Mr.Farmville

6 Waves has published a new and growing, Facebook title by the name of Sim Hospital. Developed by RedSpell, the game recently found itself on our top emerging apps list and currently earns itself around 368,000 monthly active users with over 95,000 daily active users.

Significantly different then the current wave of business-sim titles, Sim Hospital is an app that has players running a hospital and battling disease. It has a unique, simple feel to it, but doesn’t offer enough decoration options, as we’ll get into below.

Like any of the business sims that came before it, the objective here is to build a successful business. Of course, rather than the typical restaurant, now it’s a hospital. Thankfully, RedSpell does not simply take the same elements and reskin them with new visuals.

It’s simple enough to get started, as players merely start a work shift and select an amount of time for it to run.

During the shift, patients will begin filing in and follow a certain set of basic procedures. Typically, they’ll check-in, visit a examination room of some sort to get diagnosed, then proceed to a therapy room before leaving. Once they’ve successfully completed all of these steps, the player earns some income (after a shift is finished).

The key word here is “successfully.” As patients arrive, they will be plagued with a variety of potential diseases ranging from the common cold to “Zombie Syndrome.” As the name suggests, the game has a comical style to it, parodying the various ailments with quirky visuals; e.g. a character with “Frostbite” comes in as a snowman. Despite what the illness might be, there is only a percentage chance that it will be properly diagnosed and treated. Luckily, there are means to mitigate the chance of failure.

Players are able to research information about the disease one at a time. As they increase their level, more diseases become available and take longer to research. As research improves, the chances of a successful diagnoses can increase up to 95% (expenditure of virtual currency is required for 100%).

Of course, knowing the problem is only half the battle, as players must also be able to treat it. This comes into to play in the form of the game’s various treatment rooms, dubbed Clinics (also note that there are rooms for diagnostics as well). Each ailment has an associated treatment such as a pharmacy, steam therapy, or “neuro-shaking” (for the zombies). If the player doesn’t have the associated room for the disease, it cannot be treated.

As for the rooms themselves, these are placed in set spots around the users’ virtual space. However, before they can be put to use, a physician must be hired to man it. For the most part, these are non-player characters complete with bizarre personality traits (e.g. “steals small shiny things”) and cost a certain amount of money per shift.

Supposedly, this is also where one of the social mechanics appears, in that the game also has an option to invite a random friend or two to fill that job opening. Unfortunately, not only were we unable to choose who we picked, but clicking the invite button didn’t appear to do anything and we were forced to hire an NPC regardless. Likely, the benefit would be not having to pay the character, and better statistics – each NPC has statistics representing how fast they work, how many patients they can treat before needed a break, and how long a break they need (basically, this means they just leave the room for a while).

That isn’t to say that there are no social mechanics within Sim Hospital. Players can still invite one another as neighbors and participate in the built in friend leaderboard system. In addition to this, they can send gifts and visit one another’s virtual spaces. This is of particular value, as players can increase their friends’ “Public Relations” to help improve their hospitals.

This is a mechanic similar to that of Restaurant City in that NPCs will affect the reputation of one’s hospital. In short, should they be successfully treated, it will go up and if not, it will go down. That’s the basics, but there’s actually a number of things that will lower their mood, and ultimately, the hospital’s reputation. Waiting in line, lack of restroom facilities, thirst or hunger, and so on.

While players can manually click on a character and “cheer it up,” they need to build certain decorative items to help improve the patrons’ moods. From simple benches to taper waiting irritations, to vending machines, most of the décor actually has a benefit or function. That said, there isn’t a tremendous amount of it, so the decorative element to Sim Hospital feels a bit weak at this time.

Which is where the game feels a bit drab. The decorative aspect of social games is an important part of keeping users’ attention. While Sim Hospital does include incentives to get certain decorative rewards, in that there are items gated by level. Yet there are very few and nothing terribly extravagant (if they are locked, they are also not even visible). Essentially, while the game has a lot of nice elements, players are locked into starting a shift and repeating until they have enough money to buy a new room, then repeat. Since the rooms are all premade and must go in specific spots, the refreshing nature and style of Sim Hospital gets a bit dull after a while.

Overall, Sim Hospital is a well-made game at its core, but it seems to lack a means to really keep users for the long haul. It’s a shame, as the 11 virtual items that can be placed as décor do tend to have a functional purpose that actually creates a strategic element to keeping patients happy. Nevertheless, with so little in this user-creativity department, players are left with not only limited goals, but a game that primarily consists of starting a shift, collecting pay, and repeating, with only the occasional side job to research a new disease. Even so, the application is still young, and such issues are some of the easiest to fix.

Source: Inside Social Games