Theme Hospital is a business simulation game developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1997 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows compatible PCs in which players design and operate a privately owned hospital with the goal of curing patients of fictitious comical ailments. The game is the thematic successor to Theme Park, also produced by Bullfrog, and the second instalment in their Theme series, and part of their Designer Series. The game is noted for its humour, and contains numerous references to pop culture.
Peter Molyneux and James Leach came up with the idea of creating a Theme game based on a hospital, but Molyneux was not directly involved in development due to his work on Dungeon Keeper. Designers originally planned to include four distinct gameplay modes corresponding to historical time periods, but this was dropped due to time pressures on the team. Multiplayer support with up to four players was added in a patch. The game received a generally positive reception, with reviewers praising the graphics and humour in particular. Theme Hospital was a commercial success, selling over 4 million copies worldwide, and was ported to the PlayStation in 1998. A Saturn version was in development, but cancelled. The game was re-released on GOG.com in 2012 and Origin in 2014, and the PlayStation version was released on the PlayStation Network in Europe in 2008, Japan in 2009, and North America in 2010. Revival attempts have been made with the development of open-source remakes such as CorsixTH.
Gameplay
thumb|left|A typical hospital
The player is required to build an environment that will attract patients with comical diseases and then treat them while tending to their needs. The game has a somewhat dark sense of humour, similar to that of its predecessor, Theme Park. the player must build rooms and hire doctors, nurses, handymen and receptionists. Each staff member has statistics that affect their performance, and doctors can be trained so their statistics will increase. Rooms include GP's Offices, Psychiatric rooms, Operating Theatres and Pharmacies, and are built by placing down a blueprint, assigning the location of doors and windows, and then placing down required and optional pieces of furniture. The player may also set up items such as benches, fire extinguishers, and plants in the open corridor spaces provided. The player is given time to build the hospital at the start of each level before patients start coming. Patients see a GP in his office who either provides a diagnosis or sends them for further evaluation in a specialised diagnosis room. Once a diagnosis is made, the patient will be sent for treatment. Some rooms, such as the Inflator room—where patients with Bloaty Head are treated—contain machines which require regular maintenance by a handyman: if neglected for too long, they will explode, killing all occupants of the room. Doctors must have acquired certain specialist skills to practise in certain rooms, such as the Research room (used to research new rooms and cures, and improve existing ones) and Operating Theatre. There are rooms that only staff use, such as the Staff Room and the Training room, while patients also require certain rooms such as toilet facilities.
Diagnosis and treatment cost patients money, and the player can change hospital policy, including the amount of diagnosis patients require. This can be set to over 100 per cent to force patients to have further unnecessary diagnoses. Other policies include when staff can go on breaks and whether they can leave rooms, and loans can be taken out. From time to time, events such as emergencies (in which patients arrive and must be cured within a time limit or they will die), and epidemics (in which a disease spreads rapidly) occur. During the latter, the player can attempt to cover it up by curing all affected patients before a health inspector turns up. If the player fails, they are fined and must face a damaged reputation, a statistic that shows how well the hospital is doing and affects the flow of patients. VIPs may also occasionally ask to tour the hospital; if impressed, the player is granted a cash bonus, a reputation increase, or both. There is an advisor who keeps the player informed about what is going on. Rats may infest the hospital, and the player is able to shoot them with the cursor.
Although the player has no direct control over the patients, they have some influence over whether to evict them from the hospital and in determining what to do with them when given a choice by the staff. The player can pick up any staff member in the building and move them (mainly to reassign them to another room or send them to get rest), or dismiss them if they argue about pay or are no longer required. The player may force patients to take a chance at a cure for their suspected disease before diagnosis is complete (at the risk of killing the patient), and rearrange queues.
