Buy Sanitarium

Nevermind the cliche story of a guy waking up in an asylum with anmensia. That's just the beginning. The real story is a treat filled with twists and turns and subplots that complement it nicely. Add the great graphics, sounds and the right difficulty for puzzles and you get an underrated classic.

Originally released in 1998, Sanitarium is a PC adventure game created by Dreamforge and more recently re-released and made playable on modern machines. Despite receiving a mixed reaction from adventure outlets back in the day, it is still often cited by fans of the genre as a classic for its twisted and unsettling atmosphere.

The premise of the game is pretty simple: you're an amnesiac waking up in an asylum, swathed in bandages and completely sane. Over the course of nine chapters, you need to discover what happened to you.

Unfortunately, you discover what happened to you in the opening cinematic. So the actual premise is kind of different: reveal the Bad Guy's evil plan and stop him. How do you do that? By wandering through your own twisted psyche while escaping from the asylum.

An hour into the game, you'll unravel the real actual premise: wade through a handful of disjointed puzzles to win the next cinematic sequence that reveals the Bad Guy's evil plan.

Confused yet?

The game advertises as a dark, disturbing exploration of an insane mind. This, of course, is not true in a number of ways. First, the game is rated T (ages 13+). How dark and disturbing could it be? As it turns out, not very. Second, the exploration is of the different worlds, not the insane mind, and anything you discover during gameplay has little to no relevance to the plot. It's really a game and a movie in one, but in a bad way. "Solve these puzzles. Watch that movie." Finally, you're not exploring an insane mind at all. You're exploring the imaginations of a perfectly sane mind.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the destruction of the mood. The first two chapters, I must admit, are brilliant. The puzzles were imaginative and realistic, except for one, where *SPOILER ALERT!* the combination of a lock is discovered by counting how many times a child was beaten in tic-tac-toe. *SPOILER FINISHED!* This, of course, made no sense whatsoever. The rest of the puzzles were perfect. They required observation, simple logic, and no random clicking whatsoever. In addition, some of the puzzles and their solutions were thoroughly disturbing, and I found myself mumbling, "I really don't want to do that. I really don't want to do that," more than a few times.

Beginning with chapter three, however, the game makes its slow, unhalting slide into mediocrity. The disturbingly suffocating mood simply disappears, and, in its place, an unfittingly humorous tone is adopted. To make matters worse, the game suffers the common adventure-game-failure disease: the puzzles lose their ingenuity and logic, and you just know that the designers suddenly ran out of ideas. From there on in, the puzzles are no longer challenging, some solutions even seem random, and the story becomes a race to finish before giving up in disappointment.

It's from here that the other problems with the game become apparent. First, the voice-acting, while passable in the beginning, suddenly becomes painful. It's not that the acting quality dropped; it's that the rest of the game suddenly loses its darkness and difficulty, leaving the lacks in the nuances (like voice-acting) embarrassingly obvious. What's worse is that one of the worst voice-actors is the main character himself, and you know you're stuck with him for the rest of the game.

Second, the controls are not only unorthodox, but they're incredibly inconvenient. Reminiscent of those favoured by Telltale’s Tales of Monkey Island series, the left-mouse-button is used for all interaction, while holding down the right-button moves the character in the direction of the cursor. Without Tales of Monkey Island’s keyboard alternative however, the latter becomes extremely tedious after several hours of gameplay; the frustration exacerbated by the vast amount of walking back-and-forth done in some chapters, and the result is that you end up walking up and down the same flight of stairs three or four times before you can convince your character to walk past it, not to mention the poor placement of NPCs who unintentionally block potential shortcuts.

That said, Sanitarium offers a few saving graces. The sound effects are simply wonderful. The sound bytes for the game menu are very eerie, and I found myself saving and loading just to hear the voice whisper, "save game." And when you walk next to other characters, you can hear them mumbling or chattering away in the background. And unlike GOG's version of this game, I haven't encountered any crash problem or anything, other than one bug that you can see here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=758971994
In the end it would be unjust to suggest that Sanitarium is all bad. However the handful of interesting locations, intriguing sub-tales and decent puzzles cannot make up for the blandness and lack of imagination that characterises the game as a whole. The game does make a statement about the designers' ideas on sanity and the human mind, but it also leaves you wondering why they decided to call it a game.

