Players have an angled view looking down on their 3D hospital environment and begin by placing various rooms in the map. As with all simulation games there are a number of rooms which are required for your hospital to function and a host of optional rooms you can use to attract new patients. They are divided into four categories so there’s diagnosis, treatment, clinics and facilities. Finding the best layout in terms of maximising space and efficiency is one of the major challenges of the game. Patients queue outside the facility they need to use and so related rooms should be close together, and you need to provide plenty of seating. You can improve the atmosphere by adding things like vending machines and plants.
For the hospital to operate you have to hire a range of staff from doctors and nurses to handymen and janitors. Naturally your budget is the main obstacle and while cost will determine whether patients visit your hospital a fine balance is needed to ensure you can run things at a profit. The AI routines provide some frustration and, as is often the case with simulation games, you’ll frequently find them huddling together in one corner of the map or constantly wandering past that puddle of vomit you want them to clean up. It can also be annoyingly tough to keep your surly staff happy, but doctors with bad bedside manner will harm your reputation so you have to try.
The patients who wander your halls cannot be interacted with directly but you can see various pieces of information which tell you how they are finding your establishment and what affliction they are suffering from. The developers have gone for fictional ailments which provide a few laughs and steer the game away from being depressing or overly realistic which could obviously be a bit off-putting. There are quite a few maladies that can afflict your sims from bloaty head to slack tongue and the particularly unpleasant sounding heaped piles.
Micromanagement is the name of the game as you battle to improve your hospital’s reputation and attract more patients. The difficulty in the single player challenge ramps up nicely and later in the game you’ll face tougher challenges like hospital inspectors, epidemic outbreaks and even earthquakes.
