November 26, 2025 • 26 mins
Today TWIG’s special Interview, Mike “The Birdman” sits down with the devs from wiss development team Zeitglas, to talk about their game, Sanatorium - A Mental Asylum Simulator.
Diving into a mystery set against the backdrop of the 1920’s and the evolution of mental health and various treatments, you are on a mission to save a loved one. Mike and Sebastian and Fabian discuss what research went into developing such a serious topic with care and dignity and so much more.
Prepare to go to the strange Castle Woods Sanatorium and get your lab coat before visiting your first patient.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2059090/Sanatorium__A_Mental_Asylum_Simulator/
Show Notes:
Your Geekmasters:
Mike "The Birdman" - https://bsky.app/profile/birdmanguelph.bsky.social
Alex "The Producer" - https://bsky.app/profile/dethphasetwig.bsky.social
Feedback for the show?:
Email: feedback@thisweekingeek.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisweekingeek
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thisweekingeek.net
Subscribe to our feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/3571037/episodes/feed
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Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Lit2bzebJXMTIv7j7fkqq
Website: https://www.thisweekingeek.net
November 26, 2025
Diving into a mystery set against the backdrop of the 1920’s and the evolution of mental health and various treatments, you are on a mission to save a loved one. Mike and Sebastian and Fabian discuss what research went into developing such a serious topic with care and dignity and so much more.
Prepare to go to the strange Castle Woods Sanatorium and get your lab coat before visiting your first patient.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2059090/Sanatorium__A_Mental_Asylum_Simulator/
Show Notes:
Your Geekmasters:
Mike "The Birdman" - https://bsky.app/profile/birdmanguelph.bsky.social
Alex "The Producer" - https://bsky.app/profile/dethphasetwig.bsky.social
Feedback for the show?:
Email: feedback@thisweekingeek.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thisweekingeek
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/thisweekingeek.net
Subscribe to our feed: https://www.spreaker.com/show/3571037/episodes/feed
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/this-week-in-geek/id215643675
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Lit2bzebJXMTIv7j7fkqq
Website: https://www.thisweekingeek.net
November 26, 2025
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mhm Hi, this is Steve Downs, the voice of master Chief.
You're listening to this weekend geek dot Net.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Finish the fight. Hell no, it's time for another special features.
Everyone has been destroyed because of its freak.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I won't allow it.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
These babies to say to sleep that fine.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Double you don't know about how DOUBLET are alive?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
You're coming with me?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
One? We recused one one?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Wait time?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hey, guys, what's going on? You are listening to this
weekend geek dot Net. I'm your host, Mike the bird Man,
And well, guys, we are getting down to the wire
here at TWIG as things are starting to wind down
as we are preparing for our annual holiday gift guides,
and that means we are doing a lot of work
here at Twig. We also have the annual Game Awards
are going to be hosted by good old friend Jeff
(01:52):
in Los Angeles in just a couple of weeks. Nominations
are now closed, but you can do voting, I believe
for a little while longer. As far as I know,
I'm currently preparing a TTRPG Focus Holiday gift Guide. You'll
be able to find that on December fifth, and then
me and Alex will have a show out for you
December twelfth, which will be our final holiday gift guide.
(02:15):
Alex may have some additional stuff later on, and then
Twigg is on holidays until the end of January because
I got a lot of gaming I want to play,
and I want to watch a lot of Star Trek.
So anyway, so why are we here today? Well, I
love to do interviews and a good friend of the
show reached out to us, and her name is Jessicas.
(02:37):
She's one of the PR reps we've had a chance
to work with over the last little while, and she
pitched an interesting game to me. She pitched a game
called Sanatorium, a mental asylum simulator done by a small
team of developers from over in Europe. This was part
of a thesis project and it involves mental health. And
just before I go any further, we're going to talk
(02:59):
about some pretty heavy stuff today. Is so trigger warning.
But then again, as you guys know, over the course
of the show, since two thousand and seven, I've not
been shy about sharing my own mental health journey. As
someone who is a diagnosed bipolar two with severe depression,
I have had my own mental health struggles over the years.
So when Jessica pitched this to me, this definitely caught
(03:20):
my attention. I don't see many games that deal with
gamifying mental health, but in a fairly respectful way. So
what this game is. It kind of puts you in
the shoes of a failed journalist, don't I know that
vibe in the nineteen twenties, and while you're out there
to solve a mystery. But in order to do so,
(03:41):
you have to infiltrate this sanitarium, Castle Woods under an
assumed identity, and well you have to blend in. That
means you got to be talking to patience, you gotta
be prescribing treatments. You're gonna help people, but you also
have to get to the bottom of the mystery as
to what's happened to a family member of yours. So,
without any further ado, I want to welcome Sebastian and
(04:04):
Fabian too the show. Guys. Welcome aboard. Hi, Hi, thank you.
