Set in a fictionalized version of the 1920s where the lines between modern psychiatric treatment and pseudoscience are still muddy at best. Sanatorium is a 2D card-based workplace adventure where the player has to test, diagnose and treat patients. At its core, Sanatorium is a comment on the turbulent history of the practices and pseudoscience used to stigmatize mental illnesses.
Even though they wrote on the game's developer page that they consulted with these professors and received grants from this institute, it's truly surprising that they managed to make such an unsuccessful game. If you're curious about the period or psychiatry, instead of playing this game, you might as well check Wikipedia. Or just stare at a plain wall....
An original, thematically bold indie that nails atmosphere and moral tension but is held back by a deliberately restrictive core loop and a handful of polish and UI issues.
A flawed but fascinating experiment, Sanatorium is a place worth visiting—just don’t expect to check out without a few scars.
Sanatorium – A Mental Asylum Simulator provides a unique coat of paint over a deckbuilding-style puzzle loop. That coat of paint is about as deep as the theme goes; however, the game unfortunately lacks a lot of immersive features or mechanics beyond color-matching cards. If you know what you’re getting into, it’s not a bad game, but the promise feels...
The oddball staff members at the asylum are full of charm, and the patients are just as endearing. It struggles with some unfortunate design choices and some unusual bugs in the menus, but is overall worth a bit of your time.
