It is a real-time (it's really turn based but the mechanics are implemented in a way to emulate real-time) management strategy. You will have tabs available (somewhat resembling the Master of Orion Tabs), each tab allowing you to manage an aspect of the game:pacients, staff, researching, travelling, administration, policies,personal. The current supported resolution of the game is 1280x1024. I am using SDL and related libraries and the supported OS is curently Windows.
Since my funds are
The game is set in Victorian England 19th century (or a very close resemblance of England). You just got your licence to open a private mental institution. Your funds are somewhat limited, your medical equipment is virtually nonexistent and the few patients you have in your care are some low-class poor bastards that don't bring very much money. And all the available treatments are trepanation and blood-letting. So what will you do? Start a corespondence with some of the renown people of your time, travel to a big city and visit other lunatics houses to learn from their experience, start building some new wards or maybe research some of those whacky -and probably even crazier than your residents- technologies : electricity, chemistry (it's probably just a fancy word invented by those dirty alchemists)?
I did my fair share of researching all the in's and outs of the 19th century lunatics and lunatics houses and let me tell you that it's a sick but somewhat fascinating world. I am trying to create a world close resembling that of a madhouse but within the limits of my understanding and design powers (so don't expect much historical or medical accuracy).
If all goes well I will probably release a demo on 15 Oct 2012.
That beeing said, I offer you 2 screenshots from early development stages (took them about 2 weeks ago) so you can form an impression about the feel of the game.
Screenshot 1 present a design concept of the pacient tab and screenshot 2 is the main menu window.
Ooh, and the game will (probably) be called Asylum Master.