Psychiatrist Simulator 2 | PC Review

March 16, 2024 Marc Szymanski

The concept is gold. You are a psychiatrist. The game utilizes full motion video for actors to portray patients with problems that you can solve. You listen to their story, you ask them questions, and conclude on a diagnosis and treatment. I thought this game might be a great way for my normally non-gaming wife and I to enjoy something different. What I found was still a fantastic idea with quite a few shortcomings.

Staying Positive

People have problems. It takes a very special human being to listen, understand, and help. Psychiatrist Simulator 2 puts you in those shoes. You start the game in your office. It looks like how an office might have looked in the 80s: Brown colors and patterns. It also resembles how movies would have us believe Eastern European offices might look. You can look around using your mouse, but you cannot walk around. Your options are: Click on the textbook or click on the patient binder.

Each page of the textbook describes, in terribly generalized terms and tiny font, the different diagnosis options that you will have available. The final page of the textbook lists the four prescription options and what they treat. This will be helpful information as you treat your patients. Before you know it, the first patient is ready to get your help. You listen, ask questions, listen some more, come to a conclusion of what is wrong with them, and consider how you might treat their ailment. Once you dismiss them, you can view their patient file in the binder where you will click on what you believe is wrong with them and how you would like to treat them. I hope you read the textbook carefully.

This Is Where Things Go South

Before I go any further, Psychiatrist Simulator 2 is still in its early days. At the end of the game, the game-maker put a statement on the screen which says that he/she is still adding more content. They are also asking for volunteer actors to create more patients for the game. This game was created by one person.

The mechanics and gameplay are at least minimally broken. Without an interface, the patient interactions start without warning. I was trying to read the textbook and was rudely interrupted. “That’s fine!” I said to myself. “That’s just like reality. The patients aren’t going to wait until it’s convenient for you!” Then I realized that there also isn’t a menu. I could not pause the game. I couldn’t even exit and ESC did nothing. I had to hit the Windows button to get the taskbar to show and then “End Task” from the Task Manager. The game starts over fresh every time you start it. On with the game! The patients have a quick introduction and then say one sentence that might start pointing you in the right direction. The questions, poor grammar and all, are prompts that you click which is read by an AI voice. Usually, there are three options for you to choose. One option is usually ruder than the others but the patient responses are usually the same regardless of which option you choose. A few minutes of questions and answers and the game prompts you with “Thank you, that is all for today.” You return to the desk and fill in the patient binder with your decisions.

Some of the volunteer actors had substandard equipment to record their segments; the sound quality was inconsistent. Mix that with the fact that some of the actors might not be English speakers (or it’s a second language at best), it made some of the patient videos very difficult to understand. Sometimes, their answer videos repeated and other times their responses didn’t match the question that I selected. Some improvements are needed, but the game-maker has acknowledged that bugs are being fixed and audio files are being improved.

At the end of Psychiatrist Simulator 2, when the player is being told how they did with their diagnosis and treatments, a lot of what was described was not the options that I selected. For instance, a patient’s treatment said “Nothing” when I actually selected Xanax. A patient’s diagnosis said that I selected Addiction when I actually selected OCD. Most of them were accurate to what I selected, but there was more than one incorrect synopsis. As an added treat (sincerely), the videos playing in the background of the patients who I mistreated were fantastic. I felt terrible that I did something wrong.

Final Words

Making video games is hard. Making them alone is incredibly difficult. I tip my hat to anybody who gives it a shot and has a product at the end that is marketable. Psychiatrist Simulator 2 is a great idea. The sound quality aside, there is potential for this to be a decent, albeit simple, game! I’m hoping that the game-maker is able to add a menu and some in-game options like “pause” or “bring in my next patient.” In its current form, this is not a game that I would recommend. However! Since it took me less than an hour to get through it, I would gladly try it again once the kinks are ironed out.

To hear me talk more about Psychiatrist Simulator 2, be sure to listen to the March 6 episode of The Gaming Outsider podcast around the 1:09:18 time stamp.

This review is based on a PC copy of Psychiatrist Simulator 2 provided by Press Engine for coverage purposes. It is exclusive to this platform.