Theme Hospital, a game from Bullfrog’s classic era of development, is available as a freebie through Origin’s ‘On the House’ program today. It’ll also be free for an undetermined period of time in the future, but if you’re actually interested in it then you may as well grab it now.
As long as you have an Origin account (and therein lies the rub for some people,) you can just sign in, claim it, and have it attached to your account for the rest of recordable history and/or when Origin shuts down in 2089 after the Great PC Download Service Apocalypse.
Honestly, I was more of a Theme Park than Theme Hospital man myself. There was something about cynically fleecing children and adults of their hard-earned cash in return for salt-laced chips and poorly maintained rides which appealed to me more than curing comedy diseases.
Still, it’s a fine reminder of a time when Bullfrog were riding high, and when Peter Molyneux was delivering on game after game (hard to believe, I know.) Worth trying for the grand total of zero pounds/dollars/insert currency here, anyway.
