A Windows port of Asylum, the 1994 Acorn Archimedes platform shooter by Andy Southgate. The game code of SDL Asylum was translated function by function into Rust, and the port runs on Godot Engine 4.7.2. It uses the original game data unchanged and adds modern display modes, gamepad and mouse support, and Korean and Simplified Chinese translations.

Young Sigmund has a few problems. Enter his mind, shoot anything that moves, collect anything that doesn't, and shut down the eight pulsating neurons hidden in each of the three mental zones.

1. Download asylum-windows-godot-<version>-windows-x86_64.zip from Releases.
2. Extract it anywhere and start Asylum\Asylum.exe. Nothing is installed.

Requirements: 64-bit Windows 10 or later, and a graphics driver with OpenGL 3.3 support.

The game is portable: settings, high scores and the saved position go to userdata\ next to Asylum.exe (%APPDATA%\Asylum\ if that folder is not writable).

• The original game. The three mental zones Ego, Psyche and Id with their original maps, graphics, music and sounds; the game logic follows SDL Asylum.
• Display modes. Windowed, Borderless (a window covering the whole monitor; the default) and Full Screen (exclusive). F11 or Alt+Enter switches between Windowed and the full-screen mode used last (Borderless if none was used since the game started).
• Window size. Aspect ratios 4:3, 16:10, 16:9 and 21:9; for each, every standard resolution that fits the monitor is offered.
• Scale from 1.0x to 3.0x in steps of 0.5, as far as the window or screen height allows. The game draws 256 × scale lines, so a higher scale raises the internal resolution and shows more of the game world.
• No black bars, no plain stretching. The picture always fills the window or screen: the layout is computed for the actual size, the play area grows with it, and the frame and the status panel are assembled from the original artwork.
• Smooth Motion. The game logic runs at the original 50 Hz; with Smooth Motion on, the picture is interpolated to the display's refresh rate. Vsync can be switched off.
• Languages. English, Korean and Simplified Chinese, chosen from the Windows language settings at first start and changeable in the menu. Korean and Chinese text uses pixel fonts restyled at run time to match the original font.
• Input. Rebindable keys with the original defaults, arrow keys and Space/Ctrl as alternatives, gamepads, and the mouse in menus.
• Sound. Music and sound effects are synthesized at 48 kHz from the original tracker data and samples. Sound System offers No Sound, Effects Only or Effects and Music; effect and music volumes are set separately.
• Multithreaded. Game logic, music synthesis and Godot's renderer run on separate threads, assets load in parallel, and each frame is one draw call.

• The default keys for Left, Right, Jump, Down and Fire are those of the original game; Pause, F11 and Alt+Enter are additions of this port.
• An alternative key stops working while it is bound to another action.
• Keys are rebound under Options → 1. Define Controls → 1. Keyboard; 3. Reset Keys restores the defaults. The gamepad layout is fixed.
• To teleport, stand in the center of a teleporter and press Down. In the Ego zone the teleporters look like candelabra.
• Pause screen: R returns to the game, O opens the options, Q loses this life, Esc abandons the game.
• Menus: number keys choose entries, as in the original game. The arrow keys and Enter, the mouse (hover to select, left click to choose, right click to go back, wheel to move) and the gamepad (D-pad to move, A to choose, B to go back) also work.

Options → 2. Tune Game Options holds the settings; during a game, Esc then O opens the options.

During a game, Esc → O → 3. Save Position saves the position. To continue from it, choose Options → 3. Choose Mental Zone → 4. Saved Game (shown once a position has been saved), then Fire - Play.

Files in the data folder (userdata\ or %APPDATA%\Asylum\):

• asylum.cfg: the settings as plain Key=Value text.
• asylum_game.sav: the saved position.
• hiscores\: the high score tables of the three zones.

When the data folder is userdata\, the game also writes override.cfg next to Asylum.exe, so that the next start opens the window directly in the saved mode and size. Deleting it is harmless; it is written again at the next start.

