Side Effects

Sometimes you play games that you feel you would like to be a part of, games that you immerse yourself in and can fantasise about the adventures you could experience if there was a little you running around misbehaving and causing trouble. {Side Effects} is not one of them... far from it. In fact, I find it difficult to think of games that are less appealing than this one. The idea of being strapped to a table and forced to swallow pill after pill until you drop dead is not exactly a dream scenario.

That is the premise of {Side Effects}. You are a test subject who has to play Russian roulette with potentially lethal drugs. {Buckshot Roulette} was a hit and went viral when it was released almost two years ago, and {Side Effects} has borrowed the concept from it, removing the weapon aspect and applying a medically prescribed dose of pills instead. However, it's not just a matter of swallowing and looking happy. No, a plethora of tools and instruments allow you to survive another round, or punish an opponent instead...

You will learn how many of the tablets impact your life before they are placed on the table.

Initially, it's fairly harmless in this context, with two out of six pills causing you to lose one of your four lives. Before the round starts, you choose two tools that you can use to your advantage. We have the hammer that you can use to smash pills, the mint pastille that you swallow to skip your turn, and the medicine tester, which is incredibly useful because it reveals whether the pill you have chosen is good or bad. There are a whole bunch more, which allow you to steal stuff from other players or force them to take a specific pill. Since the game is quite... graphic, it also offers bizarre elements, such as removed eyes and pulled teeth, and it may not be the best choice of game if you happen to be afraid of needles.

{Side Effects} can be played solo, against friends, or against random opponents who are also in desperate need of medication. This game is definitely best played against others, as that's when it's at its best. Forcing a pill that you know will lead to a nasty death down the throat of an AI opponent isn't quite as satisfying as ruining the mood of a good (former?) friend and seeing their face contort in pure panic. The multiplayer mode accommodates up to four players, and the matches are quite long, but as the rounds tick away, the selection of pills becomes both larger and considerably more lethal.

It's important to keep track of which pills your opponents have swallowed, which ones you have consumed yourself, and which ones are left on the table. If you do that, you have a good chance of surviving, but sometimes you have to take a chance, and the odds are rarely in your favour. It's a concept that is both fun and clever, even though it's basically very simple. But there are a few things I would have liked to see that would have elevated {Side Effects} even higher.

Analyse the tablet and see whether it is beneficial for you or not.

It's a bit boring that all the guinea pigs look the same initially. The design works, it really does, with shaved heads, staring eyes, wide jaws, and a complete lack of noses. {Side Effects} looks fun and the developers ({hirohun, Mr.Pootsley, Jaybooty, Lofar42}) really nail the aesthetic, but it wouldn't have hurt to modify their own patients a little. It would have made the matches more lively and broken the immersion less. After a few rounds of pill roulette, everyone ends up looking different anyway, thanks to the side effects of the tablets they swallow. Towards the end, no one looks particularly well, and it's like a makeover session in a mental hospital where no one really wins.

Technically, graphically, and visually, it's no masterpiece. {Side Effects} achieves what it sets out to do, mainly thanks to its aesthetic choices. It won't win any awards for best graphics, but it works. The music doesn't stand out either as it's more about ambience and mood. Machines rattling and creaking, plus patients banging their heads on the table and pills bouncing off the playing surface. Together with the dull, anonymous music in the background, the atmosphere is greatly enhanced. We're not talking about a good atmosphere here, as you can imagine, but more like the atmosphere you often experience when sitting in the waiting room at the hospital as people are coughing, sneezing, and sighing around you.

An incredibly thrilling multiplayer round ended with me as the sole survivor. A very satisfied Joel on the far left.

I like {Side Effects}. It's fun to unlock new tools, fun to mess with opponents, and even more fun to win a match. But it's not something I'll be returning to daily - at most monthly, to check if they've added new content. This is a game that's perfect for one or two insanely fun game nights with friends, but you probably won't get more than that out of it. That said, it costs less than £4, and it's definitely worth it.