Asylum is an Argentinian horror Adventure Game, released in 2025 by Senscape Media as a Spiritual Successor to Scratches.
Set somewhere in the mid-70s/early-80s, you play an unnamed former patient of the Hanwell Institute, an isolated mental hospital drenched in disturbing events that forced it to mysteriously close. Strange hallucinations have led you here, and the place is scheduled to be renovated and reopened as a modern mental health facility. With 12 hours remaining before the renovation begins, it's up to you to discover what really happened inside Hanwell Insitute...and whether you had something to do with it.
Can be found here
on Steam and Good Old Games, here.
Not to be confused with other media named Asylum.
Asylum contains examples of:
- Awesome, but Impractical: Dr. Hanwell invented the STRABBE to further his research towards study of the brain, but not only was it criticized for its high margin of error and general danger to the patient, but it was quickly outmoded when the MRI came out about a year later.
- Bedlam House: Hanwell Institute is as broken down and filthy as it was when it was abandoned, and a few patients have already been admitted before more arrive when it reopens.
- The Cameo: After the player finds a familiar-looking teddy bear in the men's showers, someone heavily implied to be Robin Blackwood from Scratches runs in and hides in the corner.
- Creepy Cathedral: The third-floor Chapel starts out dark and dusty, but not too creepy. It gets worse when the escaped patient charges through, to the point of detaching the cross from the wall.
- Door to Before: The south doors to the courtyard and library are locked from inside, and only act as a shortcut once opened.
- Dug Too Deep: Without the funds for outside help, Dr. Hawthorne resorted to using mental patients as labor to build underground tunnels for renovations. Unfortunately, those tunnels also happened to lead to the lair of Phalote, along with some strange toxic fungi.
- Electroconvulsive Therapy Is Torture: The player thinks of this when examining an ECT rig in one of the operating rooms.
- Eye Scream: Several terrifying examples towards the endgame.
- When the main character uses the STRABBE to perform a biopsy on himself, we get to see a first-person view of its mechanical syringe jabbing through their eye socket.
- At the endgame, the main character squeezes Julia's eyes with his thumbs on the way back to his car.
- Five-Man Band: Therapy Group E, made of five different mental patients whom all mysteriously changed one night in the asylum.
- Bertrand Laroche: a French immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia. By the time the game takes place, he's nearly catatonic and never says a word.
- Leonard "Lenny" Huntings: the most talkative and social of the group, despite his weak bone structure.
- Rebecca Bierce: Admitted when she was pregnant and prone to neurotic breakdowns.
- Will Hodgson: The largest member of Group E, though he is known to be a slow learner, and terrified of fire due to a childhood accident.
- Jonas Crawford: The least seen of the five, and deemed unstable by the staff, often joking one minute and attacking people the next. He also has a strong fear of the dark.
- Fun with Acronyms: The STRABBE (Stereotactic TRAnsorbital Brain Biopsy Equipment), an experimental surgical device designed to extract brain tissue samples without requiring incisions, using a syringe mounted to a programmable mechanical arm.
- The Heavy: One of the high-risk patients has a tendency to break out of his cell, and the only character to pose an active threat during the game. He also has a tendency to smash things up when outside his cell.
- Idiosyncratic Menu Labels: The game's menu is presented as a mental Records Book you carry around. Brightness settings, for instance, are described as ranging from "Photophobia" to "Cataract".
- Give Me Your Inventory Item: If you try to walk past Bruno while carrying his keyring, he'll take them from you and put them back in his office.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Bruno, the facility's only security guard for the night. He has to deal with the patients all night, and asks you to get his stun baton which he left in his office. He does keep the keys fairly secure for the first couple hours.
- Left the Background Music On: Invoked for an early-game puzzle with a randomly-set solution per game. A record player is hooked up to the first floor's P.A. system, and playing one of three records is necessary to soothe the escaped patient.
- Missing Secret: The only patient wing you're able to visit is the Male Ward on the ground floor, as all the others are either locked or blocked by debris, along with several minor rooms in the building. Thankfully, the game gives an inventory prompt for doors that can be unlocked.
- Museum of the Strange and Unusual: The second floor includes a museum filled with old-fashioned medical equipment and preserved body parts.
- Music Soothes the Savage Beast: The one thing that can calm the escaped patient is music, and an instrument in his cell provides a clue as to what he likes to hear.
- No Name Given: Your character and the high-risk patient are never named within the game.
- NPC Roadblock:
- Bruno won't let you enter the cafeteria right away. Understandable, given he trapped the escaped patient in there.
- Lenny will block off an area he's assigned to sweep, usually until an hour or so has passed. More so with his nearby trash cart.
- Ominous Music Box Tune: Subverted. When you finally play Bertrand Laroche's music box, it plays the same happy tune from Scratches, without dying midway like it did there. Though the bizarre pattern Bertrand draws on the floor still clashes with this enough to make it creepy.
- Psycho Psychologist: Dr. Ellis Hawthorne, who only gained his rank through his intimidating attitude and connections with Dr. Hanwell. He chafes against Dr. Ann Ebesbacher's conversational methods, and believes only surgical methods can heal mental illnesses.
- Playing with Syringes: Several puzzles have to be solved using a single syringe, which the player cleans using only clean water from a sink.
- Puzzle Boss: Defeating the escaped patient once and for all requires leading him through a loop of four rooms, and using debris left behind to trap him in one of them.
- Quirky Janitor: Leonard "Lenny" Huntings is a tragic example, having been tasked with cleaning the asylum before its reopening. He also just so happens to remember certain events from the place's past.
- Rape as Backstory: Rebecca Bierce was sexually assaulted as a teenager, and came to Hanwell Institute already pregnant. She hated this so much that she eventually performed a nasty Sanguine Abortion that finally shut down the institute.
- Room Full of Crazy: Several twisted examples.
- Several of the inmates' cells have graffiti on the inner walls, including that of the high-risk patient.
- The two art workshops on the third floor are loaded with deranged drawings and sculptures, most of them showing demonic imagery.
- Taken to disturbing levels with Walter Hanwell's secret shrine to Phalote, containing bone sculptures and a satanic altar among other relics.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When you reach the third floor, the insane patient comes back for another round, and this time he's coming after you specifically.
- Sassy Secretary: Julia, the first character you meet is a subversion. She lets you explore the ground floor once given an alibi, but quickly lays down rules of where you can and can't go. She does know a fair bit about the building's history and her coworkers.
- Spooky Silent Library: The library on the ground floor, with random collections of books on every shelf, some of which can be read.
- Story Breadcrumbs: Documents about the building's past are scattered all over, and can be saved in your Records Book.
- Swallow the Key: One of the flashbacks shows patient Hodgson swallowing the key to Bertrand's music box when the tune angers him. To get it back, the player has to find Hogson's corpse in the morgue and cut the body open to get it out. To add insult to injury, Hogson lurches to life for a split second just after you get the key, causing it to fall down the drain to the ground floor.
- Variable Mix: When the player first enters Operating Room A, a menacing drum beat accompanies the background music. No doubt related to the STRABBE machinery in the same room.
- Whole-Plot Reference: According to the developers, the backstory to the Hanwell Institute was inspired by Session 9.
