You start each level with the aim of designing and building a hospital that
can cope with the day to day patient load, as well as just about any emergency
that can be thrown at it. Rooms need to be built to successfully diagnose
patients and cure them of their ailments. You also need to ensure that
your staff are satisfied with working in your hospital, and that your patients
don't have to wait too long to be treated.
The interface is purely graphical: watch as patients walk around the
hospital and are diagnosed and cured in a variety of humorous ways.
The animation is detailed and well drawn and, like the other Bullfrog sims
(Theme Park, Populous and Dungeon Keeper to name a few), you only control the
environment that the people in your hospital walk around in - something
that can be both rewarding and frustrating at times.
A level is completed when several criterion have been matched. Sometimes
these conditions are closely tied to each other (for example: making a
lot of money is best done by curing a lot of patients). You can get a progress
report on how well you are doing, and how close you are to the win/lose
limits.
There are a number of different rooms to build for the benefit of patients
and staff alike. Staff need to be hired: doctors and nurses to diagnose
and cure, handymen to keep the hospital clean and repaired, and receptionists
to direct new patients for diagnosis. As you move through the levels you
will have to research new diagnosis rooms and cures. Doctors can be trained
in specialist skills such as surgery and psychiatry.
 Sound
easy so far?
Life is made far more complicated by a limited budget with which to
pay staff and build your hospital. Patients have a mind of their own and
often decide they don't like your hospital, its long queues, lack of toilets,
coldness or high prices.
Most of the machines for diagnosis and cure need to be repaired on a
frequent basis - they can explode if you aren't careful. Your employees
can threaten to walk out on you if you don't give them a good place of
work.
Emergencies and epidemics can stress your resources to the edge, and
VIP's just rub salt in the wounds. Add to that there's a little consultant
who tells you when things are going wrong!
The mission statement win conditions can be summarized as:
-
make a healthy profit
-
build an expensive hospital
-
get an ego boosting reputation
-
cure some patients
-
don't kill or turn away too many patients
This is roughly in priority order. Who said health care was about the sick?
All hospitals should have a mission statement, even if it is just so
you can wave it in the face of every Dilbert that walks in through the
door.
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