Think you can build the best hospital in Small City? Can you treat the ill? More importantly, can you make it profitable?
Alban Viard is a master of building games with tight economies. In Clinic, players are building competing hospitals in the same city. They try to recruit the best graduating doctors, build the newest facilities, and treat the most challenging patient cases in different specialties. Oh, and find a place to park everyone's cars. Really.
This game is quite heavy, with fairly dense rules for doing all the things above, plus admitting patients, moving people, building cost and constraints, and using special facilities. Frankly, it's tough to learn and a pain to teach. However, once you get going, most things click, and it is a delightful puzzle to play.
The "cynics" in my title are because players soon learn that the best way to make a profit is to let patients get as sick as possible and then treat them for the biggest profit.
I am still partial to the original art, but this new Deluxe Edition looks great and the component quality is excellent. If you are sick enough in the head that all this sounds good to you, then this could be just the treatment you need!