This is my very first steam review, so bear with me. At the time of writing this review, I have had zero hours played of this game IN STEAM. While I have not played this game through steam, I have played through it at least five times in the past straight from the disk. I can say without a doubt that this is my favorite point and click game. Not only is it simple, but it has a compelling story, some very creepy elements, and is overall a well thought out, and well balanced horror game.

First of all, the story of this game is very immersive. It really puts you into the protagonist's shoes and makes you want him to progress and find whatever it is that he needs to find. (Trying to avoid any and all spoilers in this) This tactic of turning you into the protagonist really compells you to progress in the game.

A good point to also make is that the characters in this game are all VERY diverse. There are a wide range of individuals in this game, and they are truly individuals. They have their own voice, action set, and personality. This makes the game seem realistic no matter how crazy it all seems.

True Horror. This game isn't a new game, obviously. It is before all of this jump scare nonsense. A lot of people can't stand them, and I am one of them. Instead of throwing things at your face, his game uses it's storyline while constantly and consistently sprinkling creepy people, places, and ideas to get under your skin and really make your heart pump.

The music in this game is very good in my opinion. It adds a lot of subtle creepy tones to the game that couldn't be attained with such a magnificent soundtrack.

You may see point and click and think "Too easy. I would be done in minutes." This isn't the speedrun kind of game. It actually has given me some difficulty. The game really makes you think about what needs to be done next.

Puzzles, puzzles, puzzles! This game has many uniquely puzzling puzzles. It has just enough to make your brain work without bringing you out of the game's atmosphere.


Overall, I think this game is very well worth the five dollars that I payed for it on sale even though I know the story by heart and all the places to click are stored in my brain. I honestly can't think of anything negative to say about this game. I have loved it for years upon years and I will keep loving it as the simple, yet eerie and enjoyable game that will stay in my heart forever.

TL:DR:

Well structured game.
Good cheap horror title.
Great character development.
Perfect music.
Challenging.
Great puzzles.

And creepy as all hell!

Thank you for reading. I really suggest this game to anyone looking for horror, point and click, casual, adventure, or creep-me-out kind of games. The developers from the past really deserve a pat on the back for this masterpiece.


EDIT: It was requested that I speak more specifically about the story in my review. Hopefully this helps some of you.

In this game, you wake up in an insane asylum after a tragic car accident. You have amnesia and can not remember your name, why you are there, or many details about your own life and the world around you. You explore different planes of reality and even fantasy to learn the details of your life and why you woke up in the asylum.

I suppose this summary kind of dumbs down the amazingly integrated and intruiging plot of the game, but don't let my horrible preview fool you. The story may seem unrelatable and maybe even boring to some of you, (Trying to figure out your past, present, and future) but once you begin to play this game, you will instantly feel otherwise. I hope this bit helps some of you decide on purchasing this game.

About time this got a Steam release! One of the most immersive point & click adventure games ever released, Sanitarium offers an extremely thick atmosphere, excellently voiced dialogue and a plot that will keep anyone who appreciates a good, abstract story on the edge of their seats.

In Sanitarium you play the role of a patient, bound in rags with no immediate recollection of who or where he is but soon finds himself in a very twisted and obscure world, far different to our own in which he must converse with interesting characters, seek answers to riddles and solve puzzles in hopes of finding an answer to the madness which surrounds him.

Not much can be said about Sanitarium without taking away from this unique experience other than it’s an extremely solid point & click adventure game for both hardcore and newcomers to the genre and one of the most memorable experiences in all my years of gaming.

This Steam version works well, my only current complaint, as far as my knowledge, being that you cannot choose the aspect ratio but other than that everything is intact here! Very interesting game that I could easily recommend to people that have never played anything from the genre.

