Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma
Finalist in the 2018 World Changing Ideas Awards
Posted on 9 April, 2018
Nerdcore Medical’s infectious disease card game, Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma, was listed as a finalist in the 2018 Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Awards, in the health category. There were nearly 1,400 submissions in 12 categories.
The Healing Blade card game idea was conceived of by Drs. Arun Mathews and Francis Kong, as a way to make learning about antibiotic use (and overuse) more interesting, entertaining, visually stimulating, and full of mnemonic aids. Game designer Brandon Patton and graphic designer Raul Gonzalez added the final polishes to make the game gorgeous and fun.
By giving these awards, Fast Company hopes to "give more attention to ideas with great potential, and help them expand their reach and serve as inspiration for more people to start work on solving the problems that affect us all."
See list of finalists here.
GeekDad Prototype Review
The Nerdcore Medical crew is at it again. After the original Healing Blade card game, which introduced us to the mythical world of Soma, creator Arun Mathews, M.D., has joined forces with game designer Brandon Patton and artist Raul Gonzalez in creating Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma. The Kickstarter launched a little over a week ago and is roughly two-thirds of the way to being fully funded…
Described as an “asymmetrical fantasy card game,” Defenders of Soma pits the forces of the Apothecary Healers – based on real-world antibiotics – against the dark forces of the Lords of Pestilence – creatures symbolic of naturally occurring bacteria – with the lives of meeple villagers hanging in the balance. The player controlling the Lords of Pestilence uses cards drawn from several decks of bacterial pathogens in an attempt to kill non-player “villagers.” The Apothecary Healers attempt to maim or kill the bacterial agents of the Lords of Pestilence, freeing the villagers from the pall of disease and death. The full rule set and game balance are still being fine-tuned, but the current iteration gives me lots of hope that this game will be a household favorite.
As a physician married to a pharmacist, the idea that your average gamer may one day understand why he shouldn’t take antibiotics for his head cold excites me to no end. I’ve been playing an early prototype with the aforementioned pharmacist, and not only did I refresh my knowledge of bacterial pathogens and antibiotics, but I had tons of fun doing it. On the surface, this game may look like a slightly nerdy take on good versus evil. In reality Defenders of Soma incorporates basic microbiology, pathology and pharmacology with a strategic understanding of the appropriate and judicious use of antibiotics.
You don’t have to be a scientist or doctor to enjoy the game mechanics or the amazing artwork, but biology students may understand more of the subtext involved. Resistance mechanisms ‘evolve’ as Apothecary Healers are over-used, thus encouraging players to use their antibiotics wisely. The forces of Pestilence and the Apothecaries have access to special abilities based on the real-world properties of bacteria and antibiotics as well, giving the game a subtle multi-layered strategy.
The Verdict
This game combines a solid asynchronous deck dueler with a well-rounded and accurate teaching aid, wrapped up in a beautifully illustrated package. Game mechanics give great replay potential, and the integration of even advanced concepts in microbiology makes this an excellent tool for learning or reviewing. Visit the Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma Kickstarter page for more details.
See original here.
DiceTower News
Now on Kickstarter: Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma by Nerdcore Medical
Now on Kickstarter: Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma by Nerdcore Medical
May 31, 2015
Have you ever imagined the battles that are conducted in your body between infectious bacteria and antibiotics? If so did you imagine the antibiotics as fantasy heroes and the bacteria as the monsters they slay in battle? Well apparently these guys did and they made a game out called Healing Blade for the rest of us to enjoy. Healing Blade is sold out and instead of doing a reprint Nerdcore Medical has decided to do a complete redesign with the help of Kickstarter backers.
The reprint is called Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma and in it two players will battle it out in the land of Soma. One player will take on the role of antibiotics as The Apothecary Healers, a group of sorcerers and warriors named after antibiotics and the way they fight reflects actual antibiotic recommendations from real world medical guides. Their opponent will play The Lords of Pestilence a diverse group of evil monsters like dragons and zombies that are named after real world bacteria and infections and have the same characteristics as their real world counterparts. During the game the Pestilence player will attempt to kill 3 of the 5 villagers while the Apothecary player tries to defend the villagers until the end of the plague.
The game was envisioned by Dr. Arun Matthews and designed by Brandon Patton it has some very cool looking artwork by Raul Gonzalez who has also illustrated a The Bacterionomicon an artbook with the Apothecary Healers and Lords of Pestilence. It comes with 80 different characters:
- 46 different infectious bacteria
- 34 different antibiotics.
This is certainly a unique Kickstarter but definitely worth checking out. The artwork is great and the game itself is based on real science, a rarity in the non-educational game world and looks like a solid game. There are some interesting stretch goals like a pill bottle to hold the game pieces, and trying to pronounce the names of the characters is almost a game in itself. There is also a PnP pledge level for those that like to craft. So head over to the Kickstarter project for Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma today.
See original here.
GeekDad: Bacterionomicon Outfits Impractical for Battle
The Bacterionomicon by Nerdcore Medical
Nerdcore Medical created a game called The Healing Blade, which was kind of like a cross between Magic: The Gathering and a medical textbook. The monsters were various bacteria known as the Lords of Pestilence, and the heroes were the antibiotics used to treat them (the Apothecary Healers). The game, unfortunately, sold out and is now out of print, but Nerdcore Medical launched a campaign to print a nice hardcover book to showcase the various monsters and heroes from the game. The result looks like a monster manual from a role-playing game, and it’s pretty impressive. My only complaint is that, as in many other fantasy-based games, most of the women are wearing outfits that seem completely impractical for battle.
