Sanitarium is a point-and-click adventure game, best described as a psychological thriller. The player is cast as Max Laughton, a man who wakes up in a bizarre asylum, suffering from amnesia due to a car accident. He will have to find out who he is, and what he is doing there.

The game world is divided into five different levels, each having its own atmosphere, and it's not always clear if something is happening on the grounds of the sanitarium or in the delusional mind of the protagonist. Both movement of Max and picking up items are done with the mouse. Puzzles are mostly inventory-related, with a few machine and lever puzzles. There are also a few action sequences, but even when the player dies, the game can be continued without any penalty. Talking to various NPCs will teach the player about their bizarre surroundings.

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Alternate Titles

"Шизариум" -- Russian spelling
"סניטריום" -- Hebrew spelling

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Part of the Following Group

Theme: Amnesia

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Sanitarium	Windows	$9.79
	Sanitarium		$9.99
	Sanitarium
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User Reviews

Starts strong, but disappoints as a whole	YID YANG (162395)
An interesting, but unfortunately very eclectic experience	Straw Hubert (33)
A bizarre graphic adventure with great potential. One of those games worth a remake.	Dr. M. "Schadenfreude" Von Katze (588)
Awesome unique game keeping the dying adventure genre alive.	kbmb (399)
One-line summary not available	Katakis (37454)
Has some big problems that get partially forgiven because of it's unique-ness.	Zovni (9427)
A true adventure game underdog with a great, unique but rather short story	Electric Penguin (4)
Sanitarium is much more than a game, it's an obsession	Ricardo Ramirez (2)	unrated
Chilling, psychological thriller	Terrence Bosky (5238)
Insane... Adictively insane	Sam Tinianow (98)	unrated

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The Press Says

Tap-Repeatedly/Four Fat Chicks	Dec, 2002		100
Computer Games Magazine	May 20, 1998		90
GameSpot	Jun 04, 1998	8.2 out of 10	82
Adventure Classic Gaming	Oct 20, 2006	4 out of 5	80
Retrogaming.it	Jan 22, 2008	8 out of 10	80
PC Zone	Aug 13, 2001	7.9 out of 10	79
Power Play	Jun, 1998	73 out of 100	73
PC Games (Germany)	Oct 07, 1998	70 out of 100	70
IGN	Aug 12, 1998	7 out of 10	70
PC Player (Germany)	Jul, 1998	67 out of 100	67

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Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
problems installing sanitarium	4	kate moss Sep 14, 2010

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Trivia

Bugs

Initial shipments of Sanitarium came with a game-wrecking bug that would cause the player to get locked out of buildings in level 2. A patch is available that corrects this, but there are still reports that it appears infrequently.