LGR - Theme Hospital - DOS PC Game Review
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Isaac
This game is really a business process simulator. Once you understand the dynamics, the objective is really simple: get patients in, treated, and out as quickly as possible. It turns out that having an optimal layout and the right people at the right place makes the game a child's play.
For example, the GP's office should be as small as possible, near the main entrance, with the patient's chair as near to the room's door as possible to minimise movement. Remember, the room layout doesn't have to make sense - the patient's chair doesn't need to face the doctor's desk for it to work. The GP himself should be the best doctor(s) in the hospital, with the most experience. The best doctors make getting the diagnosis correct at the first visit almost 100% of the time. You will only need a second diagnostic room to cover the rest of the cases, also with an experienced doctor. I can't remember off-hand but the scanner room is one of the fastest in and out. If you still have trouble diagnosing, then build another type of room. It is best to use as few options as possible to minimise complexity. Again, optimise the room layout so that the patient moves in and out as quickly as possible.
Think of each room like a stage in the process with inventory to handle. You should minimise inventory (patients) by having as few as possible waiting, either by making the process faster (better people, optimal room layout, or having more rooms. If you see long queues at a stage, increase capacity at that stage. Put all the most commonly used rooms close to the main entrance and all the specialty rooms further away (e. g. nearer to the helipad) - depending on how commonly you receive such patients. Keep staff rooms nearby so that staff will not need to travel too far between them.
Do away with all the plants, seats, and vending machines as they simply slow the process down, block the paths, and add more complexity. In fact, you will need fewer handymen if you don't have food (from vending machines) and plants to water. And you avoid rats as well.
The best way to keep staff happy and therefore not have to give raises (at all) is to make sure they have plenty of breaks. I remember setting the threshold to around 50% of tiredness before they should go and have a break. This way, no one asks for more money.
As for doctors, the important thing is to get a Consultant Surgeon Psychiatrist Researcher, or at least Consultant Surgeon Psychiatrist as soon as you can. This is done by slowly training up the worst doctors you can find to hire. Their low level gives them much more time to fully qualify with all three specialties before they become a Consultant and cannot be further trained. What I do once I have such a trainer is to continue hiring the lousiest doctors which are also the cheapest, train them up, deploy them, and leave their pay at the level they joined at by keeping them happy.
But you should hire the best nurses and handymen as they move the fastest. And if you followed what I mentioned, you probably need only a small number of handymen to keep an efficient hospital running. As for the receptionist, I'm not sure as I can't tell the difference between a good and a bad one on the operations. You will only need one though.
If there are medical cases where I cannot solve or are not 100% certain (i. e. fax machine asking you to take chances, I'll simply send them home or to another hospital. This is to avoid negative reputation.
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This game is really a business process simulator. Once you understand the dynamics, the objective is really simple: get patients in, treated, and out as quickly as possible. It turns out that having an optimal layout and the right people at the right place makes the game a child's play.
For example, the GP's office should be as small as possible, near the main entrance, with the patient's chair as near to the room's door as possible to minimise movement. Remember, the room layout doesn't have to make sense - the patient's chair doesn't need to face the doctor's desk for it to work. The GP himself should be the best doctor(s) in the hospital, with the most experience. The best doctors make getting the diagnosis correct at the first visit almost 100% of the time. You will only need a second diagnostic room to cover the rest of the cases, also with an experienced doctor. I can't remember off-hand but the scanner room is one of the fastest in and out. If you still have trouble diagnosing, then build another type of room. It is best to use as few options as possible to minimise complexity. Again, optimise the room layout so that the patient moves in and out as quickly as possible.
Think of each room like a stage in the process with inventory to handle. You should minimise inventory (patients) by having as few as possible waiting, either by making the process faster (better people, optimal room layout, or having more rooms. If you see long queues at a stage, increase capacity at that stage. Put all the most commonly used rooms close to the main entrance and all the specialty rooms further away (e. g. nearer to the helipad) - depending on how commonly you receive such patients. Keep staff rooms nearby so that staff will not need to travel too far between them.
Do away with all the plants, seats, and vending machines as they simply slow the process down, block the paths, and add more complexity. In fact, you will need fewer handymen if you don't have food (from vending machines) and plants to water. And you avoid rats as well.
The best way to keep staff happy and therefore not have to give raises (at all) is to make sure they have plenty of breaks. I remember setting the threshold to around 50% of tiredness before they should go and have a break. This way, no one asks for more money.
As for doctors, the important thing is to get a Consultant Surgeon Psychiatrist Researcher, or at least Consultant Surgeon Psychiatrist as soon as you can. This is done by slowly training up the worst doctors you can find to hire. Their low level gives them much more time to fully qualify with all three specialties before they become a Consultant and cannot be further trained. What I do once I have such a trainer is to continue hiring the lousiest doctors which are also the cheapest, train them up, deploy them, and leave their pay at the level they joined at by keeping them happy.
But you should hire the best nurses and handymen as they move the fastest. And if you followed what I mentioned, you probably need only a small number of handymen to keep an efficient hospital running. As for the receptionist, I'm not sure as I can't tell the difference between a good and a bad one on the operations. You will only need one though.
If there are medical cases where I cannot solve or are not 100% certain (i. e. fax machine asking you to take chances, I'll simply send them home or to another hospital. This is to avoid negative reputation.
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Karl
The AI for the doctors is pretty good, I think. Staff has a tiredness meter that fills up as they work. At a certain threshold (which you can adjust in a menu slider) they will finish off their last patient call and head towards the nearest staff room where they will stick around playing pool and watching daytime TV until restored. What the player can do is decrease the travel time to a staff room. A wing of the hospital with lots of staff probably need a large staff room, but a little wing with just a few rarely used clinics can make do without.
Staff AI tries to decide which rooms need them most at the moment. You will hear the -doctor to room x- announcement, and a doctor from an unused room or one that was hanging out in the hallway will make his way to the needed room. This can cause specialists like psychologists to jog over to a clinic and perform a treatment. It is possible to pick up the staff and forcibly shove them into a room. If they are forced to work with tiredness, they get grumpy faster. You can find a menu option where staff stays in exactly their assigned room, as well.
Staff morale is lowered continuously, more if they work in cramped, dreary rooms without a nice potted plant and heat and can't fix their tiredness. You can give them a one-time cash bonus to bump it up or a raise. If you do nothing, they will come at you and demand a raise. This is done through the employee menu, where you can see who is dissatisfied.
The only important bug I noticed was a slight tendency for staff to warp outside the hospital or into walls. It is possible for doctors to glitch and get stuck somewhere, so you have to pick them up.
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The AI for the doctors is pretty good, I think. Staff has a tiredness meter that fills up as they work. At a certain threshold (which you can adjust in a menu slider) they will finish off their last patient call and head towards the nearest staff room where they will stick around playing pool and watching daytime TV until restored. What the player can do is decrease the travel time to a staff room. A wing of the hospital with lots of staff probably need a large staff room, but a little wing with just a few rarely used clinics can make do without.
Staff AI tries to decide which rooms need them most at the moment. You will hear the -doctor to room x- announcement, and a doctor from an unused room or one that was hanging out in the hallway will make his way to the needed room. This can cause specialists like psychologists to jog over to a clinic and perform a treatment. It is possible to pick up the staff and forcibly shove them into a room. If they are forced to work with tiredness, they get grumpy faster. You can find a menu option where staff stays in exactly their assigned room, as well.
Staff morale is lowered continuously, more if they work in cramped, dreary rooms without a nice potted plant and heat and can't fix their tiredness. You can give them a one-time cash bonus to bump it up or a raise. If you do nothing, they will come at you and demand a raise. This is done through the employee menu, where you can see who is dissatisfied.
The only important bug I noticed was a slight tendency for staff to warp outside the hospital or into walls. It is possible for doctors to glitch and get stuck somewhere, so you have to pick them up.
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Sky
Theme Hospital is a classic. but it was also a frustrating game for me. I had a rig with Windows 95 when it was released, but the Windows version was highly unstable. I could play for a while and at a random moment at each new career (more frequently at start of level 3, the game will crash and reload said savegame will make it crash again at each try. One time I reached the level 4 before crashing.
To play again, I had to do a new career. until the game crash again at some point.
I think that the savegames of the Windows version corrupt themselves somehow, and so become unusable at a moment.
Hopefully, the DOS executable was in the CD and I played with it until the end. The Windows savegames wasn't compatible (or corrupted) so I had to redo from scratch, but the fact that there were a high-resolution mode in the DOS version compensated the trouble.
At the end, the worst point of this game was the lack of sandbox mode or map editor. Only few missions, one or two bonus level where you are asked to shoot rats, and it was done.
The opensource version CorsixTH is now here and it is great. Still some bugs thought, but it expands the game with his map editor, support of newer Windows, multiple music formats, etc. Thanks guys, you are awesome!
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Theme Hospital is a classic. but it was also a frustrating game for me. I had a rig with Windows 95 when it was released, but the Windows version was highly unstable. I could play for a while and at a random moment at each new career (more frequently at start of level 3, the game will crash and reload said savegame will make it crash again at each try. One time I reached the level 4 before crashing.
To play again, I had to do a new career. until the game crash again at some point.
I think that the savegames of the Windows version corrupt themselves somehow, and so become unusable at a moment.
Hopefully, the DOS executable was in the CD and I played with it until the end. The Windows savegames wasn't compatible (or corrupted) so I had to redo from scratch, but the fact that there were a high-resolution mode in the DOS version compensated the trouble.
At the end, the worst point of this game was the lack of sandbox mode or map editor. Only few missions, one or two bonus level where you are asked to shoot rats, and it was done.
The opensource version CorsixTH is now here and it is great. Still some bugs thought, but it expands the game with his map editor, support of newer Windows, multiple music formats, etc. Thanks guys, you are awesome!
reply
William
I rediscovered this a couple weeks ago while going through my collection of old CDs - the installer for the Windows version is 16 bit, so will have issues running on modern machines, but I got it working using WineVDM and the game itself will run quite happily on native 64 bit Windows 10. There is also an open source implementation (CorsixTH) that uses the original game's assets to run on modern machines.
I finally played it through to the end (including a few of the rat shooter bonus levels. The later levels get very hectic (especially when epidemics enter the equation). I have found that you can never have too many doctors, especially surgeons - the advisor always hints that I have too many doctors, yet there are queues for everything because I can't get them trained fast enough. Giving staff pay raises is usually a given, but there are some cases where a doctor will request a raise several times their existing rate, which can be a burden on finances so it makes sense to just sack them and find a replacement.
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I rediscovered this a couple weeks ago while going through my collection of old CDs - the installer for the Windows version is 16 bit, so will have issues running on modern machines, but I got it working using WineVDM and the game itself will run quite happily on native 64 bit Windows 10. There is also an open source implementation (CorsixTH) that uses the original game's assets to run on modern machines.
I finally played it through to the end (including a few of the rat shooter bonus levels. The later levels get very hectic (especially when epidemics enter the equation). I have found that you can never have too many doctors, especially surgeons - the advisor always hints that I have too many doctors, yet there are queues for everything because I can't get them trained fast enough. Giving staff pay raises is usually a given, but there are some cases where a doctor will request a raise several times their existing rate, which can be a burden on finances so it makes sense to just sack them and find a replacement.
reply
Nick
Of the modern Theme Hospital homage games, what is your favorite? Mine is Two Point Hospital.
Have you considered doing a series on homage games, or whatever you want to call it? We've got Two Point Hospital & gang emulating Theme Hospital, Planet Coaster & gang emulating Rollercoaster Tycoon, Dungeons 3- & gang emulating Dungeon Keeper.
I think you could have a great series on games like this.
-Let's be honest, Dungeons 1 wasn't trying to be Dungeon Keeper, and everyone threw a hissyfit. Dungeons 2, while fun, felt like Dungeon Keeper Lite, at best, and Dungeons 3 hits is virtually perfectly as a Dungeon Keeper homage game. War For The Overlord is, I think, a bit CLOSER to Dungeon Keeper, but not in the right way. I find Dungeons 3 to be the best spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper.
