Two Point Hospital is very much the spiritual successor to Theme Hospital and I would have no problems pointing people towards it first rather than Theme Hospital.
I have extremely fond memories of playing Theme Hospital back on my PS1 but it does have some rough edges.
+1 very very much the spiritual successor, and I think even some of the same developers.
The negative side of course is that they have not really added that much in terms of new gameplay mechanics in Two Point Hospital compared to the original, and a bunch of the levels are DLC so are extra money. But hey it is fun.
A little over 11 years ago, I setup this game, CorsixTH, for a friend who was undergoing chemo for leukemia and a bone marrow transplant. They had played the original game as a kid and I guess nostalgia and their then-current circumstances got them interested again. I was impressed by this port's functionality, back then.
My friend didn't make it, several months later. The marrow transplant didn't take well enough, and they eventually caught a lung infection they didn't survive. Needless to say, this had a profound impact on my outlook.
So it's bittersweet to see it pop up again. But I will repeat my original assessment: it's an impressively functional port!
As another more modern and 'serious' (but still fun) game in this genre, I recommend Project Hospital. You manage building, hiring staff, addressing difficult diagnoses, and so on.
I randomly started playing through Theme Hospital, and I'm now almost at the last level.
I must say: in general it hasn't held up very well. There are so many mechanics that are extremely poorly explained that are fundamental to the game. E.g. epidemics and earthquake/machine strength. Trying to micromanage all of the gameplay systems that are quite annoying to begin with doesn't end up being .. fun.
As a child I'm sure I liked it because it was goofy and approachable, but playing through it now I doubt I ever got through the levels where managing epidemics is important.
Epidemics is a pretty bad gameplay system. Especially considering patients going between buildings automatically fails it; which makes it almost completely broken. On some maps buying some particular buildings is a complete foot-gun due to this.
Curious what you prefer about the original epidemics. As a rule we try to balance quality of life improvements with faithful implementation and lean towards faithful when a change is controversial.
For our own protection we do not reverse engineer though so the goal is similar to what can be observed and fun to play.
TH, and CorsixTH afterwards have taken an unbelievable amount of my life away since the game first landed on the PS1.
I feel like I speak with a British twinge on my voice for days after a few hours of listening to the PA secretary audio -- that applies to both TH and all the new Campus bullfrog games, too.
( I love Bullfrog, but I still like the original TH and Corsix remake more than any of the new stuff. Probably just nostalgia. )
I made a few commits now and then on corsixth and I want to stress how much the team has been welcoming, with "first issues" label, guidance and help on the code.
It's poorly explained in the game, but you can increase the amount of machine health by researching "Improvements". One also has to keep track of the machine strength which is only visible in the bottom right corner when hovering over the machine. It will deteriorate over time, and at some points the machines will have to be replaced.
This is awesome, can’t wait to play TH again.
Totally forgot about this game, but i remember playing a demo version of the original game. The game was good fun. What impressed me most back then was the quality and “realism” of the videos (mind you, it was 1997)
I enjoyed playing a demo version of Theme Hospital too. It wasn't the version on the UK Playstation Magazine Demo Disc No. 18, volume 2 for you as well, by any chance? :)
man thanks for the nostalgic rush, upon witnessing tucows a phrase I've not seen since forever I was instantly transported to 1998 searching with alta vista/infoseek getting gaming tips off happypuppy.com and updating my geocitie website, man those were the days
> we love Lua and its approachable and easy to pick up nature
I keep seeing Lua popup in random places, like home automation or this game. I've never really looked at it into details, what makes one chose Lua over something more standard?
Matroftt helped us find out where our sudden stars were coming from. Very thankful to get a flurry of appreciation from the community today for CorsixTH :)
I suppose I can answer a few questions about the history.
Peter Crawley (Corsix) built the original versions of CorsixTH back in 2009. I made my first significant contribution in 2012 when I added movies. Now I am the oldest active contributor and Windows packager. I primarily work on the engine and leave the scripting to others.
Lewri joined in 2020 and brought a lot of energy back to the project, improving community outreach, bug triaging, patching and keeping everyone talking.
Alan runs the distinct but parallel Android port which was recently started again after a long hiatus.
A number of other developers are currently active and can be found in our discord/matrix channel.
Give it a try, this is one of the few ones that I have played and enjoyed.