Cards on the Table
It’s about time we put the cards on the table.
No, we’re not talking about that thing in the dungeon; it’s not supposed to be talked about. We’re merely referring to the Pathologic Tabletop game—or rather The Pathologic Tabletop Game that Gets Released This Spring and is Totally Finding Its Way into the Hands of the Eligible Backers and Everyone Else Who Wants It. (Or TPTGGRTSTFIWHEBEEWWI, as we like to call it.)
Having started as a side project and a mildly original backer reward, Pathologic Tabletop has grown to become its own thing. Ice-Pick Lodge provided general vision, art direction, and texts, but the game itself was developed by CapsLock Games—our partners and friends, who came up with the idea in the first place. We would have never dared invade the dark and twisted world of tabletop games without their boldness; and so it’s about time we told you where it has lead us.
Pathologic Tabletop is loosely based on its videogame namesake; save for the fact that there are fewer Bound (Adherents; Wards; For-Crying-Out-Loud-Can-You-Choose-ONE-Name-For-’Em), it follows the same general idea. Three healers, one Plague—and a town filled with brilliant and desperate people wondering what they have done to deserve this.
The game was designed for 2-4 players. The number of doctors can vary, but one of the players always represents the Sand Plague itself. ”Represents” is a tricky word though; while not necessarily corporeal, the Plague definitely has a strong personality; it’s not really “represented”, but rather proactive. Unlike the videogame, in Pathologic Tabletop it’s you who decides where and how exactly it strikes.
And you will have to think on your feet, since a typical session takes 1-1.5 hours, and any player, be they the Plague or a doctor, will need to do a lot in that timeframe.
Oh yes, by the way; we may have failed to mention that Pathologic Tabletop is mostly a PvP game. Although “PvP” is also a tricky word, so more on that below.
Asymmetry
The game is balanced asymmetrically. The Plague’s gameplay is very different from the doctors’, while each of the three also has their own perks and strong suits. Their goals are also different.
Basically, you begin the game with the Town sleepy, but full of healthy people. Each healer has an agenda; their goal is to collect a certain amount of evidence and prove that their way of overcoming the plague is superior to the others’. To do that they need to fulfill missions, seizing the opportunities that the course of life provides—while the sleepiness is dispelled and people around them begin to die. (New missions are unlocked each turn and serve as the PvE part of the game.)
Each healer also has three Wards (i.e. Bound people; i.e. Adherents; i.e. don’t worry, the rest of the names are consistent with the Classic HD translation), who they have to take care of. As with the video game though, these people refuse to sit on their hands, preferring to jump into the action; they can complete missions too—providing you with crucial evidence. The game’s map represents the town, so sometimes it may be handy to send someone else in your stead—perhaps they’re simply closer to the mission location, or perhaps you need that for a subtle strategic gambit (e.g.: feeding an opponent’s Ward to the Plague).
As a doctor, you’ll have to think twice before sacrificing someone else’s Ward to the Plague (even though it establishes your superiority over their obviously deluded methods). First of all, Wards can provide you with resources and free hands (you can use another doctor’s Wards as means to your end, so they are all your allies—after a fashion). But more importantly, any dead Ward can spell another step towards the Plague’s victory.
While the healers are busy with petty squabbling and plotting, each so fond of their ego that they only accept a single kind of victory—that is, the victory achieved in their own way, the Plague’s plan is graceful in its simplicity.
Kill people.
Kill. Them. All.
…Actually, that’s not true. Each healer has three Wards (so there are nine total). The Plague only needs to kill one Ward of each healer, selected randomly at the beginning of the game and known only to the Plague itself. So its goal is more like:
Kill people.
Kill. Three. People.
The Plague can choose its modus operandi as it sees fit though—no one’s stopping it from indulging in a senseless bloody massacre. It’s not like it can’t kill people who are not on its hit list. Just not doctors themselves.
To sum it up, each doctor tries to get enough “mission complete” points and secure their personal victory. The Plague wreaks havoc and brings death.