The player competes against computer rivals named after famous computers, real and fictional: these include Holly from Red Dwarf and Deep Thought from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The game is timed with days of the year,
Each level has set goals in the fields of financial attainment, hospital reputation, patients cured, and hospital value. If enough rats have been shot, the player is taken to a special level whose goal is to shoot as many as possible.) in the Windows version, and a difficulty setting. In multiplayer, each player has a colour, which patients will wear to distinguish from those of other players. "Litter Bombs" are featured, allowing players to spread litter around other players' hospitals, while staff members can be persuaded to work for other players, and there are "Mini Missions", with instructions for players to perform. Players are also able to chat with each other during a game. The idea came from Peter Molyneux and journalist James Leach, who explored the possibility of other Theme games while discussing Theme Park. Leach suggested a hospital, and Molyneux was enthusiastic about the idea. Development began when the designer Mark Webley selected Theme Hospital from a list of possible games put together by Molyneux, and Webley, along with the artist Gary Carr, visited the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and Frimley Park Hospital for research and inspiration. Carr was initially displeased at the prospect of working on Theme Hospital: he had previously left Bullfrog to work for The Bitmap Brothers because he did not have faith in Theme Park. He chose to return based on his belief that he would work on Dungeon Keeper, which he was eager to do. Initially, Theme Hospital was to feature real diseases, but these were replaced with fictional, comedic afflictions as it was decided that the game's maladies should not be too realistic:
It was during a hospital visit (after witnessing an operation that they were ordered out of because they were distracting the surgeon According to Carr, the team were aiming for humour rather than gore. During the initial stages of programming, Bullfrog hired James Leach, who wrote the game's text and came up with the diseases. Molyneux was not directly involved in the game's production as he was then working on Dungeon Keeper.
The graphic design was decided to be modelled from those of cartoons, Another artist was hired to complete the graphics on time, Fellow artist Andy Bass had difficulty getting the Kit Kat graphics correct. The game was originally to have players begin in the mediaeval<!-- This article uses British English, in which this is not an incorrect spelling. Please do not change on the grounds that it is incorrect. --> zone, and progress to more modern ones. Carr later stated that the game did not need the other eras, and that the team was small enough to make things up as they went along.), The game attracted some controversy from NHS managers, the Houses of Parliament, and The Daily Telegraph, who published an article criticising the game as "sick" and said that the British Medical Association was using it to train management staff. The PlayStation version was released as a download on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable from PlayStation Store in Europe on 31 January 2008, in North America on 31 August 2010, and in Japan on 28 October 2009. Later PlayStation Vita version become available on PSN exclusively for Japan. This version is no longer available for purchase in Europe since September 2014, after becoming free for a short period of time. A Sega Saturn version (titled Sim Hospital as of October 1995) was in development and due for release in mid-1996, but was cancelled.
In 2012, Theme Hospital was re-released on the digital distribution service GOG.com. In January 2015, Origin distributed Theme Hospital free for a limited time through their "On the House" programme. It was distributed a second time through the "On the House" programme in September the same year, as a temporary replacement to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 due to an excessive number of requests for the latter. It was released a third time in selected countries in 2017 from 7 March to 17 May as a replacement for Syberia 2.
An open-source remake, CorsixTH, improves the original game with features such as modern OS support, higher screen resolutions and a level editor. CorsixTH is available under the MIT Licence, and in 2012, a version was released on Android, available on the Google Play Store.
Reception
Theme Hospital received positive reviews. Critics noted the strong gameplay, detailed graphics, satisfying comedic tone, and voice acting performance, but fell conflicted on music, repetition, the artificial intelligence, and the user interface.
The British magazine PC Gamer Steve Owen praised the game's challenge and "cute" graphics, but criticised the interface. Its reception was not entirely negative: James Mielke of GameSpot also commended the addictiveness, and described the port as "almost completely intact".
In 1997, Theme Hospital appeared alongside Theme Park at #61 on PC Gamers list of top 100 games, and was named in April as a Game of Distinction. Two Point Studios, a studio founded by Webley and Carr, developed a similar game Two Point Hospital, a spiritual sequel to Theme Hospital. Both games were released in 2018: Two Point Hospital was released on 30 August, while Project Hospital was released on 30 October. Two Point Hospital features the Animal Magnetism disease, that was originally cut from Theme Hospital before release.