Sanitarium (videogame)
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| Sanitarium | |
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| Developer(s) | DreamForge Intertainment, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | ASC Games (1998) XS Games, LLC (2002) |
| Release date(s) | 1998, 2002 (re-release) |
| Genre(s) | Adventure game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: T BBFC: 15 |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Media | Compact disc (3) |
Sanitarium is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1998 by ASC Games. A psychological thriller often praised for its atmosphere and originality, Sanitarium tells the story of a man stricken with amnesia, trying frantically to unveil the details of his institutionalization in a terrifying asylum. The search for his own identity takes place within the grounds of the sanitarium and in the main character's delusions and flashbacks, as he confronts the ghosts of his past. The dark mood and graphics of the game are matched by an equally ominous musical background.
The game uses a 3rd person perspective and a non-tiled 2D navigation system. Each world from each of the 9 chapters (over which the game spans) carries a distinct atmosphere that presents either the real and imaginary world of the main protagonist. In many cases, it is unclear to the player which of these worlds the game is currently in play. This indistinction underlines much of the psychological horror portrayed in the game.
[edit] Levels in Sanitarium
The Tower Cells
The Innocent Abandoned
The Courtyard and Chapel
The Circus of Fools
The Cave
The Mansion
The Laboratory
The Hive
The Morgue and Cemetery
The Lost Village
The Maze
The Gauntlet
Morgan's Last Game
[edit] Easter Eggs
Mad Programmer Outburst
Inside the main program file, sntrm.exe, on the XS (pre-patched) version of the game there exists a humorous outburst as a possible error code, on what would be line 774 if the file were interpreted as text, when searched by the utility grep:
c:\sntrm_k.txt ERROR: Invalid NPC ID --> All resources == 0 Stupid Dumbshit Goddamn Motherfucker! Unable to find encounter keyword %d '%s' in encounter %d No portrait for this encounter. Goodbye.
Developer's Graves
In Chapter 7, The Morgue and Cemetery, some headstones contain the names of people associated with the development of the game. Clicking on the stones will trigger naration of a name and a funny epithet. More deveveloper headstones appear in Chapter 9, The Gauntlet. Developer headstones can be distinguished from headstones relevant to gameplay because the last name on a developer's headstone will be abbreviated to a single letter.
[edit] External links
- Sanitarium at MobyGames
- Sanitarium Review, Adventure Classic Gaming
- Sanitarium, Quandary
- Postmortem: DreamForge's Sanitarium, Gamasutra
- Inferno's Adventures (Windows XP setup and technical issues)
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