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Bossa wants to bring Surgeon Simulator to tablets, but only if it can nail the controls

From Eurogamer Expo 2013

Bossa wants to bring Surgeon Simulator to tablets, but only if it can nail the controls
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| Surgeon Simulator

An antique ambulance is not your typical place to see an game. And surgical scrubs are not the typical attire for a press demo.

But UK-based developer Bossa Studios is not a typical developer. It is best known, after all, for madcap medical game Surgeon Simulator 2013, which has you cracking open ribs with a hammer and performing brain surgeries in outer space.

Now, the team is hoping to bring the viral hit to touch devices, and showed us a prototype of Surgeon Simulator running on iPad.

On PC, the game is controlled with a crazy system where you use different keys to flex individual fingers of a hovering hand. Now, Bossa is trying to find a control system that works on the touchscreen - and it thinks it might have cracked it.

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"If you'd asked me last month if we were bringing Surgery Simulator to touch, I'd have said 'no way'," says Surgeon Simulator developer Tom Jackson. But a new system, where you move the camera with two fingers, or pick up items with one pinky and spin them a second, just about works.

In some areas, like when you're wielding a scalpel, the touch controls are apparently more precise than a mouse.

But it mostly emulates the PC version's clumsy, fumbling, butter-fingers fun as vital bits of equipment topple into your patient's chest cavity and medical utensils do more harm than good.

Plus, Bossa would like to add more touch-friendly features like buttons and drawers, giving the game a The Room-like tactility.

Right now, the game is not officially confirmed for touch devices. But, Bossa told Pocket Gamer that if there's enough demand for a touch version of Surgeon Simulator, you might just see this barmy, cult-classic doctor sim end up on the App Store.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer