Sanitarium
Step into the gaming world with Sanitarium, one of the top $3.99 games in the App Store! Crafted with creativity and innovation by DotEmu, this captivating Puzzle game is bound to grab your attention. With its content rating of 9+, it caters to a wide audience. Ever since its release on 29th October 2015, it has been constantly updated, with the latest version rolled out on 18th October 2021.
Whether you have a liking for Puzzle, Adventure, games, Sanitarium is sure to keep you hooked!
User Ratings
Join the crowd of 120 gamers who have given their verdict on Sanitarium.
Ready to take on the adventure? Get Sanitarium now from the APP STORE.
Dive into Sanitarium
In Sanitarium you play an amnesiac thrust into a morbid, really creepy universe. After a car accident you wake up to find that instead of lying in a hospital, you’re in an asylum with your head wrapped in bandages. Who the hell am I? What am I doing here? How do I escape? There endless questions eating away at you, and so too are the many puzzles you’ll need to resolve throughout this immersive, captivating adventure.
Featuring a rich, complex plot set in an intense world where a very thin line separates reason from madness, Sanitarium is a masterwork suitable for point-and-click beginners, experts and everyone who enjoys captivating storylines and horror games.
This version has not only been authentically recreated for mobile, but also enhanced with brand-new features:
- Choose between touch mode and pad mode
- A new easy-to-use interface specially adapted for touch devices
- Automatic save system
- Dynamic ON/OFF hint system
- New inventory system
- 20 Achievements to unlock
- Choose between full screen mode & original mode
- 3 languages available: English, French, German (voices and text)
Originally released in 1998 for PC and Adventure Game of the Year Winner, this timeless point-and-click horror game is a must-have for adventure game fans. Discover or rediscover one of the scariest games of all time with this mobile version you can play anywhere!
MORE ABOUT DOTEMU
facebook.com/dotemu
twitter.com/dotemu
youtube.com/dotemu
What’s Fresh in the Latest Update?
Discover what’s new in the recent update of Sanitarium on 18th October 2021:
Updated version to fix some issues and Os compatibility
Hear from the Players – Sanitarium Reviews
Find out what gamers are saying about Sanitarium:
Ok, so maybe not directly. But if you enjoyed Lost Highway and Twin Peaks and kept watching despite not always knowing what was going on youll love Sanitarium. Actually, that could even be said of Lost as well. Anyway,that kind of sets up the premise that you wont always understand if its reality or a dream world but that makes it pretty fun to play as well. And like the other reviewer said its a pretty intense mind-bender. Not gory at all but some great psychological chapters that will keep you interested even as you make some loose connections with what a certain chapter entails. Its nice to see a classic suspenseful point and click such as this one. Now if they can just port Phantasmagoria so we dont have to find all our disks to play it again. :)
Incredible game! Lots of hours of adventure fun, very well made, genius storyline. A++++
Hey we just paid money for this game. The games great but keeps crashing when we talk to Jessie Hatcher in the second level please fix thank you.
One of our favorite titles of Gamings’ second generation (after Atari and text adventures). Remember our jaw dropping at the "SOA graphics and playability". We’ve come a stretch since but these titles are much appreciated.
So we played this game when it first came out, for the PC. It has always stuck with us because we really enjoyed the story, chaos, weirdness. We were telling our 18 year old son about it and searched it. We were happily surprised to find it on the iPad. Needless to say, we downloaded it for nostalgic sake. We havent been disappointed yet. Still has the same feel and graphics. A little old school, but fun! We originally played this game 20+ years ago, and the iPad version doesnt disappoint. If you like the dark, the weird, and to solve puzzles you will enjoy this game!
We are really happy to have this masterpiece on our iPhone. It remembered the days we spent hrs trying to solve the unique puzzles this game has. The best game ever on the app-store. Thank you #Dreamforge #DotEmu for making it a real thing and port it to phones.
One of our favorite games from back in the day, we almost peed myself when we saw this port.
Sanitarium has a lot of atmosphere and a well written story. We remember playing the demo from a PC Gamer CD as was the fashion at the time before the internet. Glad we finally got the chance to finish the game that our prepubescent self could not.
There’s a game ending bug on chapter 3, if you can even make it that far. The game is in serious need of fixing. Dotemu seems content to continue pocketing money for an app that doesn’t work, though. We’ll never buy anything from them again until they either fix this app or give us a refund.
There is a bug in the Aztec calendar puzzle. Please fix. Otherwise great game!
One of our all time favorites of the genre.
This was one of our favorite games as a teen. We would have dreamt to play it on the go on a touch screen back then! It sounds so futuristic.
Awesome game, but… Please add Russian language! Please Please Please.
We loved this game when it came out in the late 90s and have been looking for it in the App store for some time now. Awesome!
This is the only game that ever really captured our wife’s attention. We played several nights in a row before we finished it together. It got so under-our-skin that we couldn’t even go get something to drink alone. :-) we are so glad this game is back!
Loved playing this game. Thanks for making a port for this title so people like us ( new to the point and click adventure fan club) can experience all these amazing games from the 90’s! Wish they made more games like this nowadays! Also want to note that price is totally worth it, game is awesome and good length which is something we look for in a game. We hate paying for short games and thankfully this game gives hours of point and click puzzle solving fun!!!!
We have wanted to play this game for a long time so we were happy to see this port. The movement can be frustrating at times but overall the game was great. Love the creepiness.
Compelling story and classic point and click adventure. A little finicky on the active touch areas and it took us a bit to figure out you double tap an inventory item to use it.
We’ve had the pc version of the game for some time now but we’ve never been able to properly play it because it would invariably crash once we finished chapter 2 (although we did manage to get to chapter 3 once) but now we’ll hopefully have the chance to play the game in its entirety thanks to dotemu. Unfortunately a problem that both the original and the port have is that the controls aren’t nearly as good as they could be. In the original you would guid max along with your cursor rather than clicking a location and having him walk there. That coupled with his slow walking speed made things very tedious. This port has the same issues PLUS some wonky touch controls. The game is very slow paced so it won’t effect your ability to play it but it will occasionally be a bother.
Although the games storyboard and the games atmosphere is scary there is one thought that came in mind,one thing is that at the schoolhouse and church it won’t let us enter also at one certain moment there is a glitch in the game for example we want to get in the but instead of getting in the church we’re walking all the way to the roof of the church. So those are the two things that need fixing.
It’s really cool that Sanitarium was ported to the phone. It’s easy access and you can play this classic anywhere at any time. The game has a great story that’s both creepy and comical at the same time, and seeing that Sanitarium came out in 1996, the graphics and sound design are pretty crisp, and if you get stuck, there’s a nifty hint button. Our only complaints is that every once in a while it’s hard to click on a specific point, and also the dialogue is both rather low and sometimes an entire quote, making you have to do it again. These, however, are small bugs that should be easily fixed. Otherwise, a great port!!!
We agree that better instructions are needed, and it does crash too much. Right now we’re stuck in the hive because the scanner won’t accept the mechanical arm. Two days of touching every millimeter of the screen has left us frustrated! Please fix. We want to finish.
Im probably biased because this game has good memories attached to it (I played it with our cousin and we had inside jokes), but we really like this game. Its pretty much a straight port of the game so no new graphics or anything. The controls are not great (especially on a iPhone screen. If you have a tablet we recommend using that). Your character is slow and it gets frustrating when you have to backtrack a lot. Some items are really finicky about where you stand in order to activate them. We did get stuck in one part and had to reload the game, but thats the only big issue so far. The plot is somewhat cliche but is presented interestingly.
This game is fantastic: from its unique and gripping story, to its vintage isometric perspective, to its depth and originality. The only real drawbacks are the technical ones, which is really a port issue. Unresponsive prompts, and skipping out on dialogue though never really get in the way of having a good time with Sanitarium. This point and click adventure is definitely worth the purchase.
Along with the review Fantastic game, iffy controls, we’ve noticed that it would randomly skip to the next piece of dialog even when we were certain nothing was touching or charging our iPad. Still, we want to see the game to completion. We have a hunch that the plot (which, by the start of chapter 4, seems to be a kudzu plot), will come together nicely at the end.
Nice dark plot with hallucinations. Puzzles generally good. Long gameplay with cool cutscenes.
Good story with creepy things. Minus one star for hard to click active points and background noise being almost as loud as great acting/dialogue. Thanks Dotemu!
… We love adventure POC games but don’t have a PC. This game really fun, great story, we absolutely love games with different themes for different levels and how the story tied together. Voice acting was very good. However we were playing on a small iPhone 5s and the ‘trigger points’ for so many things just got lost in the densely detailed environment. Also, yes please give a basic item tutorial, and consider have a ‘description’ for each item when clicked on, or maybe update the item menu. And the reaction time between clicking on areas and then getting recognized was really aggravating we almost deleted game. Thanks for a good game we think for small screens this is not a good choice though.
We’ve had this game on our list of things to play for the longest time and just when the game was getting weirder (a good thing)… We’re hit with crashes… Luckily upon reload no progress was lost.
It is one of our favorite PC games. Sadly the iOS version did not have a manual so it took a while to figure out using items. Also the touch controls are wonky. We knew where to dig and had to do it a dozen times to make it work. They need to work on that as other gamers might have had problems solving that puzzle. Overall so far so good.
We were super excited about this game. Pros: looks like a very faithful port of a classic adventure game. Sound is good, graphics are true to the original. Cons: we were stuck way too long in the very first screen because there’s absolutely no explanation of how the controls work. The settings screen gives the option to turn "pad mode" on and off, but again, no description ofwhat that is/does.
Love this game. We played it on PC. However, the controls on this version are laughable. Its this horribly implemented free standing invisible joystick that does the game absolutely no justice. IMPLEMENT A SIMPLE TOUCH TO CONTROL STYLR!
Played the original game on PC, still own the hard copy. Love this game. Mobile version Crashes often at loading screens and cutscenes. Sound issues, speech volume is too low, other sfx volume too high. Dialogue skips sometimes even if screen isn’t touched.
Unfortunately the game crashes a lot and the controls arent great, but we do enjoy the puzzles and story.
Just like we remember playing on our PC but the touch controls make it hard to press the correct response and even walk around.
Its worthwhile having played this classic game and Im please it was ported to apple devices. The updated gameplay system is cumbersome and leaves much to be desired and the game occasionally crashes. Fortunately an auto-save feature helps that from being too tedious. Although the game and story is dated by modern aesthetics, it is a must for anyone interested in archaic video game treasures.
We appreciate the developers making this mobile port. But it glitches very often and doesnt respond to input well. Im stuck on Chapter 2 because every time we go to the barn, a glitch happens where everything we do Max says something to the effect of That wont work. Even when Im not holding an item, anything we touch he says we cant do that. We cant even open the main menu. And we cant fill the generator with gas. We hold the full gas can but when we tap on the generator he says that wont work.
We thought this was a good game, at least it started out that way, but since we purchased it 2 days ago, it has repeatedly crashed. We have deleted and reinstalled the game at least 5 times. Cant get past the second level. Very disappointing!
Pumpkin patch. Everything went blank, but the sounds and the eyeball were still there. Cant really navigate blind. Seems like the crows pecked out Maxs eyes?
Graphics are poor and this feels very old. Delete.
Audio dialogue and text dialogue are totally out of sync starting in chapter 3 – the audio seems to be taken from random parts of game completely broken – unplayable.
We made it to the playground and the entire game froze. We’ve tried everything and nothing is working!!!
Controls were tedious, no "tap to go here" option. Sometimes control icons would disappear completely. Then, after the game crashed, the controls stopped working altogether. The character won’t move at all. Shame, we were looking forward to the iPad release of this game, it was so good back in 1998, one of our favorites.
Plz update or fix the bugs! We really am interested in playing this game but unfortunately we got stuck on on the 3rd level near the door just like some other people. Using an IPhone 8.. We tried to get ahold of the developers but got no response.. We’re gonna have to get a refund, but I’d rather play the game as it was fun so far!
This game is not worth the $4 price tag and has very low quality programming and graphics. Controls are difficult to manage and not intuitive at all. Should have taken the advice of the previous reviews and stayed away.
Not worth the 3.99 so save your money.
The controls for this game on our IPad are awful. We cant even get past certain areas because they wont work or the game freezes up. Not worth the money at all.
Love the start to this game. Too bad we cannot finish it. Game is bugged 3rd level after town with kids level. Went next to dr office to open panel outside and it crashes. Very disappointing to pay for a game that does not work.