The Heilwald Klinikum used to be one of the most renowned medical facilities in Germany. That all changed when that curious loophole appeared...
The Heilwald Loophole is a first-person horror game with PS1-style visuals released on Steam. You wake up in a dingy store room noticing the hole in the ceiling. You step out finding yourself exploring the dark and twisted depths of Heilwald Klinikum, a medical complex that once stood as one of the most respected facilities in Germany, but now it stands as a place of nightmares where the patients are mistreated or neglected and the staff are corrupted parodies of their former selves. You have to navigate the twisted corridors and brave whatever horrors await. This game takes the survival horror genre and adds an important twist. You cannot die. Instead, you can use your deaths to open up new paths to take.
This game provides examples of:
- Autocannibalism: Edward Sauer is stuck in a pot that is constantly boiling himself alive. With this in mind, it isn't difficult to connect the dots on what he uses to make his stew.
- Body Horror: Keeping up with Heilwald Klinikum being a certified Eldritch Location, certain characters have gone through this. The patients all look like walking corpses and the Neglected Patient looks as if he should not even be alive. Nurse Heidetraut seems to have had her head grossly stretched forward not unlike a Xenomorph, and Sauer is trapped inside a large stew pot boiling himself alive. For extra horror, it's revealed Sauer is serving his own boiled flesh as soup. Nurse Astrid may be one of the worst victims. When you find her, she seems to just be an arm and two legs sticking out of an iron lung on wheels. Perhaps it is best not to see what the rest of her looks like...
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Dr. Randolph went above and beyond to ensure that no one ever died at Heilwald. He somehow ended up warping reality itself, trapping everyone in a hellish loop where they would eventually become mentally and physically distorted by the immortality.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: The trash collector eats the garbage he finds. Given the alternative is Sauer's cooking, he's likely better off with the garbage.
- Bring My Brown Pants: One of the electroshock therapy chairs Nurse Anne can strap you down to is coated with what are very clearly poop stains (along with many of the seats and even the floor in the room), likely from the other patients who were subjected to the treatment.
- Closed Circle: The player makes use of this to progress. When the player gets put in a position where they cannot progress by one of the staff, they end up finding the titular loophole that lets them go right back to the empty room they woke up in at the start of the game. It's only when you trick Randolph into falling into the loophole that you break the circle.
- Creepy Long Arms: Nurse Anne and Nurse Sabine both possess arms that are long enough to reach their knees, adding to their uncanny appearances.
- Eldritch Abomination: The titular loophole. It is literally a set of holes in the floor and walls that have been all plugged up. When you find the one you can open, suddenly an ominous voice is speaking to you even as you exit the room. There is never an explanation given on what exactly the loophole is but it seems to have been the source of or played a part in the corruption of the hospital. Interestingly though, it does not seem malicious and actually guilty about what it had done to the staff.
- Exact Words: Dr. Randolph's creed: No one dies at Heilwald. And true to form, you can't.
- Featureless Protagonist: It's not known what the protagonist looks like, what their name is or why they are in the hospital. All that matters is that they need to escape it.
- Genre Throwback: The game uses retro-polygonal graphics reminiscent of old PlayStation titles.
- Humanoid Abomination: Oooooh yes...There are a number of monsters in this game and they are...off-putting to say the least. Starting off, the showers provide not one but two cases. The first is what can only be described as a man in his underwear with a shower faucet for a head and nozzles in place of arms. The second is a man with a giant head and a brush for an arm. The former, you actually chase in an attempt to turn off their faucet to stop flooding the bathroom, and the latter, you avoid less it catches and starts brushing you to death. The final monster of the game is not much better. At first, Dr. Randolph looks normal but when you encounter him later in the dental office, he's now rammed through an iron lung, his arms are just hanging to the side, his head is bigger than ever and his mouth is devoid of all teeth and seems to be bleeding in a permanent gaping scream.
- Jump Scare: When you first meet the Neglected Patient. He crawls up to you out of nowhere at high speed complete with a musical sting. Only he's not attacking you, he's asking for your help unclogging a toilet.
