Theme Hospital on a netbook

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My hospital isn't very tidy. Don't mind me.

Research priorities: mismanaged by default

Theme Hospital is a hospital management sim with tons of humour injected in it. You manage funds, build rooms with different functions, manage research priorities, hiring of staff including doctors, nurses, handymen and receptionist. You start off with a hospital that is absolutely empty, and every start of the month, you’ll be frantically looking for capable doctors who have special qualifications such as surgeons, psychiatrists and researchers. You’ll build rooms and expand your hospital by researching new technology and by buying more land. There will be emergencies from time to time that will test your mettle and how well your hospital was built and micromanaged.

Prepare to take out a loan to buy these plots of land

However, this is not a sim per se because it has a lot of comical references and jokes inserted into it. The names of the diseases that you have to cure are not real diseases but are rather bizarre and comical – one disease, the Slack Tongue, requires you to put your patient through the Slicer which basically is a guillotine that chops his or her tongue off. Or Bloaty Head, which makes your patient have a balloon for a head, and to treat it, a doctor needs to burst it and reinflate it to  the proper size.

The game is rather entertaining at the beginning but it does get a bit repetitive towards the later stages when you have fewer and fewer challenges. Though there are epidemics and emergencies which require you to be on your toes and micromanage, after a while they do get a bit tiresome and you’ll just ignore them.

Buy stuff to keep your hospital clean of litter, warm enough and pretty it up with plants

When you have money rolling in like no other, and that is typical during later stages with a properly functioning hospital, all you want to do is to power through the stage and get it over and done with.

This version of Theme Hospital was from the GOG series, which means that it has been packaged into DOSBox. I do not know how the original retail version would run. That said, this game does not run perfectly. It seems that it is susceptible to slowdowns, especially during later stages when you have many patients crowding in one area – scroll to a less busy area, and the FPS immediately goes up. However, that is not to say that this is a major problem. Indeed, it is still highly playable, though it can get annoying towards the end of the game when all you want to do is to speed your way through the stage.

Like

Nostalgic fun, comical humour, serious management

Dislike

Gets rather rote after a while

Issues with slowdowns

Verdict

Try it if you like games like The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon.

Gameplay: Excellent

Graphics smoothness: Satisfactory (20+ fps with annoying slowdowns)

Work needed to get game to play: None (GOG version)

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