War Hospital is a real-time strategy game where you must manage a hospital in the midst of World War 1. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your time and money.
War Hospital Review Overview
War Hospital Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Successfully Induces Wartime Atmosphere of Dread and Hopelessness Mechanics and Systems Seamlessly Work Together |
UI and UX are Very Rough |
War Hospital Overall - 76/100
War Hospital is a deeply engrossing RTS with great visuals, addictive gameplay full of decisions that affect the gameplay, and fantastic depth regarding prospering through hours and hours of playtime. It’s unfortunately marred by its outdated User Interface (UI) and poor User Experience (UX), accompanied by a generic soundtrack and an average story. Still, at its core identity, War Hospital reaches high heights with its excellent micromanagement gameplay and immersive atmosphere.
War Hospital Story - 7/10
The title War Hospital is as self-descriptive as it gets, where you’re tasked to manage a hospital in the middle of the First World War. There isn’t much of an active plot, but an overarching one across multiple days, weeks, and months that simulates the agonizing speed of war. There is nothing extraordinary to the story, but it’s perfect for the real-time strategy game that War Hospital is.
War Hospital Gameplay - 9/10
War Hospital is an immediate “hours down the drain” game, where once the tutorials are finished and you’re left on your own to manage the hospital, you’ll be absolutely glued to the game. The constant ongoing need to micromanage the staffs’ well-being, tasks, and schedules, preserving and generating a multitude of resources, ALL on top of defending against the enemies marching down upon the hospital, is stressfully immersive and addicting. The great gameplay is, however, hampered by the terrible User Experience (UX) from the navigation of its menus, where the outdated User Interface (UI) plays a major part.
War Hospital Visuals - 8/10
The consistent moody art direction is superb, properly utilizing gloomy colors for the desperate time of war. With an art style that I can only describe as “digital stylized painterly” visuals, the character portraits and the in-game models are appreciable. The UI elements, however, feel rather outdated and not intuitive. Most of the menus and icons are small, non-adjustable, and lack context. There’s a lack of consistency, where some icons are properly labeled, some need to be hovered over, and some outright don’t.
War Hospital Audio - 6/10
As the game is set in war, one would expect ominous, somewhat depressing music to instill dread and hopelessness. War Hospital has those to an extent but plays it rather safely and only contains generic-sounding RTS war music that won’t strike players to be remarkable. The voice acting is good at certain times, but alongside the SFX, they’re just there to not feel empty. The entire auditory experience in War Hospital is serviceable at best.
War Hospital Value for Money - 8/10
War Hospital has an incredible amount of depth that leads to a very gratifying RTS time sink. With several skill trees, resource management, staff allotment, and base defending, the $39.99 seems perfectly apt. However, there is much left to be desired with a serviceable story, terribly outdated UI, perplexing UX, and generic audio. If you can set those aside, it’s a highly enjoyable RTS game with so much potential playtime to dig into.
War Hospital Review: Shellshocking Immersion and Pressure
I truthfully haven’t played a proper RTS in a long while, and what a welcome back War Hospital is. I fully expected the stress and responsibility of leading a hospital base, but what I got was so much more, in a good way. Set in the later years of World War I, where the global conflict has steadily been growing in years, you’re assigned to manage a hospital for incoming injured from the battlefield.
The premise manages to perfectly encapsulate and, at the same time, undersell the game because War Hospital reveals all the duties of the head doctor of a hospital in times of war, and they are not pretty. Altruistic, pragmatic, empathetic, and even moral decisions are made almost every other minute, and the pressure just continually builds with no relief in sight. Later in the review, I go into more depth with how successful this game immerses and induces the desperation that no doubt crept everywhere back then.
Not only the gameplay but also the art style invokes a gloomy, depressive feeling due to the consistent use of a grayed-out color palette. The visuals and gameplay go hand-in-hand with successfully administering the sensation of desperation in the middle of a war.
War Hospital achieves exactly what it sets out to do, establishing its identity first and foremost, and triumphantly stamps itself as an excellent RTS.
Pros of War Hospital
| Things War Hospital Got Right |
|---|
|
Successfully Induces Wartime Atmosphere of Dread and Hopelessness Mechanics and Systems Seamlessly Work Together |
Successfully Induces Wartime Atmosphere of Dread and Hopelessness
Wartime Hospital places a significant amount of pressure upon the player, excellently immersing them into the role of the burdened war doctor. The responsibility to manage the town’s resources lies with you. The allocation of the staff and their health all depends on you. The ever-eternal stream of incoming patients all NEED you. The impending threat of the enemy forces breaching the town must be fended off by you. There are so many things to do and manage, and there’s only one capable of it all, and it’s you.
This feeling is magnificently conveyed through the gameplay, where hardships and tribulations keep pouring in. Sacrifices need to be made; you might have to halve everyone’s rations; you might have the engineers prioritize building upgrades over making medical supplies; you might need to make the final decision to deny a patient surgery and let them die.
War Hospital is full of dire and difficult scenarios that will have you choose between being practical, emotional, and perhaps even ethical. The choice is all yours, and the consequences all pile on and on and on without a grace in sight. War Hospital succeeds in this facet of the horrifying truths of war, and at the center of all of it is you.
