How to Play Animal Hospital: Beginner Guide

Welcome to your night shift. Animal Hospital can feel overwhelming at first — there are patients to read, cameras to check, rooms to run and your Sanity to watch — but it all comes down to one repeatable loop. This guide walks you through that loop from the moment a patient arrives to the end of the shift.

The goal

Your objective is simple to state and hard to master: survive as many shifts as possible without your Sanity reaching zero. Every shift mixes three jobs — rejecting Anomalies, treating real patients, and handling events and emergencies — and each shift you clear pays out cash for the shop and unlocks harder nights with new threats and more story.

Step 1: Check in the patient

Patients arrive at the reception desk one at a time. Each is either a normal animal that needs treatment or an Anomaly in disguise. Your job at the desk is to decide which. Before admitting anyone, run the three-layer detection routine:

1. Look in person for visual signs — three eyes, hollow eyes, sharp or realistic teeth, a wide grin, twitching.
2. Check the cameras for camera anomalies — black box eyes, stretched limbs, a void body, or a figure staring into the lens.
3. Take a photo and look for photo anomalies — a photo that does not match the patient, static, or a cursed image.

If any check flags a problem, press the red Shutter button on the left of your desk to reject them. If all three are clean, admit them. The full method is in How to Spot Anomalies.

Step 2: Check in everyone first (usually)

Outside of emergencies, treatment is not timed, so a common and efficient approach is to check in all the waiting patients first, then handle the treatments in one pass. This saves you running back and forth between the desk and the rooms. Events can interrupt this rhythm, so stay flexible, but as a default, batch your check-ins.

Step 3: Treat the genuine patients

Admitted patients go to the treatment rooms. There are four kinds of treatment:

• Basic Medical (rooms 1–5): analyze the patient’s DNA, then administer the correct items. Giving the wrong item kills the patient and costs points.
• X-Ray (room 6): complete a copy-the-sequence mini-game, then administer items.
• Heart Monitor (room 7): click the white icons and avoid the skulls to reach 100%, then administer items.
• Surgery (room 8): a timed mini-game you must finish on the spot — you cannot leave once it starts.

You can leave most treatments mid-way to handle something else (Surgery is the exception). A neat trick: if an Anomaly slipped through, giving it the wrong treatment item kills it without costing you points.

Step 4: Manage your Sanity

Sanity is your real health bar. It drains when an Anomaly attacks you or a patient, when you stare at the camera’s dark-figure zoom, and when you look at cursed photos. Restore it with coffee and food from the shop. Keep a coffee ready before risky events, and never let Sanity sit dangerously low.

Step 5: Handle events and emergencies

Throughout the shift, events and emergencies appear on the right of your screen. Emergencies are timed and must be handled now — a fainting patient must be carried to a bed, a patient on fire must be extinguished, a Death Ritual must be stopped before the candles run out. Events like room fires are more forgiving. Learn them in the Events section.

Step 6: Finish the shift

When the shift ends, you are scored on how many Anomalies you rejected and how many patients you treated without dying. That score becomes cash for the shop, where you buy weapons, Sanity food and upgrades for the next, harder night.

What to practice first

Do not try to master everything at once. For your first few shifts, focus on building the normal baseline — what a healthy patient looks, sounds and photographs like — so Anomalies start to stand out. Once detection feels automatic, layer in efficient treatment and Sanity budgeting. From there, move on to How to Survive, How to Get Money and eventually How to Beat the Game.