The Inpatient

Did You Know?

• The game was announced with a teaser trailer at E3 2017.
• It was originally set to release on November 21, 2017 in North America and November 22 in Europe, but was delayed.
• Non-player characters react via voice recognition.

Plot

The player character awakens in a restraining chair and is greeted by Jefferson Bragg, who says their memory is weak and asks them to recall the last thing they saw. The protagonist remembers hiding in a small closet and being found by an unknown man, and that the year is 1952. An employee takes them to a room and informs them they are a patient at the Blackwood Sanitarium. The next morning, the protagonist receives a new roommate, Gordon or Ana, whose gender matches the player character's. Over subsequent days, the roommate's sanity declines as chaos and starvation occur outside the cell. The protagonist eventually breaks free and explores the abandoned sanitarium, encountering employees, a priest, and possibly the roommate, who have discovered that a Wendigo uprising is responsible. The group attempts to leave the mountain, but Bragg refuses and stays behind to commit suicide. During the journey to the cable cars, they face Wendigos and police officers ordered to silence everyone. At the cable cars, either the roommate or the protagonist is revealed to have eaten human flesh and become a Wendigo. In their final moments of humanity, they may sacrifice themselves to operate the cable car or become rogue and kill the others. If the roommate becomes the Wendigo and the protagonist escapes, the protagonist is interrogated by a police officer who intimidates them into silence. If the protagonist becomes the Wendigo, the epilogue shows the year turning to 2014, and Hannah and Beth Washington are seen through the Wendigo's eyes as it chases them.

Development

Supermassive Games built The Inpatient with Unreal Engine 4. This title is a prequel to Until Dawn, taking place at Blackwood Sanatorium sixty-three years earlier. Nik Bowen directed, while Graham Reznick and Larry Fessenden wrote the script. To subtly pull players into the story, the team used psychological horror, adding three-dimensional binaural audio to enhance the visuals.

Reception

The Inpatient divided professional reviewers, landing a 59 on Metacritic from 55 critics, a score classified as mixed or average. While its visual design and atmosphere drew consistent praise, the game was frequently faulted for its sluggish tempo and limited gameplay variety. Despite the mixed reception, it earned several nominations: one for Sound Design at the 2018 Develop Awards, two for Best Audio Design and Visual Design at The Independent Game Developers' Association Awards 2018, and three for Control Design in VR, Direction in Virtual Reality, and Sound Mixing in Virtual Reality at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards.