Game News Run your own Mental Asylum

Well, the world always needs more humor-based "simulation" games, I guess. (If my DNS wasn't being so wacky, I'd read the linked site.)

Will we finally get a glimpse of what it means to run The Codex the way DU does?

Man should play afew games like Theme Hospital and Startopia to get the underlying humour. Game of that sort need it badly.

And yeah, I will look forward to this game.

Hmmm, what to do today?
A) Electroshock
B) Sexually abuse the mute retarded inmate patient
C) Kingcomrade pancakes forever

This.
I find it slightly off that he specifically mentions MOO in the context of his game... which is totally different style and genre.

Dunno who this guy is, but from what I read, he seems pretty new to this whole design a game thing. We'll see, we'll see. The setting has nigh infinite potential for all sorts of goody stuffies.

Clearly something il will check, according the screenshots , he took a more dark and i dare to say clinical design rather than a theme hospital one .

This is relevant to my interests. While looking at the second screenshot I just remembered, that I should check the whereabouts of another asylum game from the developers designer of Scratches.
Yap. It's not out yet. Oh! Interactive teaser.

I also thought that this is some goodbye post and DU is going to leave the site.

So, when can we expect a review...



... in Site Feedback. DOHOHOHOHO


edit: damnit WhiskeyWolf beat me to it

Another real time but turn-based?

Brave man. I wonder if it's a serious business, or just something that will end up unfinished, as an interesting entry in his CV.

It needs a lp as soon as the game is out.

Why isn't this in site feedback?

Site Feedback

Very good idea, even if he doesn't pull it off, somone should. Could even do a modern version with lots of pills to jam down patients throats.

@lacqongquan. As I replied to you on my blog, my aim is for a very dark humor, but I will wait until I am almost finished to see if it feels "wrong" or "wright".
spectre. It's not the about the gameplay of mmo, but about how it has it's tabs organized and how clicking on one tab gives you a screen when you can manage than tab specific area. It has nothing do to with the theme of MOO nor the gameplay (or except for the turn based aspect, which I will clarify below)
fuzz. I had no ideea there was another asylum based game. Sure, I googled for it and found some flash games, but not this. I will check it later.
Awor Szurkrarz. The game is turn based. There will be stats and events check every game time increment (minute or hour). The implementation of this however can be either as a tbs, with a end turn button and a series of events that happened during that turn or a game powered end turn button (couldn't find a better explanation) that checks for stats and presents events when they show, thus giving the impression of real time. Hope I was clear.

@All. Thanks for the positive feedback. It's most welcome and it gives me new energy and enthusiasm for continuing to work on this. I am a great fan of steampunk and the whole asylum game idea , with primitive treatments + research on famous discoveries + victorian england + steampunk feeling was (and is) a great motivation. I have to admit that often I felt (and still do sometimes) like postponing this (big) project in favour of a smaller one which could bring me some financial support. But I am trying to find alternative ways of supporting myself so I can keep on working in this because I now that once you abandon a project like this with hopes of doing it later it never works. You just loose that feeling of how the game should be (not to mentioned the amount of code you have to decipher ). I will try to post regularly on my blog and inform about the various design choices I made.

Some insane asylum related media to tide you over till release. In chronological order:


Bedlam - The History of Bethlem Hospital
The Bethlem Royal Hospital in London became infamous in the 1600's in regards to the inhumane and cruel treatment of its patients as revealed by psychiatric historians.Bedlam: The History of Bethlem Hospital reveals why Bedlam came to stand for the very idea of madness itself.It was satirized for centuries as both a human zoo and a university of madness and for 100 years was one of London's leading tourist attractions, as Madame Tussauds is today.Britain's leading psychiatric historians discuss Bedlam and its inhabitants as we reveal the incredible history of one of U.K's most notorious institutions.
http://documentaryaddict.com/Bedlam The History of Bethlem Hospital-1691-documentary.html


Bethlem Hospital: The history of the legendary institution for the mentally ill
Bethlem Hospital was an integral part of London's charitable provision for the poor in medieval and early modern times. Hand in hand with public benevolence went great public interest in the objects of charity. Until 1770, the Hospital was open (at specified times of the week) to any member of the public who wished to see inside, and 'poor boxes' were strategically placed near the entrance for donations. Bethlem was by no means the only early modern hospital to permit this level of public access to its inner workings, but it is probably the best known for having done so. The memory of Bethlem's display of the misery of its patients for entertainment and gain is a powerful metaphor to this day. Bethlem Archivist Colin Gale will explore the reality behind this metaphor via written and pictorial sources from the Hospital's own archives and the published writings of visitors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzdIhEZ1r2w