Mechanics and Systems Seamlessly Work Together
War Hospital lets you mainly manage the staff you have employed on hand. But, the amount of things you can have the staff work on is limited, and having to manage resources, scouts, AND defenses at every waking hour will take its toll. It’s so expansive and deep that it’s astonishing how it all blends so well together.
The assigning of patients to doctors and the micromanagement of doctors’ health are the most important things to oversee within the game, and it’s the center of all other systems in place. You’d need to assign medical teams to transport patients and bodies in and out of the operating building. Engineers provide medical supplies. Nurses help to increase operation success rates. Successfully curing patients will make them eligible for rehabilitation, which, when completed, can allow you to either assign them to be defensive troops, send them off to HQ to earn Military Drafts(important to consume for upgrades), or resign them from battle for a boost in morale. Everything starts with the doctors on center stage, a statement about the importance of the medical team in wartime.
With RTSs come upgrade trees and resource management, and boy does War Hospital have them all. The upgrade trees all depend on the aforementioned Military Drafts gained from curing patients, so you’re continually planning how many patients you must send off to HQ and leave some for your own defenses or morale. There are tons of medical supplies that need to be generated by engineers, who need to construct their stations in the first place. In turn, they’d need more Military Drafts. This is only one example where every mechanic and resource is connected, and it’s brilliant how it all just seems to make sense.
Cons of War Hospital
| Things War Hospital Can Improve |
|---|
|
UI and UX are Very Rough |
UI and UX are Very Rough
The User Interface in War Hospital feels rather similar to the great classic RTS games of old, from the Civilizations to the Command and Conquers. That’s exactly why it feels so outdated and rough.
To access the most important menus you'll frequently be looking at, you must go over to the very corner of the screen. Over there, stashed away, is a small icon you’ll need to hover over, which plays an excruciatingly unnecessary “unfolding/scrolling” animation to show the other available buttons, which are all unlabeled. To see what they refer to, you’ll have to hover over each icon individually. I cannot overstate how terribly anti-user this is. Sure, one can reason that with constant use, you’ll have no reason to hover over to see the labels, but that’s a very artificial and unnecessary learning curve that is a product of terrible design. What’s funny is that buttons are somewhat voided because if you select one icon, you can still switch to the others through the tab menus it opens. What’s the point of it then?
I would also like to take this time to point out that there exists NO hotkey shortcuts whatsoever to access any menu. There are shortcuts to change the game speed, but no shortcuts to actually be more efficient in accessing the important staff and resource allocation that you’ll spend the majority of your time playing.
Selecting buildings is also somewhat messy, with the all-important buttons so tiny and tucked into measly thin grids. They DO appropriately lead to what the selected buildings’ functions, but they’re just terrible shortcuts that are accessible through the aforementioned tab menus at the top-left. The option to Zoom into the buildings is neat, though, but it doesn’t have much actual use besides something to stare at to pass the time. The little act of showing some “slice-of-life” is really great and appreciated.
Along with all the unadjustable small things that plague War Hospital, the text dialogues are aggravatingly small. The SKIP button is bigger than the actual text like it WANTS us to disregard the ongoing narrative and just stick to the gameplay.
Luckily, this review was played on a pre-release copy provided by the developers. They have mentioned that they ARE aware of some UI issues that are in the game, and will be issuing a Day 1 Patch. Fingers crossed that most of these complaints are solved and render War Hospital a more fluid and even more enjoyable game to play.
Is War Hospital Worth It?
Yes, Everyone Here Depends on You
Guilt-tripping aside, War Hospital is an excellent RTS with tons of hours to invest. Micromanaging staff tasks, assigning shifts, and working them to exhaustion are all viable options when facing grave situations of life and death. The several resource and management mechanics in the game allow for so much investment and pressurized “fun” to be had – fun in the sense of holding such a great duty and responsibility over the lives of countless humans.
For only $39.99, War Hospital is very well worth it just from the amazing immersion it gives. Though there are a few shortcomings, such as the finicky UI and UX, as well as a subpar audio experience, the game is still addictive and fun.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
 Steam |
N/A |
 PSN |
$39.99 |
 MS Store |
$39.99 |
War Hospital Overview & Premise
War Hospital is a compelling real-time strategy game where instead of marines and tanks in combat against rebel forces, you’ll control field medics and nurses in their fight against time. It’s a deep game requiring immense emotional investment that caters to those curious about the greatest and often unseen drama behind the scenes of the First World War.
War Hospital FAQ
When is War Hospital’s Release Date?
War Hospital was released on January 11, 2024 for PC and Playstation. Click the button below to learn more information.
How do I Get More Staff Permits?
Staff Permits are an important resource used to hire more personnel. They are received by accepting special requests for Headquarters(HQ) that are sent from time to time. They are also gained throughout gameplay. There is no consistent way to generate Staff Permits.
How do I Get More Military Drafts?
Military Drafts is an important resource spent on ordering emergency supplies by train, or consumed when assigning Engineers to start Improvement actions. They are earned by sending fully-cured patients back to HQ in the Rehabilitation Center.
War Hospital Product Information
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| Title | WAR HOSPITAL |
|---|---|
| Release Date | January 11, 2024 |
| Developer | Brave Lamb Studio |
| Publisher | Nacon |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Xbox Series X|S, PS5 |
| Genre | Real Time Strategy |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | Teen |
| Official Website | War Hospital Website |
