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Watch trailer on Steam ↗The Book of Plagues
DiaMMax Games · Published by DiaMMax Games
Content notice: The essence of the game is to treat various diseases (including venereal diseases) and injuries. But there are no any images of blood or nudity in the game. They are only mentioned in dialogs, and their treatment takes place in the form of a funny mini-game.
Positive — 90% positive (31 reviews) · 15 achievements
Last updated 6 Oct 2026
The city is drowning in Plague. Panic, hunger, and fear are tearing it apart. You are the last one who can change its fate: heal it, hold it back from collapse… or drive it to ruin with your own hands!
£6.29
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Price history
Indie, Simulation · 2026 · More £5 - £15 games
Navigate the chaos of a city plagued by disease in The Book of Plagues. As the sole figure who can save or destroy it, your choices shape its destiny through healing and control.
About this game
The plague has descended upon the city of Ludwig. You are the plague doctor - the last barrier between order and chaos. Walk the grim streets of a dying city and master the art of medicine in an age of pestilence. Diagnose, treat, and make brutal decisions. Enforce quarantines, burn infected homes, fight panic and whispers. Every action has a price - and not everyone will survive it…
The plague spares neither rank nor wealth. Ludwig is buried under the weight of death, panic, and despair. But your fight is not only against the sickness itself. You battle its legacy: the lies crawling through the streets, the fear poisoning every soul, the madness gripping every mind, and the heaps of bodies with no one left to bury them.
The City Magistrate, the Merchant's Guild, the poorfolk, the Inquisition, and the Church - all pulling the city’s shroud toward themselves in its final agony. Whose side will you choose?
To be a doctor in Ludwig means trading in hope. Dangerous, but profitable: everyone - from beggars to counts - is willing to give their last coin for another breath of life.
Buy rare recipes, mix concoctions, craft potent elixirs - and remember: the stronger the remedy, the higher the price of a mistake. Your goal isn’t simply to become the best physician. Your goal is to save those who can still be saved.
The game unfolds week by week, each one a struggle on death’s threshold. Diagnose ailments, battle diseases through tense mini-games, and perform miracles over a smoking distiller.
Your only companion is Bane the raven. He mocks, jeers, advises… and only you can hear him. Is he the voice of reason - or your creeping madness?
The Book of Plagues is a dark and deeply atmospheric game that blends moral dilemmas, black humor, and the madness of the medieval world. Inspired by the chronicles of the Black Death and classic literature, it throws you into the heart of an epidemic where every choice has consequences.
Will you become the city’s savior - or its final sentence? Add to your wishlist and don’t miss the coming of the Plague.
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- OS *: Windows 7
- Processor: Intel Core2 Duo E8400 @ 3.0 ГГц / AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ @ 3.0 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9800GTX+ (1GB)
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Recommended
- OS: Windows 11
- Processor: Intel Core i3 @2.40 GHz
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560+
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 2 GB available space
Supported Languages
Latest news
Patch NotesOfficial
Big update
Project "The Book of Plagues" continues to evolve! In the latest update, I fixed several plot holes and typos in the text, but the main event is the localization of the game into Simplified Chinese.There's a lot of text in the game, so I had to turn to modern AI tools for help. Besides, I'm just a humble developer from a distant and cold country, and I simply don't have the means to hire professional localizers.It turned out to be a real challenge! Not only is there a ton of text, but it's also written using complex words and phrasing that sound great in my native language but are extremely difficult to translate into others.I can't guarantee everything turned out perfectly, but I was pleasantly surprised by the result. In my humble opinion, the text in all three languages now conveys the spirit and mood of the game, as well as the brutal nature of the Middle Ages.Please don't burn me at the stake if the localization of "The Book of Plagues" doesn't meet your expectations))Feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on any aspect of the game. I would be very grateful for your feedback and the opportunity to connect with players from anywhere in the world. It's important for me to know how players feel about the project, because I'm currently working on the sequel and want to take all wishes and suggestions into account.Peace and good vibes to everyone!Yours truly,Scientist Doctor.Read full article on Community Announcements (DiaMMax Games)AnnouncementsOfficial
Waiting for patients...