- Mad Doctor: Almost the entire staff is this. Only Nurse Helene and the garbage collector are the remaining good members of the staff.
- Dr. Randolph first and foremost, being that he's the one overseeing all of the inhumane treatment in his facility. Not to mention, he assaults you with a syringe the moment you fail to comply with his instructions.
- Dr. Wolfram is a picture of physical health but he does not take kindly to anyone who walks out on his water therapy sessions and has a syringe ready to make sure you stick around.
- Nurse Anne used to help patients feel at ease by making them laugh but now she runs electroshock therapy with a manic grin on her face whilst occasionally shocking herself.
- Hauser comes across as mild-mannered at first but that is because you haven't taken anything from his collection yet.
- Nurse Heildetraut is not afraid to kick any unruly guests out of her ward by headbutting them across the room.
- Nurse Sabine, much like Anne never drops her manic grin. Only if you listen closely you can hear her teeth constantly chattering. And then there's how she examines dental patients.
- Made of Iron: The player can get electrocuted, Punched Across the Room, forced through the floor, stabbed with a syringe, and can eat the vilest soup the world was cursed with and still be perfectly fine at the end of it all. Randolph wasn't kidding when he said nobody would die at Heilwald.
- Medical Horror: Do we need to explain what the game is again?
- Mysterious Past: Absolutely nothing regarding the protagonist's history or reasons for being in the Heilwald Klinikum is explicitly revealed in the game. However, it is implied that Dr. Randolph has seen the protagonist before (though not enough to actually know them especially well), as he's able to book an appointment for them at the Dentalklinikum.
- No Name Given: The protagonist's name is never said in the game, but Wolfram mentions their name not being on his list, implying that the protagonist has mentioned their name but that the player is unable to hear it.
- The Ominous Voice (the entity seemingly trapped behind the plugs all throughout the game) never reveals their name either.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Dr. Hauser makes use of this when pursuing you. While active, if you distance yourself too much from him, he'll immediately appear from behind whatever corner you're about to round.
- Punched Across the Room: What happens when the player gets caught by Nurse Heildetraut.
- Shock and Awe: Nurse Anne runs electroshock therapy and never drops the defibrillator electrodes. Whenever she speaks to you she's shocking herself every couple of seconds.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The moment Dr. Randolph begins chasing you, you begin to hear classical music that will play during the entire chase.
- Speaking Simlish: All of the characters speak with garbled noises. However, certain members of the staff will shout out coherent English (or German) phrases if they catch you either disobeying their instructions or wandering into a part of the facilities that you're not allowed in. The effect is off-putting to say the least. When you finally meet whatever the Loophole is proper, they speak entirely in English albeit with a Voice of the Legion and is off-putting in their own right. Nurse Astrid also speaks in English, though it's only barely audible due to the heavy noise filter over her voice.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: You defeat Dr. Randolph during the final battle by tricking him into charging into one of the Loopholes.
- The Tooth Hurts: Nurse Sabine straps a device to your head that applies pressure to your jaws. Then she applies more pressure. And then some more... What makes it worse is that you get to see brief glimpses of the damage it's doing.
- Violation of Common Sense: In order to gain the red keycard, you need to gain at least 5 "Items of Knowledge" - Documents you can only get by being caught or "killed" in different ways.
- The only way to leave the sick ward initially is to let Nurse Heidetraut catch you. Being caught with the crowbar will cause her to send you to the electro-shock ward, where the player can get the keycard required to escape the sick ward and gain access to the courtyard. However, absolutely nothing hints towards this, and everything else around the encounter establishes nurse Heideltraut as a threat. Players will often either accidentally get caught and progress the story, or wander around the ward for ages before realizing the possibility of them having to be caught by the easy to avoid Heideltraut in order to progress.
- In order to access the library, you need to let Dr. Hauser catch you while you're in the attic, as the resulting altercation will lead you to falling through the floor to where the library has been sealed off.
- Voice Grunting: All of the characters' dialogue is accompanied by this.
