Theme Hospital is a simulation game originally for the PC but later ported to the original PlayStation. As the title suggests, players are given control of operating a private hospital to cure patients of fictitious (and often humorous) ailments. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really have a Free Mode to do whatever you want, instead there are levels with set challenges. These challenges mostly just involve getting a certain amount of money, curing specific patients and getting your reputation up. Once you reach the objectives you are given a promotion to move onto the next hospital (aka level). You can decline, in which case you can continue on.
As the game was originally designed for PC, the user interface is a bit clunky for use with controllers. The way the selection boxes are designed, right down to the mouse cursor, are retained in this PlayStation port. Navigating is simplified for controllers as using the d-pad will move the cursor to the next available option. Nonetheless, the game has a heavy reliance on using icons due to the limited screen estate, meaning it'll take a while before you understand what they mean. Starting upon the first level, you can toggle on the tutorial which is fairly comprehensive as far as these things go. It'll teach you the motions of building certain rooms, providing a flow of the gameplay and hiring staff. Placing rooms are easy, you are able to expand the sizes and edit them later on if you wish. Again, using the controller to do these things makes it finicky and as you cannot rotate the camera, it is harder to judge distances.
There are a lot of nuances to the game that the tutorial doesn't tell you. You end up having to find out yourself, read the manual or search online. These include what certain items do, the fact that you can purchase additional items when building rooms and how to keep your staff happy. There are a bunch of menus that while not essential, are pretty useful. This is because you can take out loans from the bank, buy extra plots of land and check your current stats. The game is in 2D in an angled top down view. It works well but it would have been even better if you were allowed to rotate the camera to see the place at another angle. Naturally, this is the PS1 so the graphics haven't aged very well and is blurry on contemporary TVs.
Each level starts you off with an empty hospital and it is up to you to decide what to put. There are the usual staples to put in such as a General Diagnosis room but later on, you will need to research extra facilities. This is because new ailments come and if you don't have the proper facilities to diagnose and cure it, then the patients will leave and you lose reputation compared to your competitors. Soon after, you'll run out of space but you're able to buy extra plots of land to expand. Later levels pushes up the difficulty through larger hospitals, more ailments and less experienced staff, meaning you will have to train them up from scratch.
The fact that you have to start from scratch in each level means that it can get repetitive later on and you just go through the motions of efficiently setting everything up. The game throws in various elements to make it unpredictable including emergencies where swarms of patients come in with a certain illness. This will test whether your hospital's facilities can cope with the influx in numbers. Natural disasters may happen causing all your machines to break down and potentially explode.
You're able to set the game speed, the lowest setting allowing you plenty of time to change the layout while the higher setting rakes in the money (assuming your current layout is sufficient). You can also set the game's difficulty from Easy to Hard. Overall, Theme Hospital, while fun, never quite gets too addictive. This is because in the early levels, you finish the objectives before too long. While in the later levels, you go through the same set of motions to set it up and then wait until you have enough cash to build new facilities. Sure, while micromanaging is required for the higher difficulties, it doesn't quite reach the heights of say Theme Park.
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