So yeah, guys, this is a very interesting idea for
a game. So this game is available on Steam right
now and you guys launched earlier this month to mixed
reviews currently, but we will get to that eventually. But
(04:24):
you guys have taken a very interesting approach to mental health.
So obviously this is a very heavy subject. And now
that we are in an error where mental health seems
like we're having open conversations about it, we're asking the
questions more like are you okay and genuinely meaning it?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
How long have this project been in development and what
was the Where did you guys get the idea to
develop a game based around well mental health and how
to treat it well?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Originally it was my graduation project during our studies, so
we both met at the university's University of the Arts
and studied game design there, and this was my graduation project.
I kind of always wanted to do something like maybe
a job simulator you could haul it. And if you
(05:19):
play the game, you also see that some parts are
also inspired by a lot of photo games papers please
for example, where you have the rule book and then
you judge people by the rule book, and I the
original thought was, Okay, how could we do that in
an interesting setting where maybe the rules change a lot,
(05:39):
or where what we see today as something is viewed
differently in the past. And that's how we came for
the whole theme of psychiatry and psychology because we had
a lot of developments there in the last one hundred years.
I mean it takes place on years ago, so a
(06:02):
lot of this changing the rules or how we've used
things are very obvious to today's audience.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So when you sorry, I'm not sure whether I introduce
you to has sepassion in Fabian from Zeit Glass game.
Sorry about that, guys, So again, when you were like
kind of doing this through the lens of one hundred
years ago. Obviously the field of mental health has gone
through a tremendous transformation, with new psychiatry and therapeutic kind
(06:32):
of protocols being done and talk therapy being a big thing.
But obviously, back in the nineteen twenties things are I
wouldn't call it barbaric, but things were changing. Obviously. One
of the ways that your game describes it's kind of
a card based system. You have to assess where treatments
are coming from. What is causing this? Is it something
(06:55):
is it like a learned behavior? Is it something causing
like a re flex issues? All sorts of psychiatry words.
I don't really understand, but I kind of get now
that it's been gamified. When you were doing the research
for this, how did you guys go about that, Like
who did you guys talk to and what other sorts
of resources did you talk to, Like did you talk
(07:15):
to other people in the field who had maybe maybe
been affected by this, or did you look at historical records?
Basically where did the research start for something so ambitious?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
One part was or so the original project started in
twenty twenty, right before the pandemic. So and right before that,
I was able to talk to the curator of the
Museum of Psychiatry in burn that that's like the university
clinic that has also a museum about their clinic there,
(07:51):
and was able to talk with him already with the
concept in mind and just get some feedback on the concept.
And then, of course or in my case, during the
development of the project, we also had some experiences from
(08:12):
close family members who had stay at a clinic that
the name of the sanatorium Castlewoods is also inspired by
a clinic that we have around Currich. So our studio
is based in syric and you have two big clinics
around the lake with the beautiful panorama view. They also
(08:37):
already existed a hundred years ago and a lot of
the famous or today famous people in psychiatric were at
some point spent some time there. And also the close
family member also had a stay there to like also
reground them or have some some opportunity to get better
(09:03):
or at least.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So yeah, mmm, so over the course of like I said,
doing your research. Okay, so you've got your research, you've
got the history, know what to base the game on.
So tell me the story of how how did you
decide the gameplay loop? How did you design the narrative
for something like this, because, like, to give you an example,
(09:25):
how I looked at this. This feels very Call of Cthulhu, askue,
And what I mean by it is it deals with
like mental health and people going nuts and mean that
to be derogatory, but sort of mental health affecting you
in a very dramatic way. So that was my first
experience with like mental health, was learning it through Call
of Cthulhu as like a different kind of doorway to this,
(09:46):
but having you guys deal with it in a unique
gameplay loop. How was that developed?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Lovecraft was an inspiration for the environment of the sanatorium?
Was this kind of it is kind of it's but
mhm mhm, it's it's basically the the The card game
mechanic came along with with diving into the topic that
(10:14):
you have this different treatments and symptoms and how can
we how can we display that in in like in
the how how can how can you face the patient
in in in the game. And this led to the
idea that it's like a file with the cards inside
(10:38):
and that you have to to fight the cards with
the cards that you can choose with your your deck
that you build. That was kind of the main inspiration
for the game mechanics.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
But we're also always very clear that we don't see
this or it doesn't really work like the traditional deck builders.
