The hospital is a location in Afraid of Monsters. It is officially known as Markland Hospital, and is the first setting as well as the last setting depending on the ending, in both Afraid of Monsters and the Director's Cut.
Appearance[]
The hospital is a huge multi-story building within the city. There are three main explorable floors, however the building likely contains many more that are inaccessible during gameplay. Most of the building appears deserted and unkempt with furniture knocked over or broken and a majority of the walls and floor being dirty or stained, along with occasional pools or smears of blood with no apparent sources.
The first section of the hospital mainly consists of 3 floors connected by a long stairwell and an non-operational elevator. This section contains mostly hospital rooms, however the player will also be required to explore maintenance areas, storage and the building's rooftop during this section of the game.
The second section's most notable location is a large cafeteria. Most of the surrounding rooms are inaccessible and the player has to navigate through storage and maintenance areas as well as through vents and elevator shafts throughout most of the section. The area ends in a large multi-level parking garage that leads out in to the city.
Background[]
Markland Hospital is the first area revealed in Afraid of Monsters. The game starts through a cutscene in which the setting is revealed to be generally peaceful and nonthreatening, even bright from sun shining in through the windows. The city can be seen through various windows and patio screen doors, but the hospital halls are generally empty, with patients and doctors likely inside hospital rooms.
The camera pans to reveal David Leatherhoff, who heads into a nearby bathroom. Inside the bathroom, he leans against the sinks, where a bottle of pills sits, and talks to himself, angry about his addiction. One of the bathroom doors opens, prompting David to walk inside. Upon entering the stall, he begins to hallucinate.
After David wakes up from passing out on the bathroom floor, the mirror is shattered with an eye drawn on the wall behind it, similar to the scribbles that appear in some hallucination sequences. There are also, mysteriously, more pill bottles. In the original, David comments that he must have had "one of his wicked dreams," but in the Director's Cut he claims that he "must have passed out," indicating his recognition of the passed time.
Upon leaving the bathroom, David realizes that the hospital is now empty and locked down, as it is nighttime in the city. In the original, he finds the knife outside the bathroom and shortly the gun, as monsters immediately make their presence known and attack him from all sides. David navigates through various rooms, but the exit doors, as well as many other hospital doors, are locked. Breaking through a broken door, David manages to escape to the roof, where he finds a map that points out various buttons to unlock doors.
In the Director's Cut, however, David wanders around the hospital for a while, finding it to be empty but somewhat illuminated. However, several doors are locked and a stack of different objects block his way down the exit stairs, preventing him from leaving and forcing him to look for another exit. He discovers a bloody kitchen knife in the restroom of a patient's room. Some of the beds also have people under the sheets, either dead or sleeping, but unaware of David's presence. At some point, he discovers a P228, lying on a serving table next to a set of boxes.
David encounters a room with a lumpy bed and an adjacent room with a flashlight. As soon as he takes the flashlight, the window shatters and the lump in the bed is gone. David gains access to the construction zones outside of the hospital, and breaks the window of an office to access another floor, where he is eventually stopped by a tangle of lights and wires blocking his path. Touching the sparking mess quickly kills David, so he cannot crouch beneath the wires. Near the tangle of wires and a painting, a note from one of the hospital janitors indicates that the power needs to be shut off in order to fix the situation. David heads to the cafeteria, where he discovers a maintenance area and a switch to turn off the power.
Once David shuts off the generator to the hospital, Twitchers emerge from the darkness. Dressed as doctors and patients, they begin to fill the way back. The wires are now off, and there is text written in blood that says "Thank you!" all over the walls and the floor. David continues deeper into the hospital in an attempt to escape, encountering Handcrabs in the air vents, Wheelchair Twitchers in an area for insane patients, and eventually, Spitters in another cafeteria. In the original, however, Handcrabs are encountered first, and then a Spitter and a Twitcher in the same hallway. The design is much smaller and cramped, with combinations of Twitchers and Spitters in the hallways. Eventually, in both games, David finds the way out of the hospital through the sewers, through which he escapes to the city.
Markland Hospital is revisited near the end of the game. In the Heaven sequence, specifically the map titled 4mother, the hospital has become an abstract maze. There are upside-down rooms and hallways that are tilted to certain degrees or even spin uncontrollably. Here, more Wheelchair Twitchers are encountered.
Trivia[]
- The hospital also makes appearances in one of the four endings for the Director's Cut and the only ending for the original Afraid of Monsters.
- According to the developer Andreas Rönnberg, the hospital is based off a bad experience he had in a hospital when he was a child.
- The hospital also briefly appears as a location in the final map of the game, Heaven.
- The recurring songs played in the background are "Hankie", "Cliffs" and "Tree" by Aphex Twin.
Gallery[]
Afraid of Monsters[]
Afraid of Monsters: Director's Cut[]