Another city needs saving from a terrible plague... In the sequel, we travel to the city of Grizmar—the industrial heart and iron lungs of the country.People don't come here for fortune. They come here to work... or to live out their lives. A city where the sky is forever shrouded in smog. Where air is swallowed, not inhaled. Where birds are replaced by steam horns, and where dawn is replaced by the dim glow of factory windows...Hello, dear fans of dark stories! I'm glad that the sequel to The Book of Plagues has a page, and I'm one step closer to its release.The Middle Ages, the Black Death, and the city of Ludwig are long gone. In the second part, we're transported to a more modern era, where medicine has advanced greatly, but human cruelty, difficult fates, and dangerous illnesses remain...I really need your support! Please add The Book of Plagues 2 to your wishlist! It's incredibly motivating during development! Thank you for your attention)))Read full article on Community Announcements (DiaMMax Games)Patch NotesOfficial
Update from April 2, 2026
1) Improved animations 2) Fixed a critical bug causing output to the desktop 3) The text was re-proofread 4) The consequences of some decisions have been changed 5) Several mini-games related to healing have been simplifiedRead full article on Community Announcements (DiaMMax Games)AnnouncementsOfficial
The Book of Plagues 2
I have one peculiarity without which none of my projects can begin: before writing code or creating sprites, I must see the era. Feel its smell, hear its sounds, understand what the streets smelled like and what people whispered in their prayers...The Book of Plague 2 currently exists in draft form: diagrams, notes, rough sketches of mechanics, and cubes instead of sprites. It's too early to show it, and it's not very interesting anyway. But I really want to share with you what I have so far. So I started with the coverːsteamhappyː. The cover can tell you more about the game than a long text. It sets the tone for everything you can expect...The sequel to the game offers a journey into a truly interesting era that is unfairly overlooked. The period from the late 19th to the early 20th centuries is a gold mine for the next story. The Black Death is long gone, but it has been replaced by a completely different, equally deadly epidemic.What will change in The Book of Plague 2:Now, the doctor's main tool will be logic, not a scalpel. You will have to diagnose the disease based on symptoms, look for hidden causes, take risks, and make decisions blindly. A game about medicine should have more medicine in it!Resources matter. There will always be too few of them. And there will always be too many patients. Every bottle of medicine, every bandage, every minute counts. Full-fledged resource management will be added!Medical ethics will cease to be just a word. Euthanasia. Cruel methods of treatment. The right to decide who will live and who will die. In the age of industrialization, when progress marches on the bones of the dead and the mafia and revolutionaries divide the streets, our doctor must be not only healer, but also judge. It will be a dark, viscous, tense story!I invite everyone to join the project's social media page, where news is posted much more frequently. There, you can also ask questions, share your ideas and suggestions, or simply chat with me.I promise it w...Read full article on Community Announcements (DiaMMax Games)AnnouncementsOfficial
My thanks and the first news about the future of The Book of Plagues
Today, I want to thank from the bottom of my heart everyone who has been with me throughout The Book of Plagues' journey. Thank you, dear players, for every review on the game's page. I read them all carefully, and your words are an invaluable source of inspiration and feedback.A special shout-out to all the streamers on YouTube and Twitch. I watch your playthroughs and learn what works in the game, and where we can still improve. And a special, warmest thank you to those who believed in and supported the project financially in its early stages. You gave me confidence that this creation has the right to exist.The history of the city of Ludwig has come to an end. For some, it was dark, for others, bright by the standards of the Middle Ages. We've experienced both funny and terrifying stories, met different heroes, healed a lot, and sometimes experienced disappointment (of course)...There were so many ideas for the game initially that they physically didn't fit into one project, and some weren't entirely appropriate for the era (someone still reminds me of a printed newspaper from 1346). Although, historical accuracy wasn't my initial goal.Given my personal interest in the subject matter and the support of players, I've decided to begin developing a sequel.My goal is to correct the shortcomings of the first game and create the perfect recipe for a plague simulator. And yes, it will be a completely different story, a different era (more modern), and a different setting - Ludwig got his ending, and the Scientist Doctor and the Raven Bane told theirs stories.I'm already actively working on the design document for The Book of Plagues 2, completely rethinking the approach to healing, resource management, and interaction with the world. I think the sequel should feature more medicine - in the original version, it was limited to minigames.Otherwise, The Book of Plagues will remain true to itself: numerous patients with unique stories, profound consequences of medical decisio...Read full article on Community Announcements (DiaMMax Games)