So the cards are really just the best way we
could have done the representation of some of this stuff
in the game. What was very early on there was
the phrenology chart, so you have to sort the symptoms
(11:13):
into regions on a phrenology chart. Phrenology was a pseudoscience
back in the day that was also the basis for
lobotomy that assigned to the specific regions along the skulls.
It was really based on the skull shapes of people
some different attributes so that you could read people's psychological
(11:39):
attributes just based on the shape of their skulls, and
later that was extended to say, okay, in this exact region,
this exact thing happens. And this was also an experience
with the curator of the museum is also a professor
for psychiatry, so physician professor, but also with the specialization
(12:01):
in psychiatry that he criticizes a lot of the modern
imaging techniques as well. Because this idea of okay, we
can exactly pinpoint where something is happening in our brains
or physically and connect it directly to ailments. It's what
(12:25):
we now know is a lot more complicated than that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
When you started dealing with some of the more as
you just mentioned, complicated ailments, symptoms and syndromes, how hard
was it to translate some of the more complicated mental
health disorders into a card based thing, Because like, it
seems a lot harder than like, I don't know, something
(12:50):
like Pokemon or magic the gathering, for example, It's not
just as easy as chars are attacks. For this, you
guys have to how to diagno knows us how to
put this around. So, like, how is translating this into
the gameplay loop, Like, just that seems really hard.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Yeah, we not only translated or modern ideas of different
syndromes or diagnoses or ailments, so we show them as
how people one hundred years ago will probably have called them.
So some of the names are for example, the syndromes
(13:31):
are more put together names for things, stuff like hysteria
for example, that was a long time used to diagnose
all sorts of women for all sorts of abnormal in
big equotation marks be here. And so all the cards
(13:53):
you have in the game are always already through this
lens of what the current institution where your work in
the sanatorium things is the cause. So so you already
have like the lens prepared that you have to look
at things. And then the only window into the patient
(14:13):
itself is what they maybe tell you.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
When you are putting this together and again having your
gameplay loop and all your research, what were some of
the more difficult things to put together, because you guys
do do these some pretty significant mental health challenges in
this game, and how did you approach that with respect?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Well, I think in general we don't make fun of
the patients, but of the institution. So it always is
about how the institution treated or how how they looked
at the at the people and not theations it's themselves.
(15:02):
So we don't really I mean, you can't really harm them.
You can just play court and the only thing that
you that you the only feedback you get is is
a little sound effect or something, but you can't like like,
you can't harm the patients and kind of repeated to
(15:22):
to make fun out of. So that's that was a
basic idea that that it's always about if something is bad,
it always should like put the the institution in focus
and not the patient. Also, there's no blood, there's no
nothing like that. It's just words and and the little
(15:42):
sound effects. Yeah, I think that that was very important
that we that we don't laugh about the patients in
the institution.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah. Well, one thing I did like is how you
guys have the institution like as a character it's self.
You have somebody watching your progress making sure you're treating,
like you said, the patients with dignity and respect act
and you're kind of scored at the end of each week.
I will say this, during my first playthrough, I didn't
make it very far and I got busted and thrown
(16:15):
in the sanitarium.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
So whoops, Yeah, that's the one part you have this
or that's one of the bags conflicts that's different or
difficult maybe where it also really comes out because you
as a person or you as a person of the
(16:39):
twenty first century as a twin view for a lot
of very basic things. And what's also important to that
we wanted to show is that when you start out,
one of the first word that you have is it's
it's in nineteen twenty, so you have prohibition in the
first word is real abilitation, and you find out pretty
(17:03):
soon that the senatorium is struggling a bit because you
don't have any more rehab patients for rehabilitation or in
the rehabilitation ward, and so you're left with a few
people as patients there. And another important thing that we
(17:23):
kind of wanted to show in the game is that
whenever there is a mental asylum in games, it's usually
that the patients are also dangerous and you have to
like navigate the whole thing. But that's not really the case,
or that's not even the case today that you have
(17:43):
so many people that need to be isolated from society,
and that's much more a problem in some instances or
in later rewards on the sanatorium, you'll notice that it's
much more a problem of the society than of the
people there, because you don't really have that many patients
where you would not understand, but they it was always
(18:07):
that the patient's biography and dialogue should always makes sense
and be relatable to some extent for people.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, that was one of the things that I actually
really appreciated about this because there's one of the treatments
that you're given in your deck and it's isolation, and
it's like you're gonna put someone away in a straight jacket. Now,
obviously me looking through the lens of the twenty first
century modern, I'm like, I don't want to do that
to somebody, and I'm thinking that might work at some point,
(18:39):
because again just to the era when this game took place.