The people themselves wince, remembering that one night when they decided that staying to live in this town is probably a good idea.
Abilities
The healers’ playstyles are also different, which is represented by them having special decks with cool abilities to throw in the Plague’s face. Or in each other’s faces, which is arguably more fun.
The Bachelor is famous for his administrative prowess… which is to say, he’s good at manipulating people. His abilities mostly influence the Wards and the availability of districts.
The Haruspex is the master of resources—he always sits on a pile of them, ready to complete any resource-heavy mission in the blink of an eye; him knowing shortcuts to move faster serves to aid that even further.
The Changeling can hinder other healers’ progress and manipulate the poisonous traces of the Plague itself.
Finally, the Plague has the coolest perk available in the game: it’s slow, but completely invisible to other players. It doesn’t even have a token to represent it on the board, writing its movements down into a special notebook instead. It can manifest itself at will, but aside from that its communication with the healers mostly boils down to them desperately trying to track the beast—to avoid it or to strike back, whichever is more appropriate.
Atmosphere
Remember how we said that Pathologic Tabletop is a “tricky” PvP? That’s because it is indeed tricky.
The game has but one winner; if you’re a healer, but a different healer succeeds, you’re left with nothing to show. The Plague, however, is so irrevocably lethal that in order to have a shot at the game at all, the rest will have to cooperate. Which leads to a delicate balance with someone backstabbing someone else sooner rather than later—and the rest is roleplaying.
Pathologic Tabletop is a social game. You’ll have to talk, trying to sway other players to your side (at least for one mission! please!), hatch a plot together and cooperate to complete a mission that hurts everyone while active. And if you feel that you’re losing, you’ll also have to decide which you like better: having another doctor grab the victory—or letting the Plague burn it all to ashes. What kind of person are you?
It’s not like you wanted to be invited to play in this company ever again.
…and the Rest
Pathologic Tabletop is mechanically robust. There are a number of the game’s aspects that we have barely touched (the Plague’s strains and Blockade; the healers’ Pacts; the quarantine and the whole resource management angle; etc)—but hopefully you’ve gotten the general gist.
Here’s the same gist without needless verbosity—with bullet points:
The game is available for pre-order via the Pathologic Backer Portal. You can throw it on top of your general order—and if the tabletop game is the only thing you’re interested in, simply select any tier; then in “Choose Tier” in the Dashboard select “no reward” and proceed to select the tabletop game as an add-on.
- 2-4 players;
- a session takes 1-1.5 hours;
- PvP with cooperation elements and social gameplay;
- asymmetrical: the Plague plays very differently;
- three doctors with various abilities;
- the doctors need to complete missions swiftly and smartly;
- the Plague needs to kill people while keeping its stealth advantage;
- the town’s map totally resembles its videogame counterpart;
- there will be shouting.
After the release, it will first be delivered to the people who have already pre-ordered it. It will also be available in some shops, although we doubt that we’ll be able to deliver it to many retail vendors outside of Russia—if at all. Actually, if you believe that you can help us out with distributing Pathologic Tabletop in Europe/North America/other regions, please contact tabletop@ice-pick.com!
In any case, buying online will always be available to everyone.
And, unlike before, you’re not buying a cat in the bag now, since the cards are already on the table. See the video below to witness the actual cards.
(The trailer features the beta version of the game and is not completely representative of its final quality. Which is to say, the tokens will have actual faces instead of Tragedians on them—and this is not the only difference. We just can’t help being a bit mysterious to the very end. Thank you for your kind understanding of our unfortunate addiction.)
Reminds me of Innsmouth in Dark Corners of the Earth. I believe I will wait for this remake to play the game.
We have reached the Lucid Dreaming stretch goal—thanks to you. That means the playable characters will have interactive dream experiences.
This is also the first completely new feature we’re introducing to Pathologic.
Dreams are a peculiar thing. Any decently complicated narrative can feature a dream sequence; that’s a good opportunity to let your creative powers rampage unrestrained. Any surreal imagery; any impossible turn of events—it all goes in a dream!
