Game Review: Crazy Hospital (Mobile – Free to Play)

I wonder how many free to play games with a hospital theme have been downloaded by gamers in the hope that it would be a spiritual successor to Bullfrog’s legendary Theme Hospital? The mobile stores are awash with poor clones and even worse ideas on the hospital theme but Crazy Hospital might be the worst of them.

Why? Well, it plays its free to play hand in an unusual way for the model. It goes the demo route with only a few entry characters playable before it asks for you to buy the rest. This wouldn’t be a problem if what it offered for free was in anyway good. As an attempt to sell itself though, it does a horrendous job.

The ‘free’ side of the game gives you two characters to treat, Charlie and Jack the Pirate. Select one and then treat them by selecting items on the left and using them on the character. You can use a sponge to wash them, a toothbrush to clean up their teeth or eye-drops to help their eyes. It’s all pretty basic stuff and once you’ve done everything to completion that’s it. Unless you pay to unlock expert tools.

It’s not a free to play game. It’s a demo and one that gives you almost nothing and certainly not enough to encourage you to pay the costs it demands to keep on playing.

What would be fair for a game that is so basic that all you have to do to treat a patient is drag and hold the item over the affected area? 79p? 99p? £1.99? Anything over that and it’s one to completely avoid.

So how much does Crazy Hospital ask? It comes in 3 prices. £2.99 to get all the characters, £3.99 for all items and extra tools or £4.99 for everything.

There are 6 characters only, so if you do pay, you’re only getting 4 more and those characters will require the same treatments as the other. You can pay for all the items but you’ll be the doing the same thing over and over again. All while having to close the constant ads that come your way.

Perhaps the most questionable thing though is the game appears to be aimed at the younger market. It’s bright, colourful to look at and has super-simple gameplay. It dangles a carrot out with what it gives for free and then almost immediately drops the paywall.

It’s a bad game, a very bad game.