But I like how I was thinking like three dimensionally
and thinking, all right, how would I approach this? So, yeah,
it's a lot of unique problem solving. I said, I've
never I've never been into deck building games, but I
found this a little bit more engaging the what I
originally kind of thought, because like, this is not my
(19:02):
typical jam for sort of things. And it's sort of like,
obviously I didn't make it very far, but now it's like, huh,
we're going to try that again. And I like how
it's encouraging me to go back and figure it out.
So one of the other things that I want to
talk to you guys about as we begin to kind
of wrap things up here. So there's been a lot
(19:23):
of feedback that has been on Steam and you guys,
I would love to know what are your future plans
to support the game and integrate feedback from some of
the users on Steam.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Yeah, we're continuing or the original feedback was of course
connected to some of the issues that we had at
launch concerning bucks, and.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, we.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Have cot to touch it and to make it better.
There is one or two things that will come out
in the next few weeks. I hope that change what
a lot of people criticize that you could not keep
everything that you have currently in your head and that
(20:14):
you maybe need some overview. So we're working on that
and hope to get something out there the next week
or the next few weeks. And yeah, also continue to
better support the platforms like Steam, deech and so on
to optimize it in that aspect in the future, maybe
(20:38):
to expand the endless mode even a bit more, or
to to add some new upgrade cards so that we
are pretty flexible with our system or with the game itself.
And yeah, we have a lot of people on our
discord in our Discord community that we talk to and
(21:00):
and also have some people who were very dedicated and
gave more feedback or very in depth feedback. We call
them research assistance, and we uh always listen to to
to the play input that that now that we have
(21:22):
a very wide audience playing the game.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Are there any plans to port this game to other
consoles such as like say the Switch to or the
Xbox or PlayStation five.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
We don't know that at the moment, so as to
explained before, we were two men the f team at
the moment, or or we had some additional helps and
freelances and so on. But I cannot really say where
we will go next after the release here. So yeah,
(21:58):
it's still open or we're open for it, and we're
open for the option for different platforms.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, I gotta say I did like how the game
could almost be played in spits and spurts because it
is a deck building game. One of my first thoughts
actually while I was playing, like, you know what if
I had smaller cases, especially how you have the endless mode,
I could kind of see myself playing this to kill
(22:27):
time actually on my phone or on my switch too,
So just saying, consider other platforms. I think that might
be kind of fun. But not seriously, guys, thank you
for taking time out of your exceptionally busy time. As
I know the holidays are approaching, You've got patches to
work on. I can't imagine developing a game as a
(22:48):
two person team. I can barely put together a like
invite on my Google calendar. Don't ask, I'm terrible at it.
It literally takes multiple people to show me. But yeah, seriously,
Sebastian Fabian, thank you for taking time out of your
exceptionally busy day. I sincerely appreciate and hopefully we'll have
a chance to check in more on the Sanitarium as
(23:11):
you guys do more projects in the future. Sanatorium Sanatorium Treatment.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
That's also a funny story behind the name.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Thank you for having us. Yeah, guys, this was a
lot of fun, all right, guys. So that was my
interview with the devs behind Sanatorium A Mental Asylum Simulator.
I said, go check this game out on Steam. Like
I said, it may have mixed reviews, but I think
as things get gets passed and the team continues to
work on it, I really think there's something interesting here.
(23:46):
Like I said, I've never encountered a game that tackled
the subject matter with a reasonable degree of respect. There's
actually a couple of these things. I'm actually going to
talk to my sister in law who's a nurse practitioner
in one of the low health boards here be like, hey,
I learned a new word today. What does this mean?
And this means I can actually thought to a health
(24:06):
professional as opposed to going to doctor Google. But you
can't trust them because it's a machine. But anyway, I said,
me and Alex have a lot of stuff to do
on the site this week. So we've got holiday gift
guides coming up. The last show of the year, the
last live news show should be taking place, I want
to say next week with me and Alex, and then
it's gonna be holiday gift guide stuff specials. I'm working
(24:29):
with Adam, Dave and Ken to do some additional stuff
for Loose Cannon. I did promise we would be doing
a loose cannon specials on the Lord of the Rings movies,
so we're gonna try and get those out one week
during the holidays, so I do get a holiday a ish,
but I will hopefully be taking a break till I
said Watson Star Trek, play some games and hopefully get
(24:51):
some more tt RPG time in with my good old
buddies at the Dungeons and Dragons groups that I work with,
And either way, it's gonna be a good time here
on Twig and also stuff with Earth versus Soup with
Aaron and Darlene. I should have an interview with Aaron
regarding his new TTRPG game, Redacted at some point soon
as soon as I get schedules locked down. But anyway, guys,
(25:14):
I'm gonna take off here, So once again, thank you
for joining. Sure to check out the steamlink blow to
check out this game. And until next time, folks, I
have been Mike the Birdman saying, be excellent to each other.
