Unreal Hospital 8 is most defined by the genre that it inhabits: a waifu horror game. The genre is deep with games such as Bio Goddess: Doomsday Begins, Wicked Seed, Killing Antidote, and Unbearable.
The take that Unreal Hospital decides to utilise in its gameplay is the anomaly-searching formula, used in positively received games such as Exit 8 and Shinkansen 0. Typically, in anomaly-searching games, there is a subtlety in the more popular ones. They use the strength of liminal space and negative space to create a game that, while it is a walking simulator, is very thoughtful in creating a perceived notion that the areas you encounter are identical to whatever the original, unaffected room is.
Most of these games ramp up the anomalies to be more transgressive, creating moments of fear for the player or expanding their story. Unreal Hospital 8 does none of these things. It distils both the anomaly-searching genre and misinterprets the survival horror experience into a game that is simply looking for cheap thrills and uninteresting gameplay mechanics.
Unreal Expectations
Unreal Hospital 8 runs relatively okay. The settings I played on were “Low Graphic Settings”, where I reached 60 FPS. Any other graphic setting immediately tanks Unreal Hospital 8 to as low as 35 FPS. There aren’t many differences in fidelity between any of the graphics options, so the inclusion of High, Medium, and Low settings seems to confuse me a bit. Beyond that, there isn’t anything to write home about regarding anything else in the settings menu.
The Horror
Starting Unreal Hospital 8, I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of actual voice acting in Unreal Hospital 8. It’s very easy to include AI voice acting, and the inclusion of real actors is a standard that I hope games continue to trailblaze. Aside from that, there isn’t much context on who my character is or why they are there, besides in the main menu.
My biggest gripe with Unreal Hospital 8 comes down to two major nuisances. Firstly, the audio is absolutely all over the place. The footsteps are very low and very similar to the characters from Resident Evil 1 (1998), but then you walk on a fallen door, and the audio spikes way past 100%. It also seems like one of the anomalies is an audio cue, but it sounds like someone clipping into the recording mic, so I had to immediately turn down all of the audio at that point.
My second nuisance comes from the core gameplay mechanic: anomaly searching. Normally, anomaly searching comes down to the players finding and categorising the anomalies on their own. If they miss it, it’s on the player to recognise the specific anomaly, and if they miss it completely, it portends the next loop. In Unreal Hospital 8, they straight up tell you what the anomaly you missed is.
One anomaly mentioned a toilet “stinking”, but there was no visual indicator of that. And by that time, I was uninterested in even searching for anomalies. Another anomaly involved lights, and after that, Unreal Hospital 8 no longer had any light maps.
Surprise?
There is no sense of mystery like its contemporaries, and the anomalies no longer show up in Unreal Hospital 8 at all.
I don’t know if this is a bug or not, but you can completely run the entire game by just walking down to the end of the hallway. Unreal Hospital 8 will tell you what the anomaly you missed was, and then that anomaly just won’t ever show up again in your playthrough. I was able to reach the ending by ignoring all anomalies and shooting the minimal amount of visible anomalies needed to complete it. Beyond that, anomalies in Unreal Hospital 8 just aren’t interesting, and the minimal story does nothing to interest me in finding out anything else.
A Victim Of Circumstance
I won’t go into much else about Unreal Hospital 8, as it’s short and easily beatable in an hour. The character’s name is Nix, and she’s investigating an abandoned hospital where streamers visited and went missing. Her character model is nothing to write home about, nor does it stand out from other waifu horror games. Most of the genre’s main characters are stereotypically flanderized versions of women; Unreal Hospital 8 is no different.
The only grace I can give Unreal Hospital 8 is that I respect developers who create games and try to hone their skills. I do hope that the developer continues to make games and refine the skillsets they learn. The industry is brutal and cutthroat. Even indie games that aren’t innovating are still necessary for the growth of developers and the genres they’re part of.
Platforms: Steam
Developers: Keisuko
Publishers: Keisuko
Played On: PC
Code Provided By: Keymailer
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