Sanitarium

The game is divided into 13 chapter-levels.

• Chapter 1. The Tower

The hero comes to his senses in a psychiatric hospital, in a large tower, each corner of which (stained glass on windows, inhabitants) symbolizes one of the important aspects of Max’s personality - here we see the characters of the following chapters, during which the hero goes through his subconscious through situations filled with allegorical images and characters from his past. After a short dialogue with the inhabitants of the tower, each of which also hint at places that Max will have to visit, he finds the key to the statue of an angel, which takes him to the city of abandoned children.

• Chapter 2. Abandoned Children

The hero finds himself in a small town with ugly children. Here the hero recalls his name. He recalls fragments of his unhappy childhood, overshadowed by the loss of his sister, who was taken away by a terrible disease. There is not a single adult in the city, but the children are afraid to disobey some Mom, who actually turns out to be a terrible alien organism. Having found Mommy and freed the children, the hero proceeds to the next chapter.

• Chapter 3. The courtyard of the mental hospital

Max is back in the mental hospital in the courtyard. He does not understand what is happening to him and is ready to believe that this is reality, and he is a patient. He solves a couple of simple puzzles, helps the spirit of the fountain and he sends it further.

• Chapter 4. The Circus of Fools

Here the main character is a little girl Sarah, the late sister of Max. Max is tormented by a sense of guilt for not being able to find her sister's clown toy, which she asked him the day she died (she dreamed of going to the circus again). Here Max tries to simulate the implementation of the last request of his sister and presents her in the circus, which, however, is not at all cheerful, but full of despair. It turns out that all the inhabitants of the circus, which after a great flood was cut off from the whole world on a small island, can not leave it because of the squid monster Iggy - a former participant in the "Freak Show". After completing several quests, Sarah manages to leave the island through a cave.

• Chapter 5. The Cave

Short chapter, only one cave. Here you need to defeat the squid monster in order to go to the mansion where Sarah and Max grew up.

• Chapter 6. The Mansion

Continuing to play for Sarah, the player returns to the past, exploring a mansion full of images of the past, making up for memory loss and finally fulfilling Sarah’s last will.

• Chapter 7. Laboratory

Here again he will play for Max. In this chapter, the real work of Dr. Morgan is clarified and the dilemma is played out: is it possible to go to inhuman things for the imaginary good. The hero unravels the puzzles and moves on.

• Chapter 8. The Hive

Now the four-armed Cyclops Grimwall, the hero of Max's favorite childhood story, becomes the hero. The scene is a huge living organism within which it is located. The theme of whether success can be built on the suffering of others continues.

• Chapter 9. The morgue and the cemetery

The hero is again Max, explores the morgue and the adjacent cemetery, communicates with the inhabitants.

• Chapter 10. The Abandoned Village

The new hero is the holy warrior of the gods Olmek. A hero of mythology, which Max studied during his travels (in an attempt to take advantage of the experience of ancient civilizations in the treatment of a mysterious disease). The scene is an abandoned Aztec village. The hero confronts the god Quetzalcoatl , who is represented by an embittered and bloodthirsty creature.

• Chapter 11. The Labyrinth

The player continues to play for the stone Olmek, who needs to find a way out of the maze.

• Chapter 12. The Test

This location is a mixture of all the previous chapters. Here you will have to apply the abilities of all the characters that the player used. It’s as if Max is trying to make a mosaic of allegorical fragments of his past in order to regain himself.

• Chapter 13. The Last Game

In this chapter, the player will face the final battle - with his own subconscious, which prevents the hero from returning to real life. Max will have to overcome himself to come to terms with the loss of his past and find the strength in himself to live on.

There are about a hundred characters in the game, but only five can be called the main ones:

• Max Lauton is a scientist and a doctor. The main character of the game, who gets into a car accident. All the action of the game takes place in his mind.
• Sarah , Max's sister, died when she was still very young. Her goal is to find a toy clown. In the game, she is the protagonist in chapters 4, 5 and 6, and also partially in chapter 12.
• Cyclops Grimwall - born of Max consciousness from his children's comics. Trying to thwart a conspiracy of beetles and Gromny against the Cyclops race. Managed character in chapter 8, and again partially in chapter 12.
• holy warrior Olmek - born of Max consciousness from children's toys. The gods instructed Olmek to stop the god Quetzalcoatl, who wanted to gain power in the world. The player controls it in chapters 10 and 11, and partially in 12.
• Dr. Morgan , Max’s colleague and main villain in the game, set up a car accident that Max got into. He later tried to kill him. In the world of the Cyclopes, he appears as a traitor scientist Gromn, in the Aztec world as the god Quetzalcoatl.

The creators of the game noted in an interview with Game.EXE magazine that the atmosphere and design of the game was influenced by the films “ City of Lost Children ”, “ Jacob 's Ladder ”, “ Flight over the Cuckoo's Nest ”, and “ This is exactly what happens ” (based on Ray Bradbury ’s novel “ And the spirits of evil appeared ”) :

We tried to understand: what each of us likes about games, and what annoys us? From this, we logically came to the question “What do we love and don’t like in cinema, on television?” There were a lot of opinions, but in the end we highlighted four films, which had the greatest impact on the plot of our toy. Undoubtedly, “Jacob's Staircase” became the favorite - we were all impressed by the “strange” plot and such an unexpected, shocking end. We also liked that the film turned out to be so scary, although there is absolutely no blood in it. The City of Lost Children is also a film based on delirium, and here we were attracted not only by the plot, but also by the amazing design and camera work. Creating the “population” of the Sanitarium, we thought about character development in “Flight over the Cuckoo's Nest”; finally, the film “That is how evil comes” inspired us to create the “circus” level.

- http://questzone.ru/articles/7.php

The game received mixed and generally positive reviews; gaming publications noted the well-conveyed atmosphere of horror, but criticized Sanitarium for simple tasks and inconvenient controls. The overall rating from the MobyGames gaming site is 81 out of 100 ^[2] .

• The word Sanitarium is the American form of the English word Sanatorium ^[3] , which in translation means Russian Sanatorium . Probably, in this case we have in mind a psychiatric sanatorium.
• In the fourth part of the game, if you again ask the fortuneteller to predict fate, the player may hear a reference to his future: “You have a powerful machine on which you play the game“ Sanitarium “”.

• Game on the All About Quests site
• Game on the site AG.ru
• Sanitarium review , Adventure Classic Gaming
• Postmortem: DreamForge's Sanitarium , Gamasutra