Experience working as a pharmacist in Pharmacy Wars, coming to Steam this December

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-11-22 09:45 (JST)
Translated by. Nick Mosier

Pharmacy Wars is an adventure game coming to Steam on December 3 that was made with the involvement of actual pharmacists. The game only supports Japanese.

In Japan, if a pharmacist doubts the contents of a prescription, they are obligated to discuss the contents with the doctor who prescribed it to the patient. The consultation is called a Prescription Inquiry, and Pharmacy Wars takes that aspect of being a pharmacist and turns it into an adventure game.

The setting for the game is a world where artificial intelligence is highly developed. For some reason, this world has an issue with tons of problematic prescriptions being prescribed, and pharmacists are filling them without question. This causes health problems to run rampant.

The protagonist of this tale is a pharmacist that has accidentally wandered into this world. While working at this isekai pharmacy, the pharmacist sees the faulty prescriptions with their own eyes and works to change the fate of this world through Prescription Inquiries.

Customers are bringing in things like problematic prescriptions that can’t be filled to ones that are just totally forged. The protagonist, who works to audit prescriptions for the pharmacy, will have to use reference materials and information gathered from patients to confirm if all is as it should be.

For example, you’ll confirm if the prescriptions can be combined with a patient’s other medications and look at their history of side effects to decide if the prescription is right for them. If there’s a problem, you’ll initiate a Prescription Inquiry to set things straight and keep the health crisis in check.

A Prescription Inquiry provides 4 options, and depending on what’s selected, you’ll either gain or lose Trust Points of the patient and doctor. And if your Trust Points hit 0, it’s game over. It seems like you can experience a real part of a pharmacist’s job by checking prescriptions and holding Prescription Inquiries.

Multiple pharmacists are involved in the development of the game. According to the game’s official website, Autumn, a pharmacist and the game’s designer, tweeted an idea for an Ace Attorney inspired pharmacy-themed game that got a lot of attention and led to the game going into development. It sounds like the team wants to share what the job of a pharmacist entails through the game.

Pharmacy Wars is scheduled to launch on Steam on December 3.