The GOG.com site is giving away only a few hours of the German simulation games Biing 1 and 2 (PC). Our author Schuhmann says: These are great German simulations with deep mechanics and challenging gameplay, but one has to deal with the many breasts and the humor that the developer throws at you. Both games are NSFW (not safe for work), rated “From 16” by the USK – so nothing to be played in public.
How to get the games? The site GOG.com is giving away Biing 1. The offer lasts until Monday, February 20, at 3 PM German time.
- Being given away is “Biing!: Sex, Intrigue and Scandals”
- When you download the game, it also includes as an “Extra” “Biing! 2: Sun, Beach and Hot Nights [DE]”.
Biing!: Satirical Hospital Simulation from Hanover
What kind of game is Biing!? It is an erotic and satirical hospital simulation from 1995.
The game has a crude humor: all doctors are incompetent quacks who only want to play golf, all nurses are lewd, and warehouse staff are generally drunk.
The player clicks through various static screens, hires staff, sends people to training courses, and hires goons who lie in wait for unsuspecting passersby at the clinic entrance with a baseball bat to ensure the emergency room is well attended.
As the game progresses, the player opens hospital rooms, an intensive care unit, operating rooms, and a pathology department, just in case something goes wrong. Especially serious and lucrative cases can be brought in by the player through fast ambulance races.
From today’s perspective, Biing is a kind of text adventure: it is little graphically represented, the actual action of the game takes place in texts, when you have to choose how the doctor treats a patient. The raucous action in the ambulance races also only happens in the text; you don’t really see anything.
German Simulation Gems from the 90s with … Unique Humor
And is it a good game? Yes, it is indeed. Biing! received ratings in the vicinity of 85-90% back then.
Behind the silly and surely outdated facade lies a challenging and hard simulation. It is necessary to:
- Train employees to the extent that they can work independently
- Manage finances so that rented buildings and plots can be purchased to reduce fixed costs
- Deal with spontaneous employee absences by rearranging shift plans and employing substitutes.
Those who think they can just click through Biing and have fun will experience a rude awakening. The game is difficult. It is mainly about surviving the tough initial weeks. It is actually only possible to get through the first days with a beginner’s guide (via biing-fansite.de).
Studio Shot at Biing 2 Against German Game Press Due to Bad Reviews
And what about Biing 2? Biing 2 is from 1999: Here the player runs a holiday resort. This is also a very deep simulation, with an even stronger focus on eroticism.
How did the series end? Biing 2 had many technical problems at launch and received negative reviews between 27 and 65%. The company felt unjustly rated so poorly at the time and urged fans of the game to complain to the publishers of the German PC magazines.
It was said that the magazines had tested the game too briefly. Biing 2 was supposed to become fun only after a few days (via archive.org).
The company feared that the negative reviews could threaten the existence of the studio, and indeed Reline Software disappeared in 2002.
Biing – A Piece of German Gaming History
Is the game still relevant today? More than 20 years after the end of Reline Software, there is still a small German community that regularly talks about Biing and longs for the old days.
Here, Biing is considered an underrated masterpiece, and in many comments, one can sense the nostalgia for one’s youth.
Even today, legends circulate in the community about the failure of Biing 2. On fan sites, it is often told (via forumromanum), that PC Games journalist Petra Fröhlich (then still Petra Maueröder) killed the series. She is said to be somehow responsible for there being no Biing 3.
Others say: That’s not how it was. All magazines rated Biing 2 poorly at the time. It simply wasn’t a good game at release. Only later updates made Biing 2 playable and good.
What about the people behind the game? The game comes from the studio “Reline Software” from Hanover. The leading minds behind the game were Holger Gehrmann and Olaf Patzhauer:
- Gehrmann died in 2008 at the age of only 39 due to a fall from a high-rise building.
- Olaf Patzhauer died in 2011 of heart problems. Patzhauer continued to post in a fan forum about Biing until his death. There was always talk of an improved anime version of Biing 2 that he sent by email to the biggest fans of the game.
From a similar time as Biing, but with a completely different approach, comes the simulation Dwarf Fortress:
