Back in the distant 1997, Bullfrog Productions released one interesting game about building a clinic. Yes, that Theme Hospital. Having spent dozens of hours in it, going through every nook and cranny there is, I wanted more games like that. But, alas, I have not encountered projects that could match the feeling of joy and the humor of the good ol’ Theme Hospital very often.
Recently, we got Two Point Hospital, with the game showing great promise as a successor to Theme Hospital, featuring similar humor, aesthetics and style. Although not without its flaws, the game was warmly received by the community. Having gone through it from beginning to the end, I was waiting for Two Point Campus, but ended up being disappointed with drawn-out gameplay.
But on May 23, 2024, Brightrock Games studio released Galacticare, a game that once again captured my attention entirely while simultaneously restoring my faith in the strategy simulators. The game features quirky humor, interesting plot, easily recognizable style and, of course, excellent gameplay.
Let’s start with the most eye-catching: the visual style.
The game is striking in its attention to details, from the architecture of the clinic to the various colorful humanoids, every detail is drawn with incredible humor and fitting the overall style. Your clinic is filled with a variety of creatures: from one-eyed monsters to glowing aliens, each with their own unique problems. The diseases and treatments are so funny that you are unlikely to stop laughing while trying to treat a patient with a flamethrower and an acid bath. You can also arrange the design of the offices, seats, booklet racks, and about a hundred other decorative items, taking into account your own taste as well as the wishes of your patients.
The additional furnishings for the offices and the wards will unlock as you progress the plot, giving you even more options when it comes to customization. Even the diseases are presented with easygoing, laidback humor. Each patient, of each alien race, has a unique appearance. Some have galaxies instead of bodies, others have glowing heads or maybe half their head is actually a bare skull. And the healing animations are more humorous than can be described with simple words. Chiropractors, for example, fix the skeletons by gnawing on the broken bones and printing new ones on a 3D printer straight inside the patients’ body.
Each level also provides a certain visual variety, the level with the Mega Concert shows how the organizers are burning the moon, and with each completed task you can see its appearance change right in front of your eyes. Other levels have a similar dynamic way to reflect the progression of the plot.
Let’s talk a bit about the plot.
Like in any strategy of the same variety, it isn’t the most important thing, but it is there either way. You become the director of the intergalactic medical company Galacticare, which provides services outside the Sol system.
Every mission sends you to a new planet that lacks its own healthcare system but features plenty of aliens just waiting to be treated. Be it musicians falling ill before an important festival, or farmers facing troubles with the harvests for poor planets, or maybe monks getting burns from a volcanic eruption near the pilgrimage point.
The map always starts with a clean slate: you are given a small plot that you can place everything you need in. Later, you will get an option to purchase additional premises if the mission cannot be completed without it.
You will be further pushed to new heights by ambitious goals and patient demands. To prevent the game from turning into a boring routine-like replay of the same level with different visuals, you will be meeting various characters, with each one adding their own note to the overall ambiance of the game.
There is a certain plot present for each level of the game, with its own innovations, new alien races, and more. There will be something new and interesting to learn on every stage.
As always, the gameplay is built around creating a successful hospital, from a simple reception desk to a research complex for the study of various diseases. Each room can be decorated, furnished and modernized. Hundreds of decorative items are there to improve the rating of the hospital as well as the mood of patients and doctors alike.
Note that every race has its own preferences, social, decorative and otherwise. There is also quite a lot of story added to them, which was a pleasant surprise. Fully written races allow you to plunge deeper into the atmosphere of the game. Small and quirky Tenki love well-kept offices and enhanced rooms – to ensure they stay happy, it is advisable to purchase upgrades for your stuff.
At the same time, octopus-like Vizarj that feature both an abundance of toilets AND windows. How’s that for a spin? Before I encountered these creatures, I had not entered the window menu of the building even once. But, needs must.
The funny Kouber Baly, who walk on their hands and pick objects up with their feet, prefer spacious rooms. When creating wards, it is best to make them a little bigger than the interface tooltip suggests.
Selecting decorations for each doctor in the office proves far from boring, although those who just want to beat the game on a story difficulty don’t have to spend too much time playing around with it. However, those looking to achieve 5-stars will need to study their doctors, their patients, their interests and preferences, and build the hospital according to all this information.
By cleverly arranging benches, snack and drink machines, toilets and all sorts of decorations, you will achieve amazing results. Patients will be satisfied, and the rating of your hospital will increase. Decorating the offices and the wards will improve the mood of doctors, which will also allow them to work more efficiently.
As you progress through the levels, you will discover more and more ways to treat the diseases – as well as diseases themselves. All of it can be further researched, from a common cold to more serious diseases, with each level of improvement allowing doctors to be more successful in treating their patients. After all, deaths will spoil your reputation. Traveling merchants will further diversify your opinions, bringing either improvements for rooms or special snacks for patients, allowing you to prolong their lives, satisfy their needs, or even outright cure them.
It is impossible to summarize gameplay in a brief note, since from level to level the game offers new, at first seemingly small, details and mechanics that will later play an important role in raising your rating to 5 stars. After all, 5 stars grant you nice rewards for the hospital, for example a fountain that induces vomiting or a special appearance for a medical specialist that will have a mood-enhancing aura. Moreover, if you continue leveling that unit up, they will get their own talents and specializations.
Galacticare features a great many mechanics that will be unlocked and introduced as you go through the game. But one such feature usually connects nicely with others, which makes the learning process enjoyable and useful.
The audio accompaniment of the game is not very stressful: calm music and sounds fulfill their purpose by providing a pleasant complement to the gameplay. There are some interesting musical decisions and slightly comical sounds of treatment that fits well into the ambiance of the game.
To sum it up, Galacticare is a very pleasant tycoon that doesn’t force you to pause the game to attend to a million little annoying things. Neither is it a very complex game where a single mistake might bury your hospital for good and send you to the “Game Over” screen. Galacticare is a leisurely, unhurried but enticing game. Once you’ve beaten the campaign, you get access to the marvelous freeplay option.
Galacticare can be quite simple in certain regards. At the same time, such simplicity also leads to players paying minimal attention to some of the game’s elements. For example, hiring doctors. You are expected to study the profiles of the candidates, each of whom has weaknesses and strengths.
But in reality it doesn’t really matter, especially if all you want to do is play some story missions. That fact that someone takes a few seconds longer to come up with a diagnosis or provide treatment doesn’t really affect anything in the big picture of things. At some point, I’d gotten an achievement that said I had just hired a psychopath – a doctor who cheers themself up by killing patients. But I didn’t notice any changes in the gameplay at all.
The same thing with the room upgrades. The efficiency regulator will increase the amount of money brought by the room, but there aren’t really any problems with finances anyway. An infrasonic dampener will increase the lifespan of the room, but you will rarely have to think about this parameter anyway. The equipment monitor allows doctors to quickly gain experience for working with clients, but the difference between a newly hired doctor and the one who has already increased their level is barely there.
Again, this is talking only about beating the campaign and finishing missions. If you set out to get 5-stars everywhere, such little things WILL add up and matter.
Meanwhile, the process of building up your clinic itself is a fascinating experience, especially when you unlock more and more opportunities with every following mission. Set up resting rooms for the staff and purchase more chairs so that there is enough for everyone. Set up labs and study rooms to have doctors improve their skills. It is very calm, the controls are quite convenient, all the necessary info can be easily accessed, and resources flow into your pockets like a river. Especially if you click on small insects flying around the clinic – they give you credits and other valuable currency.