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Publisher: ASC Games

Developer: DreamForge Intertainment

Release Date: 4/30/1998

Available On

Adventure, strategy, and RPGs were the pinnacle of PC games back in the mid- to late-90s, and Sanitarium is one of those games. You play Max, who suffers a car accident and is stuck in his own insane delusions, or is he? You explore 12 sick and twisted chapters with excellent voice acting and very interesting characters, but don’t forget those adventure puzzles.

The game isn’t much different from the standard adventure game, where you wander around and click on items to proceed to the next area. Your icon is a magnifying glass, and you hold down the right mouse button to move your character around. This was my first annoyance with the game, being that the characters walk so slowly and there’s no run button. Despite this, clicking on things is actually interesting because most of it doesn’t even pertain to the real world. Your first area is an asylum where guys are bashing their heads against walls, and the people you talk to are completely out of their minds. This gets even worse as the game progresses, but that’s a good thing.

As you collect items, you find ways to use them in interesting ways, and it actually makes sense. However, most of the time, the way to use them is so obvious that you will miss it. This game isn’t exactly easy and just gets harder as the game progresses. You get thrown a couple of puzzles at the beginning, but towards the end, the game gets very puzzle-heavy, and they are not fun or easy. Sure, they are unique to individual worlds, but they aren’t easy. I had to use a walkthrough through most of the game because I just couldn’t figure out what to do most of the time.

My favorite part of the game was wandering around and talking to people and hearing their strange voices or weird stories. The worlds themselves are characters because each one has a big problem to solve, but thankfully each level is small and it’s not easy to get lost. The game is paced well with some CGI cutscenes (of course they look horrible being from 1998), but it’s nice that this game feels high-budget for its time. I always looked forward to the next zany world and the weird characters I would run into. I never got bored and always wanted more. The game is nicely paced at around 5–6 hours, and it had a satisfying ending. The one surprise I had, however, was a couple of boss fights. Most adventure games don’t have these, but these were strange.

Overall, Sanitarium is an excellent adventure game that shows how great the 90s were on the PC. You can pick the game up on GoG.com for only $6, but I did run into one huge problem. The game crashes a lot on the newer operating systems, and GoG never addressed the issue. If you can, get the CD and use it on an older operating system (like Windows 98), but otherwise, you will have to trudge through the constant crashes.