Endless Nightmare 2: Hospital

About Endless Nightmare 2: Hospital

Endless Nightmare 2: Hospital is the second game in 707 Interactive's Endless Nightmare series of first-person horror games for phones. It came out in 2021, and on Google Play it has more than ten million downloads. Its store text says it is closely tied to the first game, Endless Nightmare 1: Home, and tells a story that happened before the nights in the family house.

The detective is looking into the people who have gone missing in Oak Town when he wakes up inside a hospital. Its halls are lit by flickering panels, wheelchairs and trolleys stand abandoned, and the wards hold ghosts with unknown pasts: men with sacks over their heads, nurses in bloodied gowns and legless women who crawl fast across the floor. You search the rooms for ID cards, keys, notes and codes, piece together what happened there, and look for a way out.

Unlike the first game, this one gives you weapons. You find a knife, a pistol and later heavier guns, and their parts can be upgraded; talents learned along the way raise your chances of survival. Ammunition stays short, though, and the reviewer at Hardcore iOS found that walking in with guns blazing ends badly: most of the time you sneak up and stab a ghost from behind, or hide in a cabinet and wait for it to pass. Strong bosses need a plan rather than bullets.

There are four difficulties, Normal, Hard, Nightmare and Hell, and each one opens when you beat the one below it. Higher ones bring tougher, faster enemies with sharper senses. A late 2021 update added a Challenge Mode with a leaderboard.

Be ready for the ads. Hardcore Droid's reviewer counted them as the real cost: you watch one after every death, you come back with a quarter of your health and some items gone, and there are no checkpoints mid-level. Extra ammo, bigger material rewards and temporary buffs all come from watching more. The same review liked the stealth, the clean gunplay and the sparse sound of leaky pipes and footsteps, but found the puzzles thin (fetching the twentieth key gets old) and the enemies more odd than frightening. On the App Store, players' main gripe is the grind: one bullet takes five metal pieces to craft.

It's free with ads and optional purchases, and it plays offline. It suits players who finished the first Endless Nightmare or games like Granny and want a longer hospital setting with more ways to deal with what hunts them.

How to play Endless Nightmare 2: Hospital

1. Search each room of the hospital and pick up items, notes and keys.
2. Read the clues and use them on locked doors, keypads and safes.
3. Listen and watch for the ghosts in the corridors before you step out.
4. Sneak behind a ghost and stab it, or hide in a cabinet until it leaves.
5. Save your ammunition for the fights you cannot avoid, and upgrade your guns.
6. Learn talents as you go and work out what happened to the missing people of Oak Town.

Tips

• Crawling women are fast but go down quickly. Nurses take three or four pistol shots, so stab them from behind instead.
• A knife attack from behind saves bullets.
• Remember where the cabinets are on each floor so you have somewhere to hide when you are spotted.
• Aim for the head: one shot there drops a bag-headed man.
• Dying costs you items and leaves you at a quarter of your health, so back off and heal before a room you know is crowded.

Questions