Therein, however, also lies the temptation of being weird just for the sake of being weird, perfectly captured by this clip from Living in Oblivion (warnings: NSFW language, Peter Dinklage in a top hat). And this is something that we want to avoid. The setting of Pathologic is full of its own quirks and peculiarities already. Seriously—how weird do you dreams have to be to match the fact that you can meet Albino in real life?
Then there is the Theatre. As those of you who have played the game may remember, the shows that are staged there are also dreamy, surreal, and offer a different, metaphorical perspective. In the Theatre, you can witness somewhat detached plays that showcase the cosmic level of the story, its high-level principles, laws, and conflicts, of which you are merely a tool. The Earth, the Aspiration, the Law, Fate, Death, and Plague are the actors there; not the Bachelor, the Haruspex, and the Changeling. Not even the Town and the Polyhedron. By watching these plays you are transported to a realm of different scale… which is, in all honesty, already remarkably dreamy.
And so, while introducing real dreams into the game, we have to make sure not to step onto the Theatre’s toes and avoid redundancy. So where does that leave us?
First of all, the dreams will indeed be lucid—i.e. short interactive experiences rather than cutscenes and the likes. In a surprising turn of events, you will be introduced to them after going to sleep; and then…
Perhaps you’ll have a chance to learn more about your playable character. As you know, they are not placeholder vessels for the player’s will, but rather heroes with their own ideas and agendas that are rooted in events that had happened before the main game—and having an additional layer of narrative to explore their personalities deeper can serve really well in establishing Daniil, Artemy, and Clara as their own people with their own views and even histories. Being able to provide a more subjective, borderline hallucinatory POV is a boon that only dreams or unhealthy states can offer.
Speaking of unhealthy states, perhaps you’ll have a chance to get to know the Sand Plague better. It’s not a mere dangerous disease, after all, but an entity that seems to have a will of its own; it is said that the Plague speaks to its victims just before it strikes, luring them, soothing them, and tricking them. It won’t pass up the chance to visit your dreams.
Or perhaps you’ll see some “what if” scenarios. What if you could talk Eva out of it? What if you caught Andrey without his usual bravado? What if you knew how exactly Capella visualized herself in her own prophetic dreams? What if you could meet Nina? In Pathologic, the deceased do not need dream states to talk—but people do. We’ve mentioned in the previous update that unrealistic, uninvited honesty and desire to spill out your soul is a videogame plight that we actually want to avoid; on the other hand, we do sometimes come up with these small scenes or events that don’t necessarily fit into the real story, but would allow us to explore the characters further and in more detail. Dreams seem like a perfect fit for those.
All in all, our main goal is to make dreams personal, whether by focussing on the playable character or someone else. The Theatre is your window into the world of gigantic, barely comprehensible concepts; the game itself mostly unfolds on the social level; but the dreams—the dreams have to do with people.
Because sometimes saving someone’s life or sentencing them to death is way simpler than understanding them… and the latter may only be achievable in your mind’s eye.
And they've reached Lucid Dreaming stretch goal: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts/1545560
We have reached the Lucid Dreaming stretch goal—thanks to you. That means the playable characters will have interactive dream experiences.
This is also the first completely new feature we’re introducing to Pathologic.
Dreams are a peculiar thing. Any decently complicated narrative can feature a dream sequence; that’s a good opportunity to let your creative powers rampage unrestrained. Any surreal imagery; any impossible turn of events—it all goes in a dream!
Therein, however, also lies the temptation of being weird just for the sake of being weird, perfectly captured by this clip from Living in Oblivion (warnings: NSFW language, Peter Dinklage in a top hat). And this is something that we want to avoid. The setting of Pathologic is full of its own quirks and peculiarities already. Seriously—how weird do you dreams have to be to match the fact that you can meet Albino in real life?
Then there is the Theatre. As those of you who have played the game may remember, the shows that are staged there are also dreamy, surreal, and offer a different, metaphorical perspective. In the Theatre, you can witness somewhat detached plays that showcase the cosmic level of the story, its high-level principles, laws, and conflicts, of which you are merely a tool. The Earth, the Aspiration, the Law, Fate, Death, and Plague are the actors there; not the Bachelor, the Haruspex, and the Changeling. Not even the Town and the Polyhedron. By watching these plays you are transported to a realm of different scale… which is, in all honesty, already remarkably dreamy.
And so, while introducing real dreams into the game, we have to make sure not to step onto the Theatre’s toes and avoid redundancy. So where does that leave us?
First of all, the dreams will indeed be lucid—i.e. short interactive experiences rather than cutscenes and the likes. In a surprising turn of events, you will be introduced to them after going to sleep; and then…
Perhaps you’ll have a chance to learn more about your playable character. As you know, they are not placeholder vessels for the player’s will, but rather heroes with their own ideas and agendas that are rooted in events that had happened before the main game—and having an additional layer of narrative to explore their personalities deeper can serve really well in establishing Daniil, Artemy, and Clara as their own people with their own views and even histories. Being able to provide a more subjective, borderline hallucinatory POV is a boon that only dreams or unhealthy states can offer.
Speaking of unhealthy states, perhaps you’ll have a chance to get to know the Sand Plague better. It’s not a mere dangerous disease, after all, but an entity that seems to have a will of its own; it is said that the Plague speaks to its victims just before it strikes, luring them, soothing them, and tricking them. It won’t pass up the chance to visit your dreams.
Or perhaps you’ll see some “what if” scenarios. What if you could talk Eva out of it? What if you caught Andrey without his usual bravado? What if you knew how exactly Capella visualized herself in her own prophetic dreams? What if you could meet Nina? In Pathologic, the deceased do not need dream states to talk—but people do. We’ve mentioned in the previous update that unrealistic, uninvited honesty and desire to spill out your soul is a videogame plight that we actually want to avoid; on the other hand, we do sometimes come up with these small scenes or events that don’t necessarily fit into the real story, but would allow us to explore the characters further and in more detail. Dreams seem like a perfect fit for those.
All in all, our main goal is to make dreams personal, whether by focussing on the playable character or someone else. The Theatre is your window into the world of gigantic, barely comprehensible concepts; the game itself mostly unfolds on the social level; but the dreams—the dreams have to do with people.
Because sometimes saving someone’s life or sentencing them to death is way simpler than understanding them… and the latter may only be achievable in your mind’s eye.
Ice-Pick Lodge said:
Interview: Ice Pick Lodge On Pathologic HD And Preserving Madness
John Walker on July 28th, 2016 at 5:00 pm.
Last night Ice-Pick Lodge revealed a new collection of screenshots for their HD remake of the wonderful, bizarre and previously very broken Pathologic [official site]. Looking at them, I found I was bursting with questions, so I asked them. Ice-Pick’s Alexandra Golubeva replied, in splendid detail. Below you can find out how there came to be two remakes at once – a complete rebuild and reimagining of the game and an updated-but-preserved version of the original – plus what new directions this reimagining will take, and how they’re inventing brand new ways to tell those old stories. (Click on the pics to see the new screens all bigger.)
RPS: We’re still a bit confused about Pathologic HD and Pathologic Classic HD – can you explain a bit about what’s happening there, why both were being developed at the same time?
Alexandra Golubeva: I understand how this whole ordeal can be confusing. The new Pathologic – the “remake” – is what we’re working on now. It’s not an HD version of the old game. It’s not even truly a remake, although the project started as one, but rather a reimagining. The new Pathologic will feature new engine, mechanics, plots, visuals – everything is being redone from scratch.
How and why did it happen? Well, we tried an honest remake, but quickly realized that there’s no point in applying patches and palliative remedies. We can rebuild him! A lot of time has passed since the original release; the world has changed, and we have changed. The core ideas of the original game evolved in our minds, and some ideas that were meant to be included in the original game but failed to were also revived. But then we found ourselves in a very awkward situation. Whenever you have a beloved old game, a piece of work with its own myth, it becomes hard to muster up the courage to change anything. You just know that someone would be disappointed by the change, would think that we’ve lost the game’s identity (because, let’s be honest, every person has their own idea of what the core identity of everything is). And it felt unfair towards those who love the old Pathologic.
