Austin-based startup game developer Sentinel Games officially emerged from stealth with its debut title, CURE – A Hospital Simulator, launching into Steam Early Access in November 2025.
Described as a “cozy and chaotic” co-op experience, CURE blends medical management, first-person action, and player-driven storytelling with a twist, in that it’s designed from the ground up for content creators and their communities as a collaborative gameplay experience.
At its core, CURE lets 1-4 players work together to diagnose, treat, and contain outbreaks inside a customizable hospital that can quickly descend into controlled chaos. Players must balance tending to patients with handling unpredictable mutations that turn once-peaceful wards into high-stakes emergency zones.
When outbreaks erupt, gameplay shifts from management to light FPS-style action as doctors defend themselves and contain the infection. Between crises, players can personalize their hospitals with furniture, décor, and equipment, creating a balance between cozy downtime and tense outbreak management.
What truly sets CURE apart is its integration with The ShoutOut Engine, Sentinel’s proprietary Twitch engagement platform. This system connects Unreal Engine and Steam directly to Twitch, allowing streamers’ audiences to appear in-game as NPCs, trigger special effects through subs and donations, or even become part of the chaos themselves.
“While many developers have connected their games to Twitch, building a scalable system that lets each creator tailor audience engagement inside the game has never truly been achieved,” Doron Nir, chief executive officer of Sentinel Games, said in a prepared statement. “The ShoutOut Engine in CURE demonstrates that deeper Creator First integration, allowing viewers to inhabit NPCs, turn them into zombies, and even see Twitch alerts and Hype Train events come to life on in-game monitors. Every interaction is managed by the creator to help them craft the best experience for their community.”
Nir co-founded Sentinel alongside Will Cho, formerly of Respawn Entertainment and Housemarque, and Asi Epshtain, a veteran of Beach Bum and Tangelo Games.
The project also features an original score by Rotem Moav, whose previous work includes several Destiny titles and theHunter: Call of the Wild. The studio plans to keep CURE evolving throughout Early Access, with a roadmap including expanded diagnostics tools, combat gear, and a metagame called Find the CURE, where players collect alien-virus samples to discover the outbreak’s origin.
By combining interactive streaming technology with polished co-op gameplay, CURE signals Sentinel Games’ broader vision for what it calls “Creator First” development — games designed as shared experiences between streamers and audiences.
CURE is certainly not the first game to offer direct viewer interaction within the game itself, as several of the most popular games on Twitch have similar functionality. For example, in 7 Days to Die, viewers can engage directly by sending supplies or even spawning enemies.
However, Sentinel Games could be one of the first to build its own engine for supporting the feature from the ground up and putting it at the core of its entire development philosophy.