Ghost Hospital is a GBC-styled Role-Playing Game developed by Lev Lefton. The first demo was released on April 7, 2017, and the current version of the demo is available via GameJoltand Itch.io. You play as Robin, a young girl who one day finds herself waking up in Purgatory Ridge, a hospital for ghosts — despite being perfectly alive and well, as her assigned ghost doctor, Dr. Poe, soon finds out. She then starts to seek her way out of the hospital and find her way back home, and along the way, she meets and partners up with a ghost boy named Jay, and the mysterious Sarcastic Ghost, who help her fight corrupted ghosts as well as her own paralyzing anxiety and depression.
Reviews View More
This game... was more annoying than it was fun, in all honesty. It's why I had to put it down. This game is ACTUALLY one of those 'quirky indie RPGs about depression' and it makes that very clear to you from the beginning, with the entire opening sequence/first puzzle-room having you be bombarded by these like, red text negative thoughts as you do things. This is where this game starts to get hard to review/criticize, because I don't know how many of the game's quirks bother me because they're bad design and how many bother me because they're so real and intense that it reminds me of my past. But that in and of itself should be enough for you to gauge whether or not this game is right for you.
Similarly, the game has combat, which I don't mind, but what I do mind is that the protagonist, Robin, is so absolutely useless in combat that it's actually annoying. In most battles, on most turns (or at least half of all turns which is also horrible) she 'cries hysterically' or 'begs for her life' or 'freezes up' which cancels out any action command given for her for that turn. To my knowledge, there was no way to keep this from happening or to predict WHEN it would happen. So battles became insufferable because she was literally just a menu to click through because she literally did NOTHING most turns. Now, this would be much more tolerable if she was like, super powerful like Slaking for example. Then, those lost turns would be made up for by huge damage on active turns. But again, not only were the failed turns unpredictable, and often outnumbering succeeded turns, but she did no more damage than other party members. Not to mention it serves as a constant in-your-face reminder that 'this character is sad! shes sad! mentally unstable, can't you tell?' which was not at all necessary. That can be understood from the dialogue in literally every other scene. In fact, that may be why she pisses me off so much as a character. We literally know NOTHING about her personality beyond how sad and scared she is, because in every conversation, that's all she is. And not to diss the artist or anything, but the talk portraits for her do not help. Her character was annoying, and part of why it was so easy for me to drop the game was because I didn't really care if she got out or not, I felt like I had no reason to care about her.
And part of why I feel so conflicted about critiquing this game is because these portrayals of depression and anxiety aren't... ENTIRELY wrong... like. They're disorders. Disabilities. They disable you and leave you unable (in a lot of ways) to compete with the neurotypical people around you. And in real life, disabilities don't make you magically stronger in other aspects of your being (physically or mentally) in order to make up for what you don't have. But at the same time... this is a video game. There's other aspects of reality that suck that continue to suck when they're put in games. Like having stamina meters on running, for example. There can be other ways to portray things like this without designing a system so annoying that your players are going to get more frustrated than understanding. And I think her portrayal outside of battle doesn't help her case at all.
There were also a few other issues like sprites being hard to read, a general dim blurriness that I couldn't tell if it actually existed or not, and irritating level design. I find it really ridiculous that your speed is cut in half for the winding maze random encounter area before the first (?) boss. There's this thud sound effect that plays when you hit a solid object like in Pokemon, but the thing that triggers it to play is off and it somehow triggered to loop during a cutscene where two characters stood face to face.
This game was released as a demo on itch.io and the last version was released in 2020. The last text update was published over a year ago now. I don't want to discourage the developers, because I think every game has potential, and this one has a lot of good building blocks. Not to mention, the concept is really really cool and unique and I'd love to see what they do with it. But I also don't want to sit here and lie and say I had a fun time with this game. And if there does end up being more released some day, I think I'd much rather watch it than play it. Based on the screenshots, there may or may not have been at least two more areas I didn't reach, but at the same time, I'm not gonna force myself to play this for any longer.
Similarly, the game has combat, which I don't mind, but what I do mind is that the protagonist, Robin, is so absolutely useless in combat that it's actually annoying. In most battles, on most turns (or at least half of all turns which is also horrible) she 'cries hysterically' or 'begs for her life' or 'freezes up' which cancels out any action command given for her for that turn. To my knowledge, there was no way to keep this from happening or to predict WHEN it would happen. So battles became insufferable because she was literally just a menu to click through because she literally did NOTHING most turns. Now, this would be much more tolerable if she was like, super powerful like Slaking for example. Then, those lost turns would be made up for by huge damage on active turns. But again, not only were the failed turns unpredictable, and often outnumbering succeeded turns, but she did no more damage than other party members. Not to mention it serves as a constant in-your-face reminder that 'this character is sad! shes sad! mentally unstable, can't you tell?' which was not at all necessary. That can be understood from the dialogue in literally every other scene. In fact, that may be why she pisses me off so much as a character. We literally know NOTHING about her personality beyond how sad and scared she is, because in every conversation, that's all she is. And not to diss the artist or anything, but the talk portraits for her do not help. Her character was annoying, and part of why it was so easy for me to drop the game was because I didn't really care if she got out or not, I felt like I had no reason to care about her.
And part of why I feel so conflicted about critiquing this game is because these portrayals of depression and anxiety aren't... ENTIRELY wrong... like. They're disorders. Disabilities. They disable you and leave you unable (in a lot of ways) to compete with the neurotypical people around you. And in real life, disabilities don't make you magically stronger in other aspects of your being (physically or mentally) in order to make up for what you don't have. But at the same time... this is a video game. There's other aspects of reality that suck that continue to suck when they're put in games. Like having stamina meters on running, for example. There can be other ways to portray things like this without designing a system so annoying that your players are going to get more frustrated than understanding. And I think her portrayal outside of battle doesn't help her case at all.
There were also a few other issues like sprites being hard to read, a general dim blurriness that I couldn't tell if it actually existed or not, and irritating level design. I find it really ridiculous that your speed is cut in half for the winding maze random encounter area before the first (?) boss. There's this thud sound effect that plays when you hit a solid object like in Pokemon, but the thing that triggers it to play is off and it somehow triggered to loop during a cutscene where two characters stood face to face.
This game was released as a demo on itch.io and the last version was released in 2020. The last text update was published over a year ago now. I don't want to discourage the developers, because I think every game has potential, and this one has a lot of good building blocks. Not to mention, the concept is really really cool and unique and I'd love to see what they do with it. But I also don't want to sit here and lie and say I had a fun time with this game. And if there does end up being more released some day, I think I'd much rather watch it than play it. Based on the screenshots, there may or may not have been at least two more areas I didn't reach, but at the same time, I'm not gonna force myself to play this for any longer.