1887 New York female mental institution expose
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html


Early "Treatment" of Mental Disorders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1Izmyru5T_w


Mental : A History of the Mad House
BBC documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpr7bq2dV-8&playnext=1&list=PL60030F9B66D699FB&feature=results_video


Bellevue Inside Out
Get unprecedented full access to New York City's Bellevue Hospital, the country's most renowned psychiatric emergency center that treats as many as 7000 individuals annually. This documentary feature takes viewers for an exclusive tour inside the locked psychiatric wards of America's largest public hospital, where they will have the opportunity to observe the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, and always grueling struggle faced by the doctors and patients wrestling with mental illness.

A schizophrenic woman goes berserk and is strapped to a gurney. An actor is medicated after threatening to jump out a window. A paranoid woman insists that the CIA is trying to "zap" her. A homeless man eats the pages of his Bible. These are some of the cases confronting the doctors and staff at the psychiatric unit of Bellevue hospital--the oldest and most famous hospital in America. This documentary takes a never-before-seen look inside the psychiatric emergency room and treatment areas of this New York hospital. In addition to capturing the high drama and frequent chaos that ensues when mentally ill men and women are brought in, the documentary offers some sobering insights into some of the treatments that Bellevue provides its patients.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1nVEN1Reeaw


Inside Broadmoor (2002)
Documentary about Broadmoor one of Britain's infamous high security psychiatric institutions, in which former inmates, psychologists and governors talk about the conditions there and also at the regression into a far more restrictive and authoritarian regime with a decrease in psychological and therapeutic treatment.
https://anonfiles.com/file/fcc035bdbd78f5d39257281481cf6704


Edit: Oh, Adrian Scheff you may be interested in this links.


Some Georgian/Victorian/Edwardian media on London


Crime in Dickens's London
From his childhood acquaintance with London, when he feared he might become 'a little robber or a little vagabond', Charles Dickens was fascinated by crime. His novels all include criminal activity of some kind as he investigates criminal psychology and the causes of crime. Dickens lived through a period of considerable development in society's treatment of criminals: the foundation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829, the Detective Force in 1842, the same year as the New Model Prison opened at Pentonville; the ending of transportation and of public executions; the word 'penology' was first used in 1838, the year he began to publish Nicholas Nickleby. Dickens engages with these issues very fully, both in his fiction and in his journalism, as this talk will explore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nYf5xtoVZew


Arthur Conan Doyle and London: "A Stout Heart in the Great Cesspool"
From the impressions of his first youthful visit, to his mature years when all doors opened for him, London was an important backdrop to much of Conan Doyle's life and work. From the Sherlock Holmes stories to The Lost World (in this, the 100th anniversary year of Professor Challenger's first great adventure) this lecture examines some of the locations which influenced him. It will also touch on some of his lesser known works and include the place which perhaps meant more to him than any other in London, and to which he returned in his writing throughout his life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4BWwSkdyX4c


London: A Tale of Two Cities with Dan Cruickshank
Dan Cruickshank follows in the footsteps of John Stow and John Strype, two of London's greatest chroniclers, to explore one of the most dramatic centuries in the history of London.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NOOfAhF_2Uk


In Search of The Elephant Man (1981)
Joseph Carey Merrick (5 August 1862 -- 11 April 1890), sometimes incorrectly referred to as John Merrick, was an English man with severe deformities who was exhibited as a human curiosity named the Elephant Man. He became well known in London society after he went to live at the London Hospital. Original broadcast: 19 October 1981
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vy9fOlJGnXk


Timewatch - Shadow of the Ripper (1988)
A documentary from Timewatch that only uses police files and eschewing all hearsay and newspaper "evidence".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8cRjSdNu_HE


As a curio, the spot where he killed the second victim filmed in 1967 with the area still dilapidated before the government cleaned the city up from its Blitz bomb sites and the sort.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EjIUQqrkJdU


Jack the Ripper locations, then and now
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sh02pH_HOsw

If this allows for renaming of the patients, this will be an absolute goldmine for a Codex LP.

Treatment you say..

Looks like fun. How long till its made?

Codex: The game

When I saw the title, I thought this would be Theme Hospital: Mental Care, but to set it in the Victorian age is really an excellent game concept!

Will there be some kind of main graphical view of the hospital itself, or will the whole game consist of tabs with stats?

Aerian, awesome stuff in those links, thanks!

He looks great: