14 DAY TRIAL // Game Insight, well-known for its “My Railway” and “Airport City” mobile games, has just released another addictive game for Android devices, “My Clinic.” As the name suggests, the objective of the game is to successfully run a small clinic and build your way up to a complex hospital that could treat lots of patients in a matter of minutes.
Although the game has been introduced in the Google Play Store only a few days ago, it already has a strong Facebook community, which allows players to advance into the game much faster.
You start with only a small shack that could hardly go as clinic, but you'll be able to upgrade it with more equipment, staff and beds, in order to make it look an established clinic.
In fact, you won't be able to advance further into the game unless you invest in some vintage stuff, like a typewriter or an old phone.
At first glance the game is overwhelmingly complex, but the developers though about this and introduced a “step by step” tutorial that will guide you through the basics of the game and beyond.
The small clinic you run will need staff to take care of new patients, so simply hire some personnel to start your business. Everything in the game costs money or “coins.” You can obtain money by simply completing various missions and objectives, but coins are hard to come by.
Unless you are willing to invest real money in it, you're gonna have to wait to complete certain missions that reward you with “coins.” Money can also be received by simply opening up the game once at 24 hours, for five days in a row.
You'll be needing the coins to speed up any process in the game, a purchase, a treatment or other actions in the game. The minimum amount required is 28, which is extremely high, so I'm advising players to use “coins” to speed up only the most important tasks that require a lot of time to complete.
Until you get used with the game controls and user interface you'll be given lots of missions and objective to complete. However, some of these missions cannot be completed until you manage to get a certain item or upgrade.
The next major step in the game is when you reach level 8 and you can upgrade your clinic to a very small hospital. That will allow you to hire more personnel and treat more complex illnesses. Your clinic only lets you treat patients that require two doctors, but once you reach level 8 and turn your clinic into a small hospital you'll be able to treat and put diagnoses using more than 2 doctors.
As you advance even further into the game you'll be able to research new technologies and upgrades, or you can build new medical facilities that will help you treat more patients, much faster. For that you'll need to purchase new land that will enable you to expand your clinic and turn it into a modern hospital.
The better your hospital the more complex your patients' illnesses will be, so you will need to hire the best doctors, purchase the latest equipment and upgrade your medical facilities.
Keep in mind that this is a social game, not limited to Android platform. You'll be able to hire friends on Facebook and put ask them to work for your hospital. Lots of free prizes are given via Facebook as well, in order to encourage people to play the game.
There's no real story behind the game, but you can always imagine that you run your own hospital. I don't have any medical training, but clinic's micro-management looks pretty close to the real thing. If think you're a good manager, it's guaranteed that you'll advance faster into the game.
The graphics are pretty nice, even on ICS-based tablets and smartphones. The music is pleasant as well, but if you get tired of it there's a button where you can mute it. “My Clinic” has more than three dozen of buildings and lots of locations, such as surgery hospital, doctor's offices and more.
According to the developers, you'll be needing Internet connection to play the game, but this is not required. Unfortunately, it appears that the game has some nasty bugs that will make it crash when you reach a certain level.
Some players reported that you cannot get passed level 8. Others claim once you reach level 7 the game won't load anymore. I have only experienced one crash at level 3, but that completely rebooted my Asus Transformer Prime.
All in all, I'm pretty sure the developers will deliver an update to fix these critical issues. It's probably just a matter of days.
Game Insight's “My Clinic” is now available as a free download via Google Play store and it should be compatible with all devices running Android 2.1 and up.
