Sanatorium: A Mental Asylum Simulator

Sanatorium: A Mental Asylum Simulator is a card-driven workplace sim set in 1923. You play a journalist burdened by debt and uncertain purpose who receives a cryptic message from a childhood friend. It points to Castle Woods Sanatorium, where you pose as a doctor to investigate a mystery that may also change what you know about your own past.

Life at Castle Woods

Each week, new patient files bring puzzles to solve. You examine symptoms, choose tests and prescribe treatments, using the outdated tools and beliefs of the era. Patient files unfold as layered sets of cards, with symptoms that can be hidden, revealed or misinterpreted because of your limited knowledge.

You can follow the rule book and use harsh, archaic methods, or try experimental treatments with unknown outcomes. You can choose to be kind or cruel, business-savvy or risk-taking, and diagnose, treat or withhold care. Your decisions affect patients’ outcomes and your own fate as an impostor.

The Castle Woods mystery

As you investigate, you meet patients, ruthless opportunists and other characters, collect clues and piece together the truth behind the sanatorium’s clean facade. The campaign spans four chapters and has branching paths and multiple endings. Your treatment plans can be upgraded toward more humane practices or toward methods that protect your cover at any cost.

Cards and treatments

Over 100 cards cover symptoms, illnesses, tests and treatments drawn from the unsettled history of psychiatry.