A game about anxiety, depression, despair, mental rock bottoms, and, of course, ghosts.
My goodness, you're right, you really are alive, aren't you?
— Dr. Poe
Ghost Hospital is a GBC-styled Role-Playing Game developed by Lev Lefton. The first demo was released on April 7, 2017, and the current version of the demo is available via GameJolt
and Itch.io.
You play as Robin, a young girl who one day finds herself waking up in Purgatory Ridge, a hospital for ghosts — despite being perfectly alive and well, as her assigned ghost doctor, Dr. Poe, soon finds out. She then starts to seek her way out of the hospital and find her way back home, and along the way, she meets and partners up with a ghost boy named Jay, and the mysterious Sarcastic Ghost, who help her fight corrupted ghosts as well as her own paralyzing anxiety and depression.
The game's official development blog can be found here.
Contains examples of the following tropes:
- All in a Row: Robin's party members always follow her in a neat line.
- And I Must Scream: Corrupted Ghosts are forever stranded in the Hospital, unable to move on or die and forever hungering for life force. The condition is irreversible and the hospital staff can do little more than to confine afflicted patients to their rooms for all eternity.
- Body Horror: The Corrupted Ghosts all have some form of this going, with some drooling Ominous Obsidian Ooze from their eyelids, others looking like they've been bisected at the waist and many more charming deformities.
- Bedsheet Ghost: Most of the friendly inhabitants of the hospital look like flying bedsheets with eye-holes. Some of the Corrupted Ghosts do too, but with them it's far less cute and more unnerving.
- Bloodless Carnage: Due to all of the enemies being ghosts, there's no blood spilled when they're attacked or defeated.
- Broken Bridge: Robin and Jay are forbidden from leaving the emergency ward. The only way out goes through Carna's office, which is locked.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The protagonists each have their own color themes. Robin is red, Jay is blue, and the Sarcastic Ghost is green. Minerva, the ghost who saves your progress, lampshades this by suggesting Robin record her progress in red ink, saying it's "your color".
- Curtains Match the Window:
- Jay has blue eyes and hair.
- Robin's eyes and hair are both red.
- Death of a Child:
- Subverted with Robin. Yes, she's in Purgatory Ridge, but her heart is still beating, meaning she's still alive.
- Played straight with Jay, though he admits that he can't really remember how he died or what unfinished business is currently keeping him at the hospital.
- Driving Question: How and why was Robin sent to Purgatory Ridge, despite still being alive?
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
- Downplayed. Robin's anxiety will often pop up to insult her, belittle her choices and try to convince her that everyone in the living world is probably happy she's gone. Since Robin's actions are the same as the player's, it often seems like her anxiety is criticizing the player directly.
- Played straight at the end of the demo. The red flavor text suddenly starts to actually address the player, mocking them for wasting their time playing an unfinished game and musing about how Robin's story probably won't have a happy ending.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Robin's anxiety is presented in-game as red additional flavor text that will pop up from time to time to demean her choices and insult her, creating an uncomfortable and tense atmosphere. Due to said anxiety, Robin will also sometimes randomly break down in the middle of a battle and either hysterically beg for her life (which does nothing) or Cower, which increases her defense.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Characters can heal, be revived and refill ability points by eating food. Why a hospital for ghosts sells human food is explained by ghosts liking to eat it from time to time, even though it doesn't really do anything for them. Reversely, Robin can't eat ghost food, making her unable to heal with items like the Ghost Tuna Sandwich.
- Justified Save Point: Minerva, the hospital's receptionist, likes to keep personal records for every patient. Talking to her in order to update your own record lets you save.
- Lizard Folk: Carna, a reptilian ghost with a hatred of mortals.
- Money Spider: Beating the Corrupted Ghosts nets you a small amount of oblons. Might be justified, since the Corrupted Ghosts used to be regular patients at the hospital, so while they can't really use them any more in their current state, it makes sense they would have carried some with them when they were still sane.
- NPC Roadblock: Arnie and Ernie, who are blocking off the other wards on Carna's orders. Ernie doesn't take his job nearly as seriously as Arnie, so it's possible to bribe him into letting you pass.
- Pajama-Clad Hero: Robin and Jay are both wearing hospital gowns and, optionally, pants. The only type of armor available in the demo is sturdier gowns. Sarcastic Ghost allegedly also wears one, but you can't see it on his sprite.
- Random Number God: There's no way to tell when Robin's anxiety will set in during battles. An encounter might pass entirely without her breaking down, only for her to be constantly paralyzed in the next one, leaving Jay and maybe Sarcastic Ghost, to do all the work, unless Jay wastes one turn to Encourage her.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
- Sarcastic Ghost's demand to be let into the party is met with Robin and Jay listing all the reasons he's given them to not do that: He was rude to them from the minute they entered his room, is acting incredibly shady, doesn't seem like he'd be of any use to them and was very eager to make them leave until he suddenly decided he wanted to team up.
- Robin, Jay and Sarcastic Ghost all lay a hefty one on Carna before her boss fight, calling her out on her poor treatment of them and her draconic rules.
- Retraux: Ghost Hospital's style is meant to emulate Game Boy Color games.
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: One can reasonably expect a person with anxiety, especially a child, to struggle with something as stressful as combat. So while it might be annoying, Robin sometimes freezing up or breaking down during battles makes her anxiety something actually tangible, rather than an Informed Flaw.
- Visual Pun: Robin's signature color is red, while Jay's is blue. They're a red robin and a blue jay.
- Welcome to Corneria: Most NPCs only have one set of dialogue. Downplayed with some characters, like Vinny, Minerva and Edesia, who start out with unique dialogue, but then settle into standard lines after a certain point. Lampshaded at one point, when Jay calls one of the other patients out for gossiping to Robin about him while he's standing right next to them.
