Insanus Express

Review

In this demented title about curing mentally ill people by doctors who are also mad as a hatter, you are tasked with maintaining the flow of patients through the mental clinic. As patients arrive, they need to be guided to the proper care station for treatment. Create new doctors to treat the flow of cuckoos through the office and get them back to society as sane individuals. If your treatment is not fast enough the patients will get more and more agitated; should you not treat them in time, they will go full-blown Insanus! After a short time they will escape from the office and stress out anyone they cross paths with. So come on, it's time to lose your mind and help all the crazy people of the world.

Released was self-published on steam Feb 8, 2019, by the developer, Cienart Studios. This engaging indie title is a humorous, casual, strategy, simulation with just a touch of absurdity. As their first release on Steam, the developer is off to a great career in game development with such an adorable gem for a first release. There is no controller support, but as the title is more of a clicker, I do not believe the use of a controller would really be beneficial to the end user in this type of gameplay. The graphics are done in a top-down, birds-eye view, with funny characters and animations influenced by old school cartoons. There are only 2 settings you can alter: the resolution (going up to 3840x2160), and 3 language settings (English, Espanol, Deutsch), with more being added.

In this time management sim, you will be taking control of a psychiatric clinic and managing all of its doctors and patients. It requires sane people to become crazy doctors. They may be crazy, but it is a mad mad mad world we live in. As your patients arrive, they line up for treatment. You must decide which station they need to go to for treatment and assign them to it, along with a doctor to administer treatment. This must all be done in a timely manner, or your doctors and patients will become impatient and go totally insane, running off and disturbing others. The mechanics are changed every level; we will let you discover them all for yourself. Altogether there are 21 levels of maniacal mayhem to pursue; as you progress, the gameplay will become more and more challenging.

I must admit that the game is out of my normal genre for gameplay, but I found it to be very fun! My wife loves the genre and has already requested I get her a copy.  (I have had to share playtime with her and one of my sons.) The humorous antics of the patients and doctors are sure to raise a few chuckles from you as you play.  I love the art style and the detail they paid to the animation work, which really brings the title to life. It is a casual title that balances on the border of difficult in some levels. Achieving 3 stars for every level can be challenging at higher levels (as I like to get all 3 stars for every level, I found myself doing a bit of replaying).

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!