This is generally considered one of the most well written games of all time. The developers wwre writers, who wanted to have a go at multimedia. This would be their only game.
We regularly talk about it on /r/adventuregames!
I also highly recommend I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Similarly psychological horror, excellent writing. Brilliantly voiced by its author.
Both among a small handful of games that have made me cry.
Disco Elysium matches a similar description, writers using a game as their medium of choice. I feel like it fell just a bit short of greatness on the main story line, but it was a mesmerizing play nonetheless with lots of interesting world building. I recommend you try it out.
I've never played Sanitarium, but Disco Elysium is the closest thing I've ever seen to a Literary novel turned into a game, and the fact they did it well is wild.
I'll be curious to see if anyone else explores the thought cabinet or the skills as mind stuff again because it seems ripe for further experimentation. There's still a chance the former ZA/UM devs do, but having to start over makes that harder.
My wife is definitely not a gamer. Although she plays some console games now and then, even recent (and recent-ish) Zeldas —passing the controller to one of our kids for the boss fights— she rarely turns on a console to play a game on her own.
But there have been two occasions, before we were married and before having a gaming console in the household, when I woke up in the morning and found her still playing a game at the computer. One was Virtual Pool 3D, and the other was Sanitarium.
I loved the game, though it did not feel like much of a challenge, it was just pure atmosphere and perfection regarding horror settings and storyline, felt more like a movie with me choosing the pace and being allowed to look at details and the artwork however i want. My biggest wish that will probably be unfulfilled unless AI advances much more would be to have an adventure set in diablo 1 tristram the same way sanitarium works.
I had somehow completely forgotten about this game, but I remember being absolutely absorbed. It was in a separate class of storytelling at the time. Come to think of it, you can probably draw a line from it to Disco Elysium.
I played through Sanitarium for the first time just last year, even though I saw the game for the first time more than two decades ago. It is a superb adventure, with an intriguing storyline that is unfolding in a satisfying pace. The environments are really creative and each one entirely different from the others, creating a very captivating atmosphere. Not many of today's titles are able to capture my attention as Sanitarium did. Kudos to the creators for this mastetpiece!
Sanitarium is one of those Bad Mojo-esque games that's worth playing for how unique it is.
The isometric viewpoint never really worked for me, and undercuts the immediacy of the horror. Things aren't happening to you, but to a little human figure the size of a game piece. Maybe this is a hot take but horror games generally need to be first person.
I'd say it depends. Horror movies work without being in first person. The idea that you likely need to relate with/worry about the character is at least mostly true, but if the game can make you want to keep the character safe as a separate entity you can do it w/o the first person stuff.
We regularly talk about it on /r/adventuregames!
I also highly recommend I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Similarly psychological horror, excellent writing. Brilliantly voiced by its author.
Both among a small handful of games that have made me cry.