Sanitarium (video game)



""If Jacob's Ladder was reality squared, this is reality cubed""

- J.C. Herz (The New York Times) on the game

Sanitarium is a Point and Click Adventure Game by ASC Games. It is set in a mental hospital, except when it isn't.

More clearly, it begins with the main character losing his memory and being instituted in a sanitarium. Occasionally, he is transported to strange, alternate worlds, sometimes changing his form, sometimes not. A constant feeling of bewilderment and fear follow you as the worlds you visit become stranger and stranger.

You need to figure out many things: Why have you lost your memory? Why are you in an insane asylum? Is the asylum the "real" world, or is it just another dream?

This game provides examples of:
 * Abusive Parents -
 * Adult Child: Lenny
 * A Glitch in the Matrix: The "real world" starts becoming more and more unreal with each chapter.
 * All the Worlds Are a Stage - The next to last subchapter is a mishmash of all of the non-"real world" chapters.
 * Alternate Universe -
 * Then there's a
 * Ambition Is Evil
 * Played straight with Morgan
 * Averted with Max
 * Arc Words - "Seek the truth"
 * Back From the Dead - A dead woman comes back to life long enough to give Max some cryptic warnings.
 * Bandaged Face
 * Bedlam House - Well, of course.
 * Big Bad -
 * Big No
 * Black Bug Room -
 * Body Horror - You don't even know.
 * Booze Flamethrower - Sarah is taught how to do this by Inferno, which is then used.
 * Bratty Half-Pint - Billy, Jennifer, and Dennis.
 * Breather Episode - In chapter 3, the horror takes a backseat to...comedy?
 * Buried Alive - Happens to at least 3 characters
 * The Chessmaster - Morgan  and Gromna
 * Circus of Fear - Playing with a Trope. The circus is very unnerving, but only two of the staff members are dangerous and, of those two, only one is actually evil.
 * Cloudcuckoolander - A non-comedic example. Don, Lenny, and Martin in the first chapter. See "Foreshadowing" below.
 * Combat Tentacles - Iggy
 * Cool Big Sis - Inferno to Sarah
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive:
 * Creepy Children
 * Creepy Circus Music
 * Creepy Twins
 * The Cuckoolander Was Right - See "Foreshadowing"
 * Cuckoo Nest
 * Daddy's Girl - Sarah and Eileen
 * Dead Little Sister - Two of them!
 * Dead Man Writing - 's diary.
 * Deadpan Snarker - Max, when the situation calls for it.
 * Doppelganger - Max's shadow and
 * The Dragon
 * to
 * to Mother.
 * Evil Laugh -.
 * Face Heel Turn
 * False Widow -
 * Final Boss:
 * Five-Man Band - Played with because
 * Max is The Hero and The Smart Guy
 * Olmec is The Lancer
 * Grimwall is The Big Guy
 * Sarah is The Chick (and The Tagalong Kid)
 * Foreshadowing - The first chapter contains a room of babbling loons who each talk about different worlds...worlds that you will travel to throughout the rest of the game. Then there's really, a second playthrough of the game can be seen as a grand conga line of Fridge Brilliance.
 * Freudian Excuse
 * Hinted that this is at least part of Morgan's motivation.
 * Mother
 * Inverted with Max, who used his own past tragedy as motivation to become a doctor and help people.
 * Ghost Town
 * Go Among Mad People - Most of the game.
 * Good Is Not Nice - Olmec (hoo boy).
 * Grave Humor
 * Greed
 * Happier Home Movie - Watching these comes into play in the "Mansion" sub-chapter.
 * Haunted House
 * Hey, It's That Voice! - David Fielding (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) plays a crapload of characters in this game. It's most obvious with Olmec, which is essentially his Zordon voice.
 * Other characters voiced by him include Morgan and Lenny. You totally wouldn't know those were him unless you watched the end credits. Talk about a guy with a range.
 * Hybrid Monster - Iggy, though it depends whether the human head and torso on top of his squid head is actually part of him or a body of a victim that somehow got stuck up there.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Vera
 * Infant Immortality - Nnnnope.
 * Ironic Nursery Tune - "Don't go into the pumpkin patch. 'Cause if you do, you won't come back. Mommy says to stay way...if you want to play another day."
 * Jerkass
 * Dennis
 * Morgan's Father
 * Olmec
 * The Clown with the Balloons
 * Kid Hero - Sarah
 * Little Miss Badass - Sarah (again)
 * Loads and Loads of Characters - It may be an Adventure Game, but it utterly averts the Beautiful Void trope.
 * Lotus Eater Machine - after the Maze, attempts to trick Max into believing he's in the real world and just had a nasty bump on the head, and dreamt everything.   A very eerie scene, all in all.
 * Mad Scientist - Morgan,
 * Make It Look Like an Accident
 * Mama Bear - "Mother"
 * Manipulative Bastard - Morgan
 * At its most extreme with Olmec, who is almost the exact opposite of the kind, compassionate Max.
 * Mind Screw - A good example is the pumpkin children. In fact, there's a lot of unexplained symbolism.
 * Mommy Issues - Lenny. Surprisingly averted in Max's case despite his banters with "Mother".
 * Mummies At the Dinner Table - Made extra disturbing by the fact that it's a kid
 * Name's the Same - There is a 2001 film also called Sanitarium. Besides that, the movie's main character is also named Max.
 * Nice Guy - The Main Character and Timmy O'Toole.
 * Non-Identical Twins
 * One Bad Mother - "Mother"
 * One-Winged Angel -
 * - "Mother"
 * Preacher Man
 * Red Herring - Three literal red herrings. One is a red fish painted on the roof of a building. The main character even comments that he was sure he would find something inside.
 * The Reveal: A whole lot
 * , chapter 2
 * , chapter 3
 * , chapter 4
 * , chapter 8
 * , chapter 9
 * Rhymes on a Dime: Vera
 * Romancing the Widow
 * Rule of Scary -
 * Scary Scarecrows
 * See You in Hell
 * Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes - Olmec is Type III
 * Appropriately, as he is the least likable of the playable characters, Olmec is voiced by the same actor who plays the Big Bad
 * Songs in the Key of Lock: One of the doors in the Hive has a lock with keypad buttons that produce individual musical tones.
 * Surreal Horror
 * Talking to Himself - Grimwall and Max share the same voice actor. Grimwall briefly talks to Max in the final chapter.
 * Theme Naming - All of the cyclopses have names beginning with "GR."
 * Timeshifted Actor - Frank Schurter plays Adult Max while Paul Crocker plays him during his childhood flashbacks.
 * Town with a Dark Secret - The entirety of chapter 2.
 * Twist Ending
 * The Unseen - A big part of Max's arc. His face is covered in bandages. When he is seen in flashbacks, his face is always hidden. The one exception is a flashback from his childhood.
 * This is a rare case of the main character pulling off this trope.
 * The Un-Reveal - The
 * Unusual Euphemism - Grimwall's favorite exclamation, "Grap".
 * Unwitting Pawn - Arguably He believes that  The example has the oddity of both the pawn and the manipulator being unaware of the manipulation.
 * Villain with Good Publicity -
 * Waking Up At the Morgue
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy - Morgan
 * - Morgan
 * Womb Level - The Hive is unpleasantly organic.
 * Twist Ending
 * The Unseen - A big part of Max's arc. His face is covered in bandages. When he is seen in flashbacks, his face is always hidden. The one exception is a flashback from his childhood.
 * This is a rare case of the main character pulling off this trope.
 * The Un-Reveal - The
 * Unusual Euphemism - Grimwall's favorite exclamation, "Grap".
 * Unwitting Pawn - Arguably He believes that  The example has the oddity of both the pawn and the manipulator being unaware of the manipulation.
 * Villain with Good Publicity -
 * Waking Up At the Morgue
 * "Well Done, Son" Guy - Morgan
 * - Morgan
 * Womb Level - The Hive is unpleasantly organic.