Astrologaster review – comedy quack stalks the streets of Shakespeare

iPad, iPhone, Mac, PC; Nyamnyam
You play an Elizabethan astrologer-physician treating a bunch of hilarious hypochondriacs in this well put together game

It's the late 16th century, in the aftermath of aplague outbreak, and you're a Londoner troubled by a heaviness in the limbs and involuntary upward purging. You need to see a physician, and you've heard tell around town of an ambitious young fellow named Simon Forman, who reads the stars to aid his diagnoses. He might not have an actual medical licence, but that hasn't stopped him from attracting some very high-profile querents. Who needs the approval of the College of Surgeons when you're blessed with an eye for destiny?

Astrologaster is bawdy biographical fiction told through medical quandaries and humorous choral music, all the more entertaining because it's based on things that actually happened. You play as Forman, the astrologer-physician, and colourful characters come by to demand diagnoses, treatments, and sometimes to be read fortunes written in the stars. These patients - from a stern Protestant nimby to a frustrated female playwright to a self-sabotaging hypochondriac and a society lady who throws disastrous dinner parties - are hilariously written and well acted, each introduced by a choir. ("Sybil Fortescue! She always has what's new.")