Galacticare PC Review
Summary: Galacticare doesn’t bring anything especially new or unique to the tables besides the settings, but it’s still a worthwhile entry into the hospital management genre.
4.3
(Inter)stellar!
Galacticare by Brightrock Games is the latest in the ever-popular hospital management sim genre. What sets Galacticare apart from other entries into the niche is the setting, Brightrock Games have taken medical malpractice into space in what is a first for the genre as far as I’m aware.
Players assume the role of director of Galacticare! The newest interstellar health company in the universe, on its journey to rid the galaxy of disease while making as much money (and best hospitals!) as possible.
Everything from hereon is standard for games of this type. The moment-to-moment gameplay is spent floating above your shiny new hospital space station. There are rooms to be built, staff to be hired and patients to be cured, all the while undertaking missions thrown at you by the various inhabitants of the local area.
Using a mission-based structure there are a dozen or so levels to be completed, each in a unique-ish environment. They’re all based around a specific theme and most introduce new conditions to be cured that are tangentially related to it. There are some interesting ideas for the maps here, for example, an early mission tasks you with building up your hospital in a galactic train station. Space is severely limited, and patients arrive regularly and en masse with each new train that docks with the station, making efficiency key so as not to be quickly overwhelmed by the freshly ill.
Curing any of the forty-nine ailments present within the game rewards money and several of the various currencies used to buy upgrades and cosmetic items, which in turn is used to further expand your hospital, build new rooms, and upgrade the ones already there. Objectives within any given mission include curing a set number of patients, researching a new condition to a certain level, or simply raising the overall rating of your hospital.
Staff will generally go about their business without too much player involvement, moving to wherever they’re needed and taking breaks as required. It’s possible to micromanage it all to a frankly absurd degree, however. Each staff member can be assigned a specialty once they hit a certain experience level further increasing their effectiveness while simultaneously reducing the work they’re able to do. Individual rooms can specialise in up to 4 different ailments, something that I found very useful when trying to keep queues down, and priority can be given to specific conditions and even individual patients.
Like Galacticare’s contemporaries, it’s all wrapped up in an exaggerated, cartoon-like visual style, the type that typically ages well and still holds up years later. A strong comedic tone runs throughout the game and actually manages to be funny more often than not, thankfully, as comedy that falls flat is a quick way of killing any enthusiasm for a game. Each of the various races brings their personalities, quirks, and idiosyncrasies to the table. Each feeling different from one another and unique, even if they often feel like parodies of the races from the Mass Effect universe.
Some great voice acting helps make the comedy land when it otherwise wouldn’t, with Ben Kearns doing a wonderful impression of Matt Berry throughout, and is a pleasure to listen to. It’s so good in fact, that I had to look it up to make sure it wasn’t actually Berry himself.
Unfortunately, there are some performance issues plaguing Galacticare at the moment. When the AI ramps up as the screen fills with patients and doctors the framerate tends to plummet. Dropping graphical settings makes little to no difference either. It never dropped to an unplayable level by any means, but some of the longer, more hectic levels found the game running at under 60fps on more than one occasion. However, the slower, management-focused gameplay meant it wasn’t much of an issues, more an annoyance.
Final Thoughts?
This all probably sounds a lot like Two Point at this point, and while I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that Galacticare is just Two Point Hospital in space, it isn’t that far from the truth. I don’t think that’s a bad thing either.
There’s a lot to like here. It’s well-written and voiced, and manages to be genuinely funny, most of the time. Nothing new is presented on a gameplay level besides the settings, but honestly, that might be enough, as it does everything else expected of it right.
If you like the gameplay of Two Point Hospital and fancy another 20+ hours of it in a totally new setting, then Galacticare is definitely worth a look.
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