Surgeon Simulator. Games now! 7 hits developed in days

This is another game in this lineup that started out as a project created during the Global Game Jam. As additional points were awarded during this event for using a minimum of ten keys to control, the authors (Tom Jackson, Jack Good, Luke Williams and James Broadley) initially thought of controlling each finger separately, but abandoned this idea as it proved too impractical.

The creators themselves admitted that by the end of the work they were no longer sure whether the game was actually funny, or whether it was just sleep deprivation that made them laugh at every dropped organ. It took the presentation of the prototype to the public to convince them that the ludicrous Surgeon Simulator actually had a lot of comic potential – and they decided to develop it.

As a result, after 48 hours spent creating the prototype, the three UK developers spent 48 days to release the final version of the sim, in which the biggest fun is making mistakes and players are equally happy about failures and success alike. The phenomenon of this game is best summed up by a quote from a review in Rock, Paper, Shotgun: "Surgeon Simulator 2013 is not a brilliant game. But it is a brilliant joke. In the form of a game. It’s an idea that is a clean magnitude of awesome above 90% of what will be released this year because it is so absurd." The joke in the form of the game apparently appealed to audiences – in its first two years alone, Surgeon Simulator sold over two million copies and got a slew of clones.

1. More about Surgeon Simulator