We'll catch you guys again next time right here on
this weekend geek dot Net.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
At no point in your rambling incoherent response were you
even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Thanks for listening to this episode of This Week in Geek.
Hungry for more, check out our website. If this Week
in Geek dot Net you can subscribe to the podcast,
browse our Twitter and Instagram, and leave your thoughts on
today's topics. If you'd like to give us some feedback,
send us an email at Feedback at This Week in
Geek dot Net. Tune in next time, and remember, lower
your shields and surrender your listenership.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
We would be honored if you would join us. Thank
you for your cooperation.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Good night,
Mhm Hi, this is Steve Downs, the voice of master Chief.
You're listening to this weekend geek dot Net.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Finish the fight. Hell no, it's time for another special features.
Everyone has been destroyed because of its freak.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I won't allow it.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
These babies to say to sleep that fine.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Double you don't know about how DOUBLET are alive?
Speaker 4 (00:58):
You're coming with me?
Speaker 2 (01:02):
One? We recused one one?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Wait time?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Hey, guys, what's going on? You are listening to this
weekend geek dot Net. I'm your host, Mike the bird Man,
And well, guys, we are getting down to the wire
here at TWIG as things are starting to wind down
as we are preparing for our annual holiday gift guides,
and that means we are doing a lot of work
here at Twig. We also have the annual Game Awards
are going to be hosted by good old friend Jeff
(01:52):
in Los Angeles in just a couple of weeks. Nominations
are now closed, but you can do voting, I believe
for a little while longer. As far as I know,
I'm currently preparing a TTRPG Focus Holiday gift Guide. You'll
be able to find that on December fifth, and then
me and Alex will have a show out for you
December twelfth, which will be our final holiday gift guide.
(02:15):
Alex may have some additional stuff later on, and then
Twigg is on holidays until the end of January because
I got a lot of gaming I want to play,
and I want to watch a lot of Star Trek.
So anyway, so why are we here today? Well, I
love to do interviews and a good friend of the
show reached out to us, and her name is Jessicas.
(02:37):
She's one of the PR reps we've had a chance
to work with over the last little while, and she
pitched an interesting game to me. She pitched a game
called Sanatorium, a mental asylum simulator done by a small
team of developers from over in Europe. This was part
of a thesis project and it involves mental health. And
just before I go any further, we're going to talk
(02:59):
about some pretty heavy stuff today. Is so trigger warning.
But then again, as you guys know, over the course
of the show, since two thousand and seven, I've not
been shy about sharing my own mental health journey. As
someone who is a diagnosed bipolar two with severe depression,
I have had my own mental health struggles over the years.
So when Jessica pitched this to me, this definitely caught
(03:20):
my attention. I don't see many games that deal with
gamifying mental health, but in a fairly respectful way. So
what this game is. It kind of puts you in
the shoes of a failed journalist, don't I know that
vibe in the nineteen twenties, and while you're out there
to solve a mystery. But in order to do so,
(03:41):
you have to infiltrate this sanitarium, Castle Woods under an
assumed identity, and well you have to blend in. That
means you got to be talking to patience, you gotta
be prescribing treatments. You're gonna help people, but you also
have to get to the bottom of the mystery as
to what's happened to a family member of yours. So,
without any further ado, I want to welcome Sebastian and
(04:04):
Fabian too the show. Guys. Welcome aboard. Hi, Hi, thank you.
So yeah, guys, this is a very interesting idea for
a game. So this game is available on Steam right
now and you guys launched earlier this month to mixed
reviews currently, but we will get to that eventually. But
(04:24):
you guys have taken a very interesting approach to mental health.
So obviously this is a very heavy subject. And now
that we are in an error where mental health seems
like we're having open conversations about it, we're asking the
questions more like are you okay and genuinely meaning it?
Speaker 1 (04:42):
So?
Speaker 2 (04:43):
How long have this project been in development and what
was the Where did you guys get the idea to
develop a game based around well mental health and how
to treat it well?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
Originally it was my graduation project during our studies, so
we both met at the university's University of the Arts
and studied game design there, and this was my graduation project.
