Galacticare is a Theme Hospital-like that does the hardest thing a game can do: Make me laugh

(Image credit: CULT Games)

A sedate, smiling, massive purple alien floats in space, face pockmarked with glowing warts.

The hidden gems of Game Pass(Image credit: Microsoft)We’re checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.

The hidden gems of Game Pass

(Image credit: Microsoft)We’re checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

We’re checking out the hidden gems of Game Pass over the next few weeks, digging up all the obscure and esoteric games secreted away in our subscription and seeing how they play.

Fair enough: Theme Hospital is great. Problem is, though, its epigones are never as funny as the original game. They all have cover band syndrome. So I thought, anyway, until I put my hands on Galacticare, an unabashed Theme Hospital-like tucked away in Game Pass that manages to pull off the rarest thing a videogame can do—make me actually laugh.

(Image credit: CULT Games)

An overhead shot of a basic hospital. Patients are complaining about the lack of decor.

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Wait for what? Why, your exhaustively optimised conveyor belt of wellness. Patients come in through the front door, queue at reception, queue at diagnosis, and queue at their treatment room (or rooms) before you send them on their way. Or they die. Dying is very much a possibility, and really bums out the rest of your waiting clients, who are cowards.

Like I said, nothing too unfamiliar in the gameplay loop, although there are a few bits and pieces that keep the whole thing from seeming like a total palette-swap of Bullfrog’s classic. Little touches, like special breeds of harmless pests that are attracted to your hospital like moths to flame if it’s well-run and give you rewards for finding them, that feel novel and act as the carrot to the stick of ‘patients dying and leaving’ that encourage you to keep your hospital well-run.

(Image credit: CULT Games)

Chatting with MEDI the janitor bot. He says “Well… I guess so. Also, HEAL keeps saying I’m a fake boy, and being programmed to imitate humanity is a disgrace. He’s my best friend!"

Though really, it’s the writing that has the whole thing stuck in my brain. It’d be bad criticism to gesture vaguely at anything like a Theme Hospital ‘vibe’ or ‘spirit’ and say Galacticare somehow ineffably captures it. But, ah, Galacticare really captures that Theme Hospital vibe and spirit, and in a way that others that try the same thing don’t.

Galacticare really captures that Theme Hospital vibe and spirit, and in a way that others that try the same thing don’t

Alright, some specifics. Galacticare truly feels like whoever sat down to write it actually gave a damn, and also like they had a lifelong dream of writing their own Mass Effect codex entries. Every species you treat in your orbiting hospital has their own lore page which, if you’re anything like me, you will swiftly and enthusiastically ignore at first sight. You shouldn’t. This stuff is genuinelyquite good. The lore on humanity—they’ve only gone and plunged themself into a hellish corporate dystopia—has that same wry cynicism of Bullfrog at its best. Others, like the Ohde, who once ran a galaxy-spanning empire that no one really holds against them because they did it before any other race evolved enough to care, feel like they come straight out of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

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(Image credit: CULT Games)

A patient is strapped in to a large, dangerous-looking medical machine.

So if you fancy a Theme Hospital-like that’s actually like Theme Hospital, you could do much worse than giving Galacticare a shot. You can find it over onGame Pass,Steam, andGOG. Play it in health.

PC Gamer created this content as part of a paid partnership with Microsoft and PC Game Pass. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of PC Gamer.

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