Sanitarium is a 1998 adventure game by DreamForge Intertainment, published by ASC Games, and one of the most distinctive works its genre produced. It is psychological horror: the protagonist wakes bandaged and amnesiac in an asylum, and the player untangles alongside him what is real and what is delusion.

This single-player game combines classic adventure verbs, conversation, items and puzzles, with journeys through unsettling landscapes that shift with the hero's state of mind. That commitment to unreliable perception was remarkably bold for its day and earned the game an enduring cult reputation.

The 1998 date matters. Adventure games were losing ground to 3D action, and what survived tended to be work with a strong authorial voice. Sanitarium demonstrated that the genre could be adult and genuinely dark without cheap shocks, and it is regularly cited among the pioneers of horror built on atmosphere and narrative rather than combat.

DreamForge had previously made mostly RPGs and strategy titles, which leaves Sanitarium as the studio's most visible mark on gaming history. Among adventure connoisseurs it still carries the reputation of required reading, a game discussed decades after its commercial moment passed.

Individual chapters move the game through sharply different settings, and with them the hero's form and the world's rules shift too, keeping the player permanently off balance. That uncertainty is the story's main instrument, held together by a mystery line that eventually explains every detour.

The game's card on OldGame.cz assembles the release year, both companies and a gallery of its unsettling scenes.