He Needs His Medicine is a “Armed cop somehow has a science degree” simulator and side scholar horror game developed by the Euphoric Brothers, whose game Flesh Water I had previously covered. For those not in the know (like me), some of their other games included Garten of Banban, Egghead Gumpty and Human Apocalypse previously. I don’t really know much about this game other than what I covered in Flesh Water but I originally found out about this game by my dude Bad Ghosts, who did a small playthrough on his second channel (link down below), and as someone who likes to try out free horror games every now and then I figured I’d give this a spin as well.

The gameplay and story are both short and simple for better or worse. The game starts with you playing as an unnamed police officer as he walks between a couple of rooms with his gun loaded out. What are in these rooms you may ask? Strange ingredients you can somehow pick up like Bleach, a Torn Shoe, Glue and Old Cheese (dad?). You can’t move forward in the plot/go to the last room without getting these ingredients because you have to mix two of them together in a syringe for the experiment in the final room. What is this experiment? Well, there’s a Albert Wesker sounding a s s scientist named “He” who's obsessed with birds and the “next stage of evolution”, obsessed enough that he eventually decides he wants to turn into one with the help of his exasperated assistant, who thinks that he’s frankly insane and has had enough of it.

You find this out in letters scattered about the couple of rooms, and after you mix the ingredients (though I’m curious how someone would go about combining a torn shoe and glue into a syringe LOL) you make your way to the final room, where you’ll see the assistant sitting right outside. Once you go inside with any number of combinations for your syringe, you’ll be treated to something indefinitely unnerving: a giant skinned Sesame Street lookin’ Big Bird fucker. See, whatever experiments he’s been doing has apparently been working and is ONE step away from ultimately completing the final goal. Whatever is in this syringe will lie the route of one of six or so endings, none of which I’ll spoil here. What I can say is that for the most part as a short game (one I completed in 19 minutes), the endings mostly just made me shrug for the most part. I don’t want to judge it too much as it’s both free and feels more like a vertical slice of something but the scariest thing IS the scientist and as such I wish I could say the game did more for me in this regard.

Graphically the game lies on the same path as Flesh Water with its minimalist and pixelated production but there were times where I thought the game was way too blurry while playing it. You can see everything just fine but it’s like smearing Vaseline or something along those lines and it kind of stuck out. As for the sound design, you won’t get much in the way of sounds except eerie silence or air blowing, though Ty Coker, who voiced the scientist according to IMDB, is pretty creepy in his role. As a build up, this isn’t a bad idea as I’d prefer not to have a loud orchestra screeching in my ear but nothing really did anything for me here sadly. The most freaky thing about it again was the flayed bird guy with the elongated neck but in all honesty the game feels a lot more tongue in cheek then scary, at least with the endings it just didn’t hit me as much as I would’ve liked.

So the final question is, is this game worth a recommendation? With Halloween coming up, if you’re in the mood for a small game and some jump scares or something does it hold up? To me, it’s alright. I’d say you’ll get much more time and interest out of Flesh Water in all honesty but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played. Again it’s short, you could get all the endings in under half an hour if you wanted to and it certainly has some value even if it didn’t always hit for me as I would’ve liked. So yeah, it’s worth your time a bit considering it’s free, I guess just hold your expectations back a bit.

Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbbR4asB3o8&ab_channel=ASecondaryGhost (Plugging my buddy’s channel)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2457549943 (Guide to all the endings/achievements)

From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/