Die Anstalt

It’s been ages since I’ve played this one! Back in college I worked for my school’s library, which consisted mostly of fucking around on the internet and goofing off. We had some epic Zuma championships. I showed Die Anstalt to someone and it spread like wildfire through the library staff.

Essentially, the game is Life or Death but dealing not with medical issues but with psychological issues in stuffed animals. Each of these li’l guys has some kind of deep-seated Freudian trauma and you’ve got to cure them by prescribing certain therapies. It’s adorable as hell, especially when you start to uncover what’s troubling them. They add new ones every so often–if I remember correctly when we started it was just a crock and a lamb and then they added the hippo; the roster has since doubled in size. 

I think this technically counts as an advergame because you can buy toys of all of the patients–we all would have bought one or two if they weren’t expensive as hell. I prefer to play Die Anstalt in its original German because it sounds super dour and hilarious. Freudian psychology is great fun on its own–applying it to stuffed toys that haven’t been hugged properly is great times.

Filed Under: Blog