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20 years ago a horror point and click adventure game was released by the name of Sanitarium. It debuted during the great adventure crash of the late 90’s and while critically acclaimed seemed to pass by the majority of gamers at the time. I was recently reintroduced to it via Twitch Prime’s free games service and despite some issues loved every second of it.

The Good…

Dark atmosphere, adequate voice acting, and a score that suits the mood perfectly set Sanitarium apart from your average jump scare and shock value horror game. So let’s break those down, shall we?  The atmosphere is definitely the games strongest point. They use shadow and filth to convey a sense of corruption in every area the protagonist Max passes through. Coupled with the themes of insanity and mutilation this oozes feelings of sickness and despair into every crevice of the game.

The voice acting is decent for its age although Max’s constant puzzled inflection does wear on you a bit. The voice actors performances certainly don’t shatter immersion but like most voice acting from the 90’s they can still be a touch jarring at places. That said the voices do suite the characters and I never found myself hating any individual voice.

I can’t bring to mind any particular music from the soundtrack that stood out to me and that is perfect. You don’t want a soundtrack stealing the focus away from the atmosphere and puzzles in a point and click adventure game. What I do remember about the music is that it never seemed out of place and it’s tempo matched the pace of the action in the game perfectly.

…The Bad…

There were very few things in the game that I found frustrating overall but they were recurring issues.

Navigation

Movement speed was a constant minor annoyance through almost the entire game. Every step is very measured and even though the level maps are fairly small it took a substantial amount of time to walk across them. If I had to backtrack it would almost always trigger an annoyed sigh from me. The exception to this was chapter six with Grimwall who has a much faster walking animation.

Stairs can go straight to hell and burn in a tire fire. In the past moving characters up and down stairs always looked weird. Characters would hover a few centimeters above stairs or slightly clip into them in most cases. A way to avoid this ugliness was to create custom animations for stairs which look a much better but handle like a walrus on a unicycle.  Sanitarium took the walrus on a unicycle method. Once you trigger a set of stairs you are locked in, you are going up/down those stairs whether you like it or not. You cannot stop part way, you cannot change direction. The main reason this was frustrating was that the stair animation trigger was surprisingly generous and it wasn’t uncommon to accidentally end up trapped in a cycle of going up/down the stairs while trying to navigate maps.

Camera 

Sanitarium has an isometric camera that works really well in most cases. Where the camera fails is when a foreground item overlaps over a path you can walk over. Ninety percent of the time if a foreground item overlaps your walking path you cannot go behind it, it’s how the game deals with a lot of map edges. You are trained by the game to not even attempt passing behind most foreground items. Once this habit is nicely ingrained you will encounter a few places that are the exception to the rule, often hiding important items or NPC’s required to progress the story. It feels unfair when this happens but is forgivable once the annoyance passes. 

Puzzles

I found most of the puzzles fairly straightforward as long as I explored thoroughly. The logic portions were a bit challenging but mostly made sense. When I would get stuck on a puzzle it was normally because of the previously mentioned camera or itty bitty hitboxes. During adventure games, it’s common practice to canvas maps with your mouse pointer checking for interaction points. Sanitarium is no exception to this but I was recurringly having issues when multiple interaction points were nearby or the items themselves were small. I got stuck multiple times because I simply did not realize there was an object to interact with.

The puzzles also fall apart a bit near the end specifically during chapter 7 where it feels like there are missing links between the puzzles and solutions. Several of the actions you need to take are also unclear, due to poor conveyance of what is possible or simply a missing reason for why you are doing something. Obviously, you take the action to solve the puzzle, but the action also needs to make sense in the context of why your character would be doing such a thing in the first place. I felt that the game dropped the ball here in later chapters.

…And the Crashing

Sanitarium does not seem to like newer computers. There are three versions of the game currently floating around: the Steam version, the GoG version, and the Twitch version. No matter which version of the game you play you cannot enable cutscene subtitles as doing that will cause every cutscene to crash your game.

I played through the twitch version and it ran properly with no cutscene issues for every chapter of the game save one. Chapter 7 with Grimwall was a race against time, every 5 mins the game would crash. No matter whose guide or suggestions I followed the crashing would not stop. The steam version may be able to overcome this with verifying the game cache but unfortunately, the twitch version boasts no such feature. I ended up having to use a walkthrough to get through this section of the game because I didn’t have time to solve the puzzles or read the dialogue. It was a terrible experience but once I was past that chapter it was clear sailing for the rest of the game.

Should You Play it?

I would only recommend sanitarium to players who are both familiar with point and click adventure games and like logic puzzles. If that is you then definitely consider adding this game to your library. The crashes in chapter 7 are very frustrating but even with those the story and overall experience are top notch. If you are only interested in Sanitarium for the story then a let’s play is going to be a better option for you and save on headaches.