The Fever is a wonderful interactive story based on actual historical events. You play a young doctor trying to save his family while treating patients during the devastating Yellow Fever epidemic in 18th century Philadelphia. The creator of The Fever, Rachel Ponce, did graduate work at the University of Chicago on the history of medicine. The game is terrific, it’s a lot of fun and even uses gamification in effective ways to increase replayability. The most important part of the game is how it manages to convey thru gameplay the feeling of panic when a deadly epidemic is killing people all around you, including your family. You embody a doctor and experience what it was like to live thru that difficult time.

 

For analysis of games and history-archaeology, you might want to visit Play the Past, History Respawned, and Archaeogaming.

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Resources:

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• For a more macro view of epidemics, play Plague Inc.

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• Check out these 2 online courses on epidemics taught by universities in Pennsylvania: Epidemics, Pandemics and Outbreaks (taught by the University of Pittsburgh), Epidemics - the Dynamics of Infectious Diseases (taught by Penn State University).

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If you know of a great resource you think should be added, let me know!