I kind of always wanted to do something like maybe
a job simulator you could haul it. And if you
(05:19):
play the game, you also see that some parts are
also inspired by a lot of photo games papers please
for example, where you have the rule book and then
you judge people by the rule book, and I the
original thought was, Okay, how could we do that in
an interesting setting where maybe the rules change a lot,
(05:39):
or where what we see today as something is viewed
differently in the past. And that's how we came for
the whole theme of psychiatry and psychology because we had
a lot of developments there in the last one hundred years.
I mean it takes place on years ago, so a
(06:02):
lot of this changing the rules or how we've used
things are very obvious to today's audience.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
So when you sorry, I'm not sure whether I introduce
you to has sepassion in Fabian from Zeit Glass game.
Sorry about that, guys, So again, when you were like
kind of doing this through the lens of one hundred
years ago. Obviously the field of mental health has gone
through a tremendous transformation, with new psychiatry and therapeutic kind
(06:32):
of protocols being done and talk therapy being a big thing.
But obviously, back in the nineteen twenties things are I
wouldn't call it barbaric, but things were changing. Obviously. One
of the ways that your game describes it's kind of
a card based system. You have to assess where treatments
are coming from. What is causing this? Is it something
(06:55):
is it like a learned behavior? Is it something causing
like a re flex issues? All sorts of psychiatry words.
I don't really understand, but I kind of get now
that it's been gamified. When you were doing the research
for this, how did you guys go about that, Like
who did you guys talk to and what other sorts
of resources did you talk to, Like did you talk
(07:15):
to other people in the field who had maybe maybe
been affected by this, or did you look at historical records?
Basically where did the research start for something so ambitious?
Speaker 4 (07:28):
One part was or so the original project started in
twenty twenty, right before the pandemic. So and right before that,
I was able to talk to the curator of the
Museum of Psychiatry in burn that that's like the university
clinic that has also a museum about their clinic there,
(07:51):
and was able to talk with him already with the
concept in mind and just get some feedback on the concept.
And then, of course or in my case, during the
development of the project, we also had some experiences from
(08:12):
close family members who had stay at a clinic that
the name of the sanatorium Castlewoods is also inspired by
a clinic that we have around Currich. So our studio
is based in syric and you have two big clinics
around the lake with the beautiful panorama view. They also
(08:37):
already existed a hundred years ago and a lot of
the famous or today famous people in psychiatric were at
some point spent some time there. And also the close
family member also had a stay there to like also
reground them or have some some opportunity to get better
(09:03):
or at least.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
So yeah, mmm, so over the course of like I said,
doing your research. Okay, so you've got your research, you've
got the history, know what to base the game on.
So tell me the story of how how did you
decide the gameplay loop? How did you design the narrative
for something like this, because, like, to give you an example,
(09:25):
how I looked at this. This feels very Call of Cthulhu, askue,
And what I mean by it is it deals with
like mental health and people going nuts and mean that
to be derogatory, but sort of mental health affecting you
in a very dramatic way. So that was my first
experience with like mental health, was learning it through Call
of Cthulhu as like a different kind of doorway to this,
(09:46):
but having you guys deal with it in a unique
gameplay loop. How was that developed?
Speaker 1 (09:53):
Lovecraft was an inspiration for the environment of the sanatorium?
Was this kind of it is kind of it's but
mhm mhm, it's it's basically the the The card game
mechanic came along with with diving into the topic that
(10:14):
you have this different treatments and symptoms and how can
we how can we display that in in like in
the how how can how can you face the patient
in in in the game. And this led to the
idea that it's like a file with the cards inside
(10:38):
and that you have to to fight the cards with
the cards that you can choose with your your deck
that you build. That was kind of the main inspiration
for the game mechanics.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
But we're also always very clear that we don't see
this or it doesn't really work like the traditional deck builders.
So the cards are really just the best way we
could have done the representation of some of this stuff
in the game. What was very early on there was
the phrenology chart, so you have to sort the symptoms
(11:13):
into regions on a phrenology chart. Phrenology was a pseudoscience
back in the day that was also the basis for
lobotomy that assigned to the specific regions along the skulls.
It was really based on the skull shapes of people
some different attributes so that you could read people's psychological
(11:39):
attributes just based on the shape of their skulls, and
later that was extended to say, okay, in this exact region,
this exact thing happens. And this was also an experience
with the curator of the museum is also a professor
for psychiatry, so physician professor, but also with the specialization
(12:01):
in psychiatry that he criticizes a lot of the modern
imaging techniques as well. Because this idea of okay, we
can exactly pinpoint where something is happening in our brains
or physically and connect it directly to ailments. It's what
(12:25):
we now know is a lot more complicated than that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
When you started dealing with some of the more as
you just mentioned, complicated ailments, symptoms and syndromes, how hard
was it to translate some of the more complicated mental
health disorders into a card based thing, Because like, it
seems a lot harder than like, I don't know, something
(12:50):
like Pokemon or magic the gathering, for example, It's not
just as easy as chars are attacks. For this, you
guys have to how to diagno knows us how to
put this around. So, like, how is translating this into
the gameplay loop, Like, just that seems really hard.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Yeah, we not only translated or modern ideas of different
syndromes or diagnoses or ailments, so we show them as
how people one hundred years ago will probably have called them.
