Theme Hospital

Moby ID: 674
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Theme Hospital is a level-based hospital management simulation where players have to start on an empty building, and then assemble rooms with all kinds of material, from desks and file cabinets for the general diagnosis to the expensive ultra-scanners and X-rays to diagnose such bizarre diseases as Bloaty Head, Slack Songue or Alien DNA, and treat them with even more bizarre machines like an Head Inflator or a DNA fixer. There are several additional rooms, such as a staff room for your employees to rest, a toilet so that patients don't have to relieve themselves in the corridors, a research department to get the most advanced diagnostic and treatment technologies and a training room where consultants can teach a thing or two to rookies, making them capable doctors. The size and layout of each room can be set by the player, according to the available space. In addition to rooms, the player must provide radiators, seating for patients and drink machines.

However, rooms don't run by themselves. Most diagnostic and clinics can work with regular doctors, but others like the operating theater and the research room require specialized staff while the ward, pharmacy and the fracture clinic require an attending nurse. At the same time, the hospital can't run without handymen cruising around the hospital to water up dry plants, clean up litter and vomit (after all, people go there because they are sick) and fix machines, while receptionists direct patients to the proper rooms.

As levels advance, the player faces increasingly harder situations: VIP visits, emergencies, epidemics and earthquakes, which can either take a toll on reputation or on the bank account. On the other hand, as more and more equipment is required, additional plots of land are available for purchase in later maps.

Spellings

  • Частная клиника - Russian spelling
  • 主题医院 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

101 People (95 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 39 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 162 ratings with 9 reviews)

Very simple, but still highly addictive!

The Good
A simple concept of build-and-maintain your very own hospital, but somehow, it's highly addictive. Fun and weird illnesses walk in onto your hospital property (such as spare rib, bloaty head, people with slack tongue), and it's your job to invite, diagnose, comfort, heal and make sure the patient goes home with a smile - in that order. Sound easy? Soon your hospital becomes so popular, it's simply a huge mass of patients walking about - but be careful - lack of warmth, bad surroundings and no seating can mean that your development turns into a rat-infested sick-covered hospital. Keep the regular VIPs happy and make sure you keep that budget tight!

But what is the good highlights of this game? Well, there are many. Comedic cutscenes of your hospitals' development give you laughs, making sure you employ the right amount of staff and their attitude is a welcome challenge, trying to keep your hospital warm, well-stocked, and smart is also a cute little addictive thing. The graphics aren't too bad, but you have to remember; this game doesn't focus on graphics - it focuses on gameplay, fun and addictive stuff (how many times have i said "addictive"? I just can't stress it enough!).

Realism is also a great factor in this game; for instance, in most games (like "Theme Park", for example) all employees stay in their job roles 24/7 without hassle, but this game adds realism and fun challenge by making your employees more than just "people who do stuff" - they need good surroundings to work in, good cash pay to live on, and time to chill out in the staff room. Same goes for your patients; they need to be cared for in the same ways. This game, despite its graphical downfall, it highly makes up for it by challenges, gameplay, comedy and pure fun - and that's exactly what games should be; fun.

The few levels don't seem like much, but they are fun and long and that's what keeps you playing - knowing that you'll get your money's worth out of this game, and the fun you deserve. The one-off rat level is also adrenaline-pumped and a sort of "relief break". Buying new property, moving and starting anew, and organizing your scheme into the best and ultimate hospital is a challenge (i've also said "challenge" quite a few times, too) but is sure fun.

The Bad
If anything, the graphics are the only thing that were bad. Maybe a first-person experience as a patient may have been a nice little extra, but the graphics are the only thing to be improved on. Seriously though, if this game were ever going to be remade, it would need better graphics, about one or two more levels, and possibly more structures, employees, equipment, etc. but that's probably all.

The Bottom Line
For fans of simulations and people who love to build and control things, you'll love this game. Like I said above, the graphics are the only downfall, but the highlights surely make up for everything. Due to its age, it can be found cheap but may be hard to find slightly. But honestly, one of the best simulations ever on the PlayStation and PC, until "The Sims" can along, but some reckon Theme Hospital is still even better, and at the end of the day, this game is pure fun and excitement for those who love games. If real hospital managers played this, their real-life hospitals would surely become great.

Windows · by Reborn_Demon (127) · 2006

Bullfrog getting everything right

The Good
Everything about the game avoids being dry and long-winded, leaving the serious approach to Civilization and the like, and ensuring that the general appeal of the hospital idea isn't wasted. The graphics are bright and cartoony, and the sound effects enlivened by some comic speech ("Will patients please try not to be sick in the corridors?" is a good example).

The largely-fictional illnesses are a good idea, enlivened by a few amusing diagnosis sheets and some entertaining animations of the specialised ones being cured. The combination of ward and operating theatre, plus the multiple uses for psychiatry and pharmacy, put a premium on hospital planning.

