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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Dreamforge/Peeko Interactive/Dotemu Released: April 30, 1998 Requirements: OS: Windows Vista, 7, 8 Processor: Minimum, Pentium 4 2.4 Ghtz; Recommended, 2 Ghz Dual Core Memory: Minimum 1 GB RAM; Recommended, 2 GB RAM Graphics: Minimum, Intel HD graphics; Recommended, Nvidia GeForce 640 DirectX: Version 9 Storage: 3 GB available space
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By flotsam Dreamforge / Peeko Interactive / Dotemu Released in 1998, I remember when I first played Sanitarium, as well as my anticipation at playing it. I was a recent convert to adventures and in exploring what to play had come across it. It sounded like nothing I had played to date, and it intrigued me. As this was back in the days when you needed a physical copy I searched one out. And eventually got to fire it up. In short, “what the??” But in a very good way. That was then and this is now, and I found it on Steam recently and felt compelled to try it again. It wasn’t just nostalgia, but that it still has an impact on far more modern games (Stasis and Stangeland come to mind). 25 years later “what the” still fits. So does “bonkers fever dream.” Which mustn’t put you off. If you have never played this, or if like me you haven’t played it since then, perhaps you should. It begins with a car crash and coming to in an ‘institution’, your head sheathed in bandages with no recollection of who you are. The visuals and the accompanying sounds suggest it isn’t a happy place, so best get to exploring and hopefully getting out. Sanitarium plays in the third person with an isometric POV. It’s controlled with the mouse, the left mouse exploring and interacting with the environment, the right mouse used for movement. The latter is more than pointing and clicking, and involves holding and dragging the mouse around to get the character to follow. It can be fiddly, even cantankerous at times, getting the character to go where you want, especially with the puzzle at the very end of the game. You will settle in, but will probably curse more than once. The default curser is a magnifying glass that will wobble when it comes into contact with something you can interact with. Hotspots are fairly generous, and clicking may result in you examining the object, taking or activating it, or starting a conversation. You don’t choose what to do, rather the appropriate action (and icon) will occur, but you made need to examine something before you can, for instance, then further interact with it. You do need to find and use items and your inventory is revealed by clicking your character. Click the item of choice to attempt to use it, and click the character again to put it away. Items exhaust when they can no longer be used, and as near as I can recall you didn’t take any with you as you moved to the next chapter. I also reckon the most I had at any one time was about six, so complicated inventory management isn’t something to worry about. Speaking of chapters, each commenced in a new location and each had a particular objective. Working out what that is wasn’t always apparent, but just go about your exploration and it will eventually all come together. Your character might also have a different persona, a small girl and an Aztec warrior being amongst them. You also need to solve a number of out and out puzzles, and as a whole I enjoyed these. Many involve sorting out what it is the puzzle is about, and how you might go about discerning the solution. Collecting information in the environment is part of some, others are just right there in front of you. None are really hard, but almost all required at least a modicum of contemplation, and quite a few a lot more than that. There are a few (not very) actiony sequences but these don’t require much in the way of dexterity or proficiency. Plus if you die, you just get resurrected and can start again, and the progress you made is retained. Put another way, enemies don’t respawn, so if you are e.g., scything crows to get to wherever, take down two before your demise and there will be two fewer the next time through. Which means you can confidently progress incrementally. Cutscenes precede each chapter change and also occur elsewhere, and are important parts of unravelling the backstory and exactly what is going on. I am not sure I sorted everything out, but that’s the nature of fever dreams. Just go with it and enjoy. Scenes slide around as your character moves, and the insides of buildings and rooms (and some other places) are revealed once you enter. Thorough exploration is essential to moving forward, as is talking to those whom you come across. Some triggers are clearly conversation dependent, and not surprisingly, talking to one character might open up new lines of enquiry with that same character or another. A conversation ribbon will appear bottom of screen during a chat, and includes headshots of the participants and single word topics that you can select to ask about. Just ask again to go over information that you think might be important. I thought the graphics stood up remarkably well. Part of that is no doubt the fact that so many new games have a retro look and feel to them, so the lack of the very latest graphics isn’t really a thing. Even in that context I thought it did the original grisly ickiness proud. Perhaps its been upscaled or polished or something similar (I have no idea) but regardless, in my view it looked good. What else? The cutscenes are grainy, although I expect that might be deliberate given their ‘role.’ Colour is used effectively. The sound palette – ambient, voice and soundtrack – is perfectly fine. You can save at will and tweak a range of settings. It didn’t fill my curved screen but was still did a pretty good job. My boxed version contains 3 cd’s and a detailed manual, and the cover art is rather awesome. That same box refers to the contents being freakish and bizarre, and a journey through a man’s consciousness to confront his demons and escape his mind. That journey should take you 12 hours or so and is well worth your time. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
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