Dice Hospital

Readiness

ready (confidence=0.88, rules=0.90, fun=0.85). BGG rank: 959; year: 2018; weight: 2.34; playtime: 90 min

Core Loop

Dice Hospital is a worker placement / hospital management game where dice represent patients. Each round, ambulances deliver incoming patient dice to each player's hospital — the values on the dice indicate patient severity (lower = worse). Players simultaneously assign their workers (specialist meeples) to rooms in their hospital board, and each room treats patients by modifying their dice in specific ways. A room might increase a patient's die by 1, reroll it, convert its type, or cure it if it reaches 6.

The hospital board is a personal grid of rooms drafted at game start and expanded over the game. Rooms are placed on a grid — adjacency matters because some rooms gain bonuses from neighbors. Each round also has a shared "ambulance queue" showing which patients arrive and which hospitals get priority choice of incoming patients. Better patients (higher values) are easier to treat; worse patients (1s) will die if not treated sufficiently. Dead patients (whose die drops to 0 or can't be stabilized) score negative points.

Turn Structure and State

• BGA tutorial is present; useful for exact turn flow and implementation gotchas.
• BGG description anchor: In Dice Hospital, a worker placement game, players must treat as many patients as possible to appease the local authorities! Players use their hospital staff to treat patients on their personal hospital player boards. However, players may also call in specialist staff to react to certain situations that arise to score more points with the authorities! The game uses worker placement mechanics for the staff, dice [...]

Win Condition and Arc

Most points after a set number of rounds (typically 6). Points: cured patients (die reaching 6 = scored positively), surviving patients remaining in hospital, bonuses for specific room upgrades, minus penalty for deceased patients. Early game focuses on building a room engine; mid-game is throughput efficiency; late game pushes patients through the curing pipeline before the final round.

Decision Primitives

BGG mechanisms: Action Drafting, Action Points, Dice Rolling, Hexagon Grid, I Cut, You Choose, Modular Board, Solo / Solitaire Game, Variable Phase Order, Worker Placement, Worker Placement with Dice Workers

Memory-derived primitives:

• Worker placement (assigning specialists to rooms)
• Dice manipulation (rooms change die faces by fixed amounts)
• Personal board building (placing room tiles, expanding hospital)
• Resource / patient management (keeping patients alive and scoring 6s)
• Simultaneous action selection

v4 controlled primitives: i_cut_you_choose, tableau_personal_board, engine_growth, variable_player_powers, attrition_clock

Why It Is Fun

The dice-as-patients metaphor is intuitive and creates memorable moments ("my ICU room keeps saving the 1s"). The simultaneous play cuts downtime. Drafting and placing hospital rooms creates a spatial engine-building puzzle that differs each game. The triage decision — which patients to prioritize when you can't save everyone — creates genuine pressure.

Player-voice evidence:

• Tile engine and dice management game with an interesting theme.
• Dice Hospital骰子醫院（2018） 類型：主題、工人放置、輕中策、競爭、德式 標籤：輪抽、引擎建構、骰子、BGA 美術：⭐️⭐️ 主題性：⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 教學難度：⚡️⚡️ 策略性：⚡️⚡️⚡️ 隨機性：⚡️⚡️⚡️ 互動性：⚡️⚡️⚡️ 平衡性：⭐️⭐️ 勝利路線：1 樂重比：⭐️⭐️⭐️ 耐玩度：⭐️⭐️⭐️ 個人再開度：⭐️⭐️⭐️ 空檔時間：❌❌❌ 垃圾時間：❌❌ 擴充： 系列作：
• Dés ouvriers vraiment intéressants, deck building Mode Solo : * Diff. 2
• I like this more than I should, but I find that the dice randomness represents well the theme of a hospital. Timing and good decisions do matter. Works well with my family too.
• Fun game but could use a better solo mode. Expansion is somewhat lacking in its offering.

Friction and Failure Modes

• Treat Sonnet-memory edge rules as draft until confirmed by manual, BGA, or transcript.

Translation and Design Hooks

• Use this card to ask: which primitive carries the fun if theme/licensing is removed?
• For iOS, look for short-session compression, clear state visualization, and a digital-only twist.
• For new tabletop design, look for the tension source and decide whether to preserve or invert it.

Edge Rules and Gotchas

• Some specialist types can only go in certain rooms (e.g., surgeons only in operating theaters)
• Patients who are not treated at all that round lose 1 from their die value automatically — neglect kills
• Superbug tokens can be placed on incoming patients; these must be cleared before the patient can be treated normally
• Some rooms trigger chain effects: curing a patient in one room may send a bonus to an adjacent room
• Hospital upgrades (unlocked by meeting conditions) grant permanent passive bonuses, creating engine acceleration in mid-game

Sources Used

[
  {
    "kind": "bga_tutorial",
    "path": "data/bga_tutorials/218121.md",
    "quality": 0.85,
    "note": "BGA implementation rules summary"
  },
  {
    "kind": "bgg_comments",
    "path": "data/bgg_comments/218121.txt",
    "quality": 0.75,
    "note": "positive/player-voice sample"
  },
  {
    "kind": "llm_memory",
    "path": "data/llm_memory_sonnet/218121.md",
    "quality": 0.65,
    "note": "sonnet-self-rated-7"
  },
  {
    "kind": "tabletopia_overview",
    "path": "data/tabletopia_overviews/218121.md",
    "quality": 0.3,
    "note": "Tabletopia overview; not a rules authority"
  }
]