The moment I spotted this on Steam, I instantly purchased it. After what seems like an eternity, Sanitarium is finally on Steam. Currently, I have the CD (3 discs + insert) sitting right next to me, and the GOG version installed and bookmarked through my library (not anymore).

I used to play this game several times a week, just because it was so engrossing. When this game released, it came at time when Point-and-Clicks were fading out (post-LucasArts and Sierra), so it became somewhat of a cult game.

This is one of my all time favorite games, providing an eclectic variety of atmospheres, horrors, and oddities. Between the isometric view, diverse scenes, the ominous soundtrack, clever puzzles, and amazing storyline, Sanitarium has always stood out. I most definitely recommend this game.

"Youth hides the key to Salvation."

This is one of the reasons why 1998 was "The Ultimate Year" of gaming. You must be insane if you haven't visited Sanitarium yet and you should be treated ASAP!

Surreal. Atmospheric. Mystical. One of the best Russian dabbing.
Each new chapter in this story, will pull you further into the abyss of madness.
If you love the intricate and atmospheric story, plot of which lies somewhere on the border of the real world and your subconscious, then welcome in to dark corners of your mind wich called as... "Sanitarium".
For those who are familiar with this game for a long time, it may become one of the doors which will take you back to the old days when we all have been a little bit younger.

Sanitarium is a point-and-click adventure game released by the now-defunct DreamForge Intertainment back in 1998. The story is quite engaging: our protagonist has a car accident after which he wakes up in an asylum. He does not know how he got there nor does he remember what happened to him (let alone his name).

If you look at the pictures on the store page you can clearly see not every event takes place in reality - our hero goes through various environments impersonating different persons throughout different ages (or planes, if you will). It makes the story a bit convoluted but eventually you will get all pieces of the puzzle together.

Oh, puzzles! Normally, you have a couple of items in your inventory and making a progress is fairly easy but from time to time you need to solve puzzles. These require some finesse and you do not get the help you would in today's games.

Sanitarium is a good game but aged much throughout the years. Since the story is still interesting and some of the artwork looks haunting (the game gradually gets under your skin without having any jump scares) I can recommend it not just to those people who used to own this game but also to those who loved the genre back in the '90s.

PS: I played it upon its release when it crashed frequently. An update not long ago was applied which seems to have eliminated all the CTDs completely.

The very first time I played this game the year was 1998. And since then, I have been speaking about this game as one of a kind, ahead of its time whether it be the graphics or the storyline. Like me, I am quite certain a number of gamers would title this game as one of the milestones in their gaming history.

The graphics of the game might not be as enticing as some of the games that are available in these days. Even if the general atmosphere of the game is horror, do not expect to be "scared", however, you might find yourself very disturbed while playing it. The game uses many cliché horror elements successfully.

The puzzles are very cleverly designed yet not too obvious nor too hard. The general story takes the player from an asylum to an abandoned bizarre village without any adults but only populated by deformed children, from a spin at a run-down circus to the pages of a sci-fi comic book until finalizing in an Aztec Temple. Regardless of how surreal the plot-line may seem, the ending is quite rational explaining it all.

This game has been one of my favourite games to this day, and I am quite certain hands down its story-line still will be one of the most intellectually written computer game stories, past and future.

There are sadly some downsides for the gaming equipment of today - the game crashes if the subtitles are enabled in the cinematics, and movement is not very precise compared to the modern day games. Apart from these two minor but very tolerable downsides this game is a must-have for any point&click and story rich adventure gamer.

I haven't finished on steam yet but I've spent countless hours on my uncle's pc during the 90's (that and Baldur's Gate).
So this review is for my childhood's point of view.
The game uses a 3rd person view perspective(...but who?). The player must find his path while travelling in the real world, the world of his mind or in-between. All that, while interacting with other npc's or solving puzzles.
The eerie atmosphere (plus the ost), the dark scenario and the fact that this game released back in '97 ,or so, makes this game unique, or even better one of the best point & click horror/mystery games of all times.