completely here. Over a series of eight turns, pestilence tries to kill the villagers by playing the ‘lords of pestilence’ like listeriosis and gonorrhoea, whilst the apothecary tries to counter by throwing weapons like chloramphenicol at the horde. These interactions are highly strategic because the pestilences are only susceptible to certain antibiotics and have special abilities e.g., pseudomonas has the ‘escape artist’ ability meaning it needs two different antibiotics to kill it. Every time the apothecary uses antibiotics the game is made more complex, speeding up the chance of a resistant mutant arriving and putting the villagers’ lives in peril. Some lords can only attack wounded villagers, whilst others can join forces and attack the same villager. The villagers themselves do fight back! For example, by researching and avoiding certain lords (consigning them as a biohazard). All of this creates a finely balanced and exciting gaming experience.

Is it Educational?

A fantasy game may not sound educational, but it certainly is! Healing Blade really captures the struggle of removing bacterial infections and the perils of overusing antibiotics, despite the unrealistic scenario of villagers being attacked by multiple pestilences simultaneously. Each card is designed with great care, containing the choices of antibiotics it is susceptible to and the flavour text on the card e.g., if yersina pestis successfully wounds a villager, it infects all the others with the bubonic plague as well. The games includes Latin names and diseases for all cards alongside pronunciation guides.

Conclusion

The game is wonderful to play and beautifully designed. It is fair to say that it requires some time investment and thought to grasp the rules in order to fully enjoy its strategic depths - but it is certainly worth it!

Dr Louise Robinson is Lecturer in Forensic Biology and Dr Ian Turner an Associate Professor in Learning and Teaching, both at the University of Derby.