A new video game, developed by the city of Aberdeen, portrays the great plague epidemic that affected the Scottish city in the Middle Ages. “strange disease“plunges you into the management of an epidemic in the 16th century, and is inspired by an ancient manuscript.

At the beginning of the 16th century, Aberdeen experienced a health crisis that had nothing to envy to the one we live today. The plague of the moment: bubonic plague. Of course, we are no longer during the Great Black Death that depopulated Europe in the 14th century, but the disease is still very much around from time to time, even 170 years later.

The city was affected in the summer of 1500, when a ship disembarked from Gdańsk with infected passengers. Local authorities are taking measures that still remind us of something: confinement, quarantine or possible gatherings only outdoors. It was between 1514 and 1515 that disease hit Aberdeen hardest, killing nearly one in eight inhabitants.

Obviously, the health situation has left traces in the archives. This is where the team that designed the game was inspired. Thus, in the pages of the Aberdeen council records, called “Burgh Records“, we can decipher the mention”the strange disease“, that is to say “the strange disease“. The term was used to describe the plague, but also other serious infections that come from abroad and are often poorly understood, such as syphilis.