The importance of money within the game, and the occasional compromising of patient safety in response for money (such as epidemic cover-ups and refusing to treat risky patients if you have a 100% cure rate for the year (and need the £10,000 bonus this offers)) present a neat satire on commercial medicine.

Several new features are added as you play through the levels, including training staff, which is a minor feature on level 4 but a HUGE deal on level 5, as the local doctors are all trainees. Levels which are prone to earthquakes and epidemics add some variety as well.

The Bad
There is a slight unfinished feel to the game, evident in a few oversights, bugs and 'features'. It appears possible for other hospitals to buy the land that is available to you, but (having got as far as level 8) this doesn't seem to happen. The UK box has a sticker crudely obscuring details of a multi-player mode which was dropped at the last minute. Some training-related messages appear garbled. Objects occasionally get stuck, which makes it harder to adjust your hospital's design to accommodate a new room. Considering that it was released in April, with the first Dungeon Keeper mere weeks later, there was no excuse not to resolve these issues.

The epidemics don't work as well as they should. If a patient leaves the hospital, the Health Authority are immediately notified. Fine, but this also often happens when a patient moves from one building within the hospital to another.

A few things such as setting the temperature of the radiators are the kind of Micro-Management that should be avoided in games like this.

The Bottom Line
Superficially a sequel to Theme Park (hence the nonsensical title), Theme Hospital sets you as manager of a small-town hospital. You must hire staff, place rooms and other objects, and ensure that people are treated well enough to keep your reputation high and get your bank balance high. Succeed on the first level and you will be offered increasingly tough assignments, each with different success targets.

The game hooks you in quickly, and as long as you can cope with the occasional spells where everything is running smoothly but you have to wait to build up enough cures or money, there are enough changes on each level to keep the interest going. It's funny, original, unique, and worth checking out today.

DOS · by Martin Smith (81669) · 2020

Starts fun, then gets too hard to enjoy

The Good
The first few levels are very fun. They're simple, relatively easy levels that don't ask too much of the player. The player gets to learn new things, try new equipment, and see new animations. It's not overwhelming, and the map isn't too large, so you don't have to divide your attention too much, while still having plenty to do. The money you make is the money you keep, and all in all you can see your hospital improving and getting better, which is very rewarding. It's also very humorous, reading about diseases, seeing the animations of doctors treating patients other things as the in-game characters walk around, and hearing the announcer.

The software also comes with one of the best manuals I've ever read. I ended up printing it off and reading it front to back. It's informative, humorous, and gives a lot of good information that helps you in the game.

The Bad
Around halfway through the game, something bad happens. It gets aggravating. Every level you get reintroduced to the same diseases, so you have to see the fax about Constipation at least half a dozen times. The announcements start repeating. The hospital gets too big for you to really manage, even though it has to be that big in order to get the money and reputation you need to finish the level. And worse, the creators added the stupidest function in the entire game: epidemics.

Basically you have to choose between whipping out all the money you've made in the past 20 minutes, or start a race to vaccinate and cure everyone with the epidemic, which will clean you out too if you don't get everyone. Worse, these happen about once every 15 minutes, and there's nothing you can do about it, so the only way to make money is the aggravating equivalent to tacking back and forth, trying to make more money between epidemics than they take away, and hoping for the rare times that the epidemics are small enough to be contained.

Meanwhile, since the hospitals are so big by this point, invariably one section or another will get covered ankle-deep in invalids' barf, more than any custodian will clean without a half dozen pay raises. And you know what? It says the difficulty is set on "medium" in the beginning of the game, but there's no way to adjust the difficulty, so banish all hope of putting the game on easy and maybe enjoying it until the end (or maybe just reaching it, without enjoying it).

Added to that is a list of nonsenses, errors, and forward compatibility troubles.

You'd expect a game like this to be nonsensical, but sometimes it went too far. I'd say the biggest nonsense was the title. "Theme Hospital"? What the heck? You'd expect a theme park, or a theme restaurant maybe, but who in their right mind would want to go to a "theme hospital"? Granted, some of the people with hilarious illnesses might go, but it seems others would rather take their chances with a regular hospital, especially those with Constipation or The Runs, two illnesses I'm sure other hospitals could take care of. But further, what perchance, is the theme? Space ship? Western? Under the Sea? Leaders of the World? No, nothing like that, it's just a regular hospital that's just wacky. There's really no theme there, and no way you can give it one.