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Of the modern Theme Hospital homage games, what is your favorite? Mine is Two Point Hospital.
Have you considered doing a series on homage games, or whatever you want to call it? We've got Two Point Hospital & gang emulating Theme Hospital, Planet Coaster & gang emulating Rollercoaster Tycoon, Dungeons 3- & gang emulating Dungeon Keeper.
I think you could have a great series on games like this.
-Let's be honest, Dungeons 1 wasn't trying to be Dungeon Keeper, and everyone threw a hissyfit. Dungeons 2, while fun, felt like Dungeon Keeper Lite, at best, and Dungeons 3 hits is virtually perfectly as a Dungeon Keeper homage game. War For The Overlord is, I think, a bit CLOSER to Dungeon Keeper, but not in the right way. I find Dungeons 3 to be the best spiritual successor to Dungeon Keeper.
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Daxter250
to prevent a forced salary raise you should always keep an eye on the staff menu. there you can give everyone some -pocket money- to make 'em happy. you should also decrease their stress level to around 40%, 'cause unhappiness starts to occur when they have to work while being stressed.
personally i found the rats to be the most annoying thing in the game. to get rid of 'em i always had to use a bench or a plant, built it right on top of the hole and it vanished. however, they sometimes make lil' holes right at the big main doors prevent you from putting something on top of it.
btw. a fun fact: the german ps1 version didn't show death taking the souls with him. instead all dead people simply changed into transparent angels and flew right to heaven xD.
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to prevent a forced salary raise you should always keep an eye on the staff menu. there you can give everyone some -pocket money- to make 'em happy. you should also decrease their stress level to around 40%, 'cause unhappiness starts to occur when they have to work while being stressed.
personally i found the rats to be the most annoying thing in the game. to get rid of 'em i always had to use a bench or a plant, built it right on top of the hole and it vanished. however, they sometimes make lil' holes right at the big main doors prevent you from putting something on top of it.
btw. a fun fact: the german ps1 version didn't show death taking the souls with him. instead all dead people simply changed into transparent angels and flew right to heaven xD.
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rickysmyth
Its pretty good apart from the pay increase requests and rooms that cannot be deleted after the machinery is damaged beyond repair. I see you were playing on the dos version which only has the normal difficulty. Normal is easy once you know how to play. I suppose it is technically a children's game. We played this as kids after all
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Its pretty good apart from the pay increase requests and rooms that cannot be deleted after the machinery is damaged beyond repair. I see you were playing on the dos version which only has the normal difficulty. Normal is easy once you know how to play. I suppose it is technically a children's game. We played this as kids after all
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triple5tar
The reason all your employees wanted raises if because the layout of your hospital was pretty awful. They respond well to large rooms with lots of items in every room. The patients need benches, warm, toilets, and drinks. If you don-t provide these things then staff and patients gets pissed.
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The reason all your employees wanted raises if because the layout of your hospital was pretty awful. They respond well to large rooms with lots of items in every room. The patients need benches, warm, toilets, and drinks. If you don-t provide these things then staff and patients gets pissed.
reply
Ri
Speaking of tedious, on later levels you will have flu spreading in your hospital and you will need to give flu jabs by finding and clicking on the patients that have it. Every single one! You have to be quick or else it will spread all over the place. That's when I gave up back in the day.
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Speaking of tedious, on later levels you will have flu spreading in your hospital and you will need to give flu jabs by finding and clicking on the patients that have it. Every single one! You have to be quick or else it will spread all over the place. That's when I gave up back in the day.
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Marina44664
your room placement is driving me nuts-I do like this game very much, my mom played it when i was young and i was drawn to it, playing myself repeatedly, though not winning until I was older, and I'm glad you liked it! for real though, that room placement is driving me insane.
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your room placement is driving me nuts-I do like this game very much, my mom played it when i was young and i was drawn to it, playing myself repeatedly, though not winning until I was older, and I'm glad you liked it! for real though, that room placement is driving me insane.
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