The port keeps the original game logic, including its quirks. docs/PORTING_NOTES.md lists every deliberate change; in short:

• crashes and undefined behavior of the C code are fixed,
• larger views are fully supported: the ranges in which enemies are drawn, wake up and stay awake, and the placement and lifetime of on-screen messages follow the visible area instead of the original 288 × 192 game window,
• the optional 25 Hz mode is not ported, and the music (now synthesized at 48 kHz) no longer restarts after every death,
• the menus gained the video and language settings, mouse and gamepad support, and Esc goes back one level.

docs/ARCHITECTURE.md describes the design: threads, timing and interpolation, layout, rendering, text and storage.

Requirements:

• Windows 10 or later (x64)
• Rust 1.94 or later with the MSVC toolchain (x86_64-pc-windows-msvc) and the Visual Studio Build Tools (C++ workload)
• Godot 4.7.2 for Windows (64-bit, standard edition), extracted to the folder Godot_v4.7.2-stable_win64.exe/ (the name of the extracted download) in the repository root, or passed to the build script with -Godot <path to Godot_v4.7.2-stable_win64_console.exe>
• an export template, either
  • the lean 2D/OpenGL template (about 36 MB instead of 109 MB) built by tools/build_template.ps1, which needs Git and Python 3 with SCons; release builds use this template, or
  • the official Godot 4.7.2 export templates installed in the editor. Such a build lacks the two patches in tools/godot-patches/: in Borderless mode the top pixel rows stay unpainted, Windows may bitmap-scale the window on monitors with different scale factors, and Godot creates %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\Asylum\.

Build:

# optional: the lean export template, with the patches from tools\godot-patches
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools\build_template.ps1
# the game: Rust library, Godot import and export, release zip
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools\build.ps1 -Zip

The game is written to dist/Asylum/, the release zip to dist/. -SkipDebug leaves out the debug library, which the Godot editor loads, including the editor runs of the import and export steps; use it only when game/bin/asylum_gdext.debug.dll is up to date. Run tools/build.ps1 once before opening game/project.godot in the editor, so that the GDExtension library exists.

Tests:

cd rust
cargo test --release --workspace
# long soak test: every zone, several view sizes, random input, save game round trips
cargo test --release -p asylum-core --test long_soak -- --ignored

After changing game/locale/strings.csv, regenerate the font subsets from the repository root with python -I tools/subset_fonts.py.

• Andy Southgate: the original game Asylum (1994), later placed in the public domain
• Hugh Robinson: SDL Asylum, the C port this project is based on
• Dmitry Marakasov, Ian Chapman, James Woodcock, Peter De Wachter: ports, packages and patches of SDL Asylum
• M-HT: the SDL2 port and fixes of SDL Asylum (M-HT/asylum)
• Jeffrey Lee and John Hoare: obtained Andy Southgate's original assembly source and hosted it on their Asylum tribute site at acornarcade.com
• itinfra7: this port
• TakWolf: Fusion Pixel Font and Ark Pixel Font
• Lee Minseo (quiple): Galmuri, the Hangul glyphs

Built with:

• Godot Engine 4.7.2, by Juan Linietsky, Ariel Manzur and the Godot Engine contributors, with FreeType, SDL, zlib, Zstandard, libpng, Mbed TLS and the other libraries listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md
• godot-rust (gdext), by Bromeon and the godot-rust contributors
• Rust and glam
• SCons, Python and Microsoft Visual C++ for the export template

Copyright (C) 2026 itinfra7. Based on SDL Asylum, Copyright (C) 2006-2009 Hugh Robinson.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. It is distributed WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; see LICENSE (LICENSE.txt in the release package) for the full text. This project is a modified version of SDL Asylum: its code was rewritten in Rust for Godot Engine in 2026.

Not covered by the GPL:

• The original game data in game/data/ is in the public domain (Andy Southgate).
• The fonts in game/fonts/ and third_party/ are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
• Third-party components are licensed under their own terms; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md and licenses/.

Source code: each release is built from its tagged commit of https://github.com/itinfra7/asylum-windows-godot. Asylum.exe is built by tools/build_template.ps1 from the Godot Engine 4.7.2-stable source (https://github.com/godotengine/godot, commit ed1daf0bf001b61586d9930840f2f1394092c079) with the patches in tools/godot-patches/; the Rust dependencies are the crates.io packages pinned with checksums in rust/Cargo.lock.