So some of the names are for example, the syndromes
(13:31):
are more put together names for things, stuff like hysteria
for example, that was a long time used to diagnose
all sorts of women for all sorts of abnormal in
big equotation marks be here. And so all the cards
(13:53):
you have in the game are always already through this
lens of what the current institution where your work in
the sanatorium things is the cause. So so you already
have like the lens prepared that you have to look
at things. And then the only window into the patient
(14:13):
itself is what they maybe tell you.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
When you are putting this together and again having your
gameplay loop and all your research, what were some of
the more difficult things to put together, because you guys
do do these some pretty significant mental health challenges in
this game, and how did you approach that with respect?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Well, I think in general we don't make fun of
the patients, but of the institution. So it always is
about how the institution treated or how how they looked
at the at the people and not theations it's themselves.
(15:02):
So we don't really I mean, you can't really harm them.
You can just play court and the only thing that
you that you the only feedback you get is is
a little sound effect or something, but you can't like like,
you can't harm the patients and kind of repeated to
(15:22):
to make fun out of. So that's that was a
basic idea that that it's always about if something is bad,
it always should like put the the institution in focus
and not the patient. Also, there's no blood, there's no
nothing like that. It's just words and and the little
(15:42):
sound effects. Yeah, I think that that was very important
that we that we don't laugh about the patients in
the institution.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah. Well, one thing I did like is how you
guys have the institution like as a character it's self.
You have somebody watching your progress making sure you're treating,
like you said, the patients with dignity and respect act
and you're kind of scored at the end of each week.
I will say this, during my first playthrough, I didn't
make it very far and I got busted and thrown
(16:15):
in the sanitarium.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
So whoops, Yeah, that's the one part you have this
or that's one of the bags conflicts that's different or
difficult maybe where it also really comes out because you
as a person or you as a person of the
(16:39):
twenty first century as a twin view for a lot
of very basic things. And what's also important to that
we wanted to show is that when you start out,
one of the first word that you have is it's
it's in nineteen twenty, so you have prohibition in the
first word is real abilitation, and you find out pretty
(17:03):
soon that the senatorium is struggling a bit because you
don't have any more rehab patients for rehabilitation or in
the rehabilitation ward, and so you're left with a few
people as patients there. And another important thing that we
(17:23):
kind of wanted to show in the game is that
whenever there is a mental asylum in games, it's usually
that the patients are also dangerous and you have to
like navigate the whole thing. But that's not really the case,
or that's not even the case today that you have
(17:43):
so many people that need to be isolated from society,
and that's much more a problem in some instances or
in later rewards on the sanatorium, you'll notice that it's
much more a problem of the society than of the
people there, because you don't really have that many patients
where you would not understand, but they it was always
(18:07):
that the patient's biography and dialogue should always makes sense
and be relatable to some extent for people.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Yeah, that was one of the things that I actually
really appreciated about this because there's one of the treatments
that you're given in your deck and it's isolation, and
it's like you're gonna put someone away in a straight jacket. Now,
obviously me looking through the lens of the twenty first
century modern, I'm like, I don't want to do that
to somebody, and I'm thinking that might work at some point,
(18:39):
because again just to the era when this game took place.
But I like how I was thinking like three dimensionally
and thinking, all right, how would I approach this? So, yeah,
it's a lot of unique problem solving. I said, I've
never I've never been into deck building games, but I
found this a little bit more engaging the what I
originally kind of thought, because like, this is not my
(19:02):
typical jam for sort of things. And it's sort of like,
obviously I didn't make it very far, but now it's like, huh,
we're going to try that again. And I like how
it's encouraging me to go back and figure it out.
So one of the other things that I want to
talk to you guys about as we begin to kind
of wrap things up here. So there's been a lot
(19:23):
of feedback that has been on Steam and you guys,
I would love to know what are your future plans
to support the game and integrate feedback from some of
the users on Steam.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Yeah, we're continuing or the original feedback was of course
connected to some of the issues that we had at
launch concerning bucks, and.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yeah, we.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Have cot to touch it and to make it better.