The book is now available for pre-order in case you missed the Kickstarter campaign, and I’ve gotten word that there is a new game in the works, so I’m excited to see how that turns out.
See original here.
NERDOPHILES.COM – KICKSTARTER ROUND-UP: ART BOOKS, FAIRYTALES, AND COMIC BOOK EXPLOSIONS!
March 16, 2014 – by Kylee Sills
Nothing jaw-droppingly amazing happened in the world of Kickstarter this week. I personally got the funds together to back those Period Panties that inspired it all before the time ran out for pledges. And with San Diego Comic Con craziness happening this weekend, this post is one day late. Shh.
The Bacterionomicon
Look at that awesome sample page right there. How awesome does that look? The Bacterionomicon is a fantasy art book that will showcase 41 “Lords of Pestilence” (infectious bacteria) and 27 “Apothecary Healers” (antibiotics), based on a 2010 card game called Healing Blade. The metaphorical descriptions will give clues to the actual facts about the different bacteria and antibiotics. If that doesn’t blow the CDC and their faux zombie preparedness articles out of the water, nothing (…okay, a lot) will. An index with all of the planned bacteria and antibiotics can be found on their Kickstarter page. Each entry into The Bacterionomicon is going to feature a full set of stats, descriptions, icons, and a full-color layout. Be honest, you’ve always wanted to know what kind of beast Helicobacter pylori is.
See original here.
Doctors make game out of learning infection control
(AMedNews.com)
Two medical school buddies who bonded over geek culture have founded a gaming company aimed at medical students.
By PAMELA LEWIS DOLAN — Posted April 26, 2010
For Dr. Arun Mathews and Dr. Francis Kong, teaching medical students is as much about sorcerers and science fiction as it is about textbooks and rounds.
The two physicians are the founders of Nerdcore Learning, a gaming company geared toward creating study tools that combine two things they both enjoy: medical education and geek culture.
Nerdcore recently launched what it considers to be its signature product, “The Healing Blade.” It is a role-playing card game that, like “Pokemon,” “Yu-Gi-Oh” or “Magic: The Gathering,” depicts sorcerers, creatures and heroines. But “The Healing Blade” teaches about infectious diseases. Nerdcore is developing an iPhone version of the game as well.
The two self-proclaimed “mega geeks” met while attending the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. It was there that a fellow gamer friend of Dr. Mathews told him he had to meet Dr. Kong, who had a campus reputation as being the ultimate gamer geek. Before entering medical school, Dr. Kong worked as a game reviewer in San Francisco. (Now he’s back in that city as a health information technology consultant.)
Dr. Mathews recalled the first time he walked into Dr. Kong’s dorm room. “He had like two or three [game] consoles in his room, and it was just like walking into geek heaven.”
The two stayed in touch after medical school. When Dr. Mathews got the idea to launch a company that combined gaming with medical education, he called his old friend.
The doctors developed their first product, a mnemonic calendar for medical students to use as a learning tool, in October 2008. They then set out to create “The Healing Blade.”
A table-top card battle game, “The Healing Blade” is built around a fantasy world, complete with sorcerers, villains and heroines that the two doctors created. Characters are divided into The Apothecary Healers, named after real-world antibiotics, and The Lords of Pestilence, named after actual bacterial agents.
Dr. Mathews, a hospitalist and intensivist in New Mexico, said the concept for the game came to him one night during ICU rounds.
“I was struck upon the complexity and yet innate nature of gaming within the choice I would make for putting some of my sick patients on particular antibiotics,” he said. “Essentially, in a similar way, when you are playing a complex multi-tiered video game, we are making similar choices by obtaining data from our cultures [and] making risk-management decisions.”
Nerdcore is working on another game that will use symptoms and signs to create sets that players use to identify ailments.
Dr. Mathews said Nerdcore’s primary goal for games is to create fictitious worlds that people want to come back to and explore, much like BioWare has done. Both doctors are huge fans of that company, whose most popular titles are “Mass Effect” and “Mass Effect 2.”
“That type of approach should be taken towards education, where if you want to sit down and learn about all the glorious things that occur in microbiology, you should be able to do that on many different levels,” Dr. Mathews said.
“The Healing Blade,” which retails for $24.99, is considered a “serious game,” defined as a game that serves a purpose beyond entertainment.
It was launched at the American Medical Student Assn.’s annual meeting in March in Anaheim, Calif. Nerdcore planned to bring about 30 copies of the game to the meeting, but because of an ordering error by the printer, there were more than 100 copies.
It ended up being a fortunate mistake, as more than 90 were sold. But even that wasn’t the highlight for Dr. Mathews.
At the end of the conference, while all the other booths on the exhibit floor were being broken down, “We had this gaggle of students just sitting down, spreading out on a bunch of tables, all playing the game. That is one memory that will take a while to fade, because it was such a neat thing to see students getting super excited about infectious disease and therapies,” he said.
“They were just totally geeking out.”