Besides the name, there's also the time. Months pass in a few minutes, but some patients need to stay there for a half hour. Even the simple invisible woman who just needs a swig of drugs will spend a few minutes for diagnosis then treatment. Doesn't anyone ever eat? Don't their families wonder where their loved ones have been for months? But I guess I can't really single the game out, because after all many managerial games, from Roller Coaster Tycoon to Black and White, Sim City, and 1503 AD have inconsistent time spans. Also, there's a relative lack of diversity in the characters. All of the doctors are either Northwest European (English, Germanic, Lapland, etc) or African decent. There are no Spanish or Asian doctors; while all doctors are male and all nurses are female (I'll have them know that my brother-in-law is a male nurse). Patient variance is only a little better. I understand they probably had to make separate actions and character animations for each person, but they could certainly have made a few more. Still, it beats the heck out of the "everyone is a white, 12 year old boy exactly 1 meter tall" philosophy of Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Also, I never got the concept behind the whole "epidemic" thing. What's so shameful about saying that you've discovered some of the patients in your hospital carry infectious strains of illness? And for that matter, how do you have a transmittable case of the runs, invisibility, or kidney stones, for that matter?

The game was pretty low on bugs, but there were a few. The first I noticed was this one time, a very hairy man (many levels before this became a condition in the game) was standing in the hall, blinking quickly (I mean like blinking in and out of existence, not batting his lashes quickly). I clicked on him, he separated into two characters, and the game crashed. Second, people sometimes pass right through each other rather than going around. Third, the staff sometimes inexplicably doesn’t go to their staff rooms well beyond their recommended mark for going there, and reach their maximum fatigue and demand a pay increase. Maybe I'm just missing something, and maybe it was intentional, but it was never mentioned in the manual and I think it's a bug. Fourth, if you're carrying someone while a fax comes in, the game crashes. Fifth, sometimes you get a fax with very nasty news in it, but the fax marks it "hurrah!".

Finally, there are some things that just make this a bad game to play 10 years after it was made. I played it on a Windows XP, but I'm guessing Windows Vista would be even worse. First, the autorun doesn't work. It tells you to "Proceed", but nothing in the autorun will actually start the game. So, after you install it, if you put the CD back in the autorun is just an annoyance, because you'll just have to run it yourself anyway. Second, sometimes when you exit the game, Windows tells you that "an error has occurred and the program needs to close". Third, there's absolutely no music. For me at least, there was nothing I could do. Music was turned on in the game and its volume up. Songs were picked out. Heck, I even want to the install location and found the songs. But they were in an outdated "XMI File" format, so no program outside of Theme Hospital would play them either. So, no music for me while I was playing the game.

The Bottom Line
Years ago, I played it, got to about the 4th level, then probably went away and played something else. More recently, I reinstalled it, and got to about the 7th level or so, but grew so aggravated at the excessively large hospitals, the epidemics, the vomit waves, the expensive equipment, and the fragile reputation that I just gave it up and uninstalled it. That's the way this game goes. It starts off pretty fun, but as you move up to higher levels, it becomes more and more complicated (much faster than anyone could ever get better at the game, so it doesn't even follow Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of "flow", meaning the learning curve is way too steep for the increase in difficulty [or the patience of the player]), up until the point you could get more enjoyment out of doing something else than the aggravation trying to continue would cause.

Added to that is a small list of things that stretch the game's suspension of disbelief too far and minor errors that add to aggravation. And added to that are signs that show the game hasn't aged well. If you find a copy of this game, you'll be lucky if it actually runs on your computer. And if it does run, you'll be lucky if it runs well, instead of getting errors in the game or not being able to hear the game's music.

Bottom line: it's kind of fun in the beginning, but gets worse as you progress through the game. Also, by now it might be too old to run or run well on newer computers.

Windows · by kvn8907 (173) · 2008

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Free on Origin Rwolf (22739) Mar 4, 2015
Theme Hospital Classic Indra was here (20756) Jul 26, 2007

Trivia

Cheats

Like Theme Park, if a player cheats the game makes a point on telling everyone that, but instead of just displaying a pop-up box, the announcer can be heard saying "Warning: a cheat is running the hospital" and "Hospital administrator is cheating", among others.

Custom music

It's possible to play custom midi files in Theme Hospital's jukebox using the executable sound\midi\hospmidi.exe under the installation directory. Look for more information in the readme file located in the same directory.

Diseases

According to producer Mark Webley, originally the game was going to use real ailments and diseases. However, it was pointed out that this would mean dealing with a serious subject, with the potential to offend someone, so the design switched to include the comical diseases.

References

In the intro, some characters from other Bullfrog games can be spotted; a Horned Reaper from Dungeon Keeper and a Eurocorp Agent from the Syndicate series. A doctor can also be seen playing Dungeon Keeper on his PC.

If these Bullfrog product tie-ins aren't enough, the arcade cabinet placed at the staff room plays no other than Hi-Octane.

Information also contributed by Accatone, Luis Silva, Yeah No, and Zovni

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

PS Vita added by Fred VT. PSP, PlayStation 3 added by karttu. PlayStation added by Kartanym. Macintosh added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Accatone, Andrew Hartnett, Klaster_1, CaesarZX, Cantillon.

Game added January 5, 2000. Last modified March 19, 2024.