There is one or two things that will come out
in the next few weeks. I hope that change what
a lot of people criticize that you could not keep
everything that you have currently in your head and that
(20:14):
you maybe need some overview. So we're working on that
and hope to get something out there the next week
or the next few weeks. And yeah, also continue to
better support the platforms like Steam, deech and so on
to optimize it in that aspect in the future, maybe
(20:38):
to expand the endless mode even a bit more, or
to to add some new upgrade cards so that we
are pretty flexible with our system or with the game itself.
And yeah, we have a lot of people on our
discord in our Discord community that we talk to and
(21:00):
and also have some people who were very dedicated and
gave more feedback or very in depth feedback. We call
them research assistance, and we uh always listen to to
to the play input that that now that we have
(21:22):
a very wide audience playing the game.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Are there any plans to port this game to other
consoles such as like say the Switch to or the
Xbox or PlayStation five.
Speaker 4 (21:37):
We don't know that at the moment, so as to
explained before, we were two men the f team at
the moment, or or we had some additional helps and
freelances and so on. But I cannot really say where
we will go next after the release here. So yeah,
(21:58):
it's still open or we're open for it, and we're
open for the option for different platforms.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Yeah, I gotta say I did like how the game
could almost be played in spits and spurts because it
is a deck building game. One of my first thoughts
actually while I was playing, like, you know what if
I had smaller cases, especially how you have the endless mode,
I could kind of see myself playing this to kill
(22:27):
time actually on my phone or on my switch too,
So just saying, consider other platforms. I think that might
be kind of fun. But not seriously, guys, thank you
for taking time out of your exceptionally busy time. As
I know the holidays are approaching, You've got patches to
work on. I can't imagine developing a game as a
(22:48):
two person team. I can barely put together a like
invite on my Google calendar. Don't ask, I'm terrible at it.
It literally takes multiple people to show me. But yeah, seriously,
Sebastian Fabian, thank you for taking time out of your
exceptionally busy day. I sincerely appreciate and hopefully we'll have
a chance to check in more on the Sanitarium as
(23:11):
you guys do more projects in the future. Sanatorium Sanatorium Treatment.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
That's also a funny story behind the name.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Thank you for having us. Yeah, guys, this was a
lot of fun, all right, guys. So that was my
interview with the devs behind Sanatorium A Mental Asylum Simulator.
I said, go check this game out on Steam. Like
I said, it may have mixed reviews, but I think
as things get gets passed and the team continues to
work on it, I really think there's something interesting here.
(23:46):
Like I said, I've never encountered a game that tackled
the subject matter with a reasonable degree of respect. There's
actually a couple of these things. I'm actually going to
talk to my sister in law who's a nurse practitioner
in one of the low health boards here be like, hey,
I learned a new word today. What does this mean?
And this means I can actually thought to a health
(24:06):
professional as opposed to going to doctor Google. But you
can't trust them because it's a machine. But anyway, I said,
me and Alex have a lot of stuff to do
on the site this week. So we've got holiday gift
guides coming up. The last show of the year, the
last live news show should be taking place, I want
to say next week with me and Alex, and then
it's gonna be holiday gift guide stuff specials. I'm working
(24:29):
with Adam, Dave and Ken to do some additional stuff
for Loose Cannon. I did promise we would be doing
a loose cannon specials on the Lord of the Rings movies,
so we're gonna try and get those out one week
during the holidays, so I do get a holiday a ish,
but I will hopefully be taking a break till I
said Watson Star Trek, play some games and hopefully get
(24:51):
some more tt RPG time in with my good old
buddies at the Dungeons and Dragons groups that I work with,
And either way, it's gonna be a good time here
on Twig and also stuff with Earth versus Soup with
Aaron and Darlene. I should have an interview with Aaron
regarding his new TTRPG game, Redacted at some point soon
as soon as I get schedules locked down. But anyway, guys,
(25:14):
I'm gonna take off here, So once again, thank you
for joining. Sure to check out the steamlink blow to
check out this game. And until next time, folks, I
have been Mike the Birdman saying, be excellent to each other.
We'll catch you guys again next time right here on
this weekend geek dot Net.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
At no point in your rambling incoherent response were you
even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Thanks for listening to this episode of This Week in Geek.
Hungry for more, check out our website. If this Week
in Geek dot Net you can subscribe to the podcast,
browse our Twitter and Instagram, and leave your thoughts on
today's topics. If you'd like to give us some feedback,
send us an email at Feedback at This Week in
Geek dot Net. Tune in next time, and remember, lower
your shields and surrender your listenership.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
We would be honored if you would join us. Thank
you for your cooperation.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
Good night,
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