That’s when we decided to release Pathologic Classic HD – an honest-to-god HD re-release of the original game (I think these are called “definitive versions” or something). To preserve the game that people know and love – so that if they end up disliking the changes to the new Pathologic, they’ll still have a decent version of the original available to them. Basically, Pathologic Classic HD is our gesture of appreciation to the people who managed to love the original game in all its imperfection.
It’s a common sentiment, I think; whenever someone dislikes a remake, they are told, “Well, no one’s taking the original away from you, just play/watch/enjoy it!” But the reality is less straightforward. Works of art age. They become less accessible as time passes, and – personally – I think it’s unfair to accuse people of vanity if they find older graphics or easily-avoided-these-days bugs unappealing. Which is why we did our best to make the original Pathologic the opposite of that. It’s not like we were throwing all our forces to the task; Pathologic Classic HD was made with the help of Gambitious, and we owe the visual revamps to General Arcade. We did the new translation internally from scratch, but the translation team wasn’t working on anything else at that moment. And so Pathologic Classic HD was released in October, 2015.
As for the remake – like I said, it’s not a remake anymore, but rather a reimagining. (I’m linking a very structured description of what exactly is going to be different and what is going to be preserved in it.) Hopefully it clears that up. You can find out more about the Classic HD version and our reasoning behind making it in this Kickstarter post.
RPS: The original Pathologic, while a little primitive in its graphics, had a very distinct look and feel. Has it been difficult to preserve that washed-out bleakness in a more modern engine?
Alexandra Golubeva: Isn’t this for you, not us, to judge? Preserving the washed-out, worn-out appearance was one of our major goals. We wrote about it here (please disregard the very old, very poorly-made screenshots and refer to the text). We tried to give everything a used, imperfect look, while also preserving the ambience of various places.
And it’s not like there’s anything about modern engines that disallows things to look disheveled! We’d like to hope that it’s still the same town, only now the drops of rain form dynamic pools on the streets rather than disappear into the Grey Abyss of Homebrew Engines under your non-existent feet.
RPS: When I first reviewed Pathologic I described it as “Oblivion with cancer”, and meant it almost literally – this was a city dying of a terrible disease. What new ideas and tricks are you using this time to communicate this to the player?
Alexandra Golubeva: After I considered your question a bit, I came to the realization that almost everything we’re doing can be – after a fashion – regarded as a trick used to the end you’re describing, especially if one perceives the disease in a broader sense, as the game does. It’s not about a bacterium, after all; it’s about a town that is inherently sick, torn apart by paradoxes. A town that should have never been able to exist in the first place.
So nothing you see there is new, perfect, sturdy, and rose-cheeked (unless we’re talking about feverish blush). Sometimes things seem to be confused about what they are! Why does the Cathedral feature mechanical motifs? How can walls form blisters? Why do branches in warning fires seem to be bone-shaped? Why is everyone saying that Simon Kain’s private study is a state of being rather than a place and that the town is alive?!
However, the most important new feature (perhaps truly the most important new feature of this whole reimagining project) is the robust disease mechanics, which is two-fold, since the plague exists both in the outer world and inside your own body. In the outer world, we’ve added infected food and objects, both the ones you can take (like clothes) and external ones (like water barrels). Infected districts now feature more threats – subtler ones, like the so-called “draughts” floating above the ground that only infect you if you walk upstream, or “plague faces” – certain spots that can infect you if you turn your back to them. The very air itself can become poisonous, too. (Don’t worry though, different districts will feature different sets of threats, so they won’t become insurmountable messes.)
As for the disease inside your own body – i.e. the things that happen when your character gets infected – we’ve developed robust mechanics that change a lot of things, from the core gameplay routine to the character’s perception of the world, but going into more details would be spoiling it mercilessly, so I won’t. Let’s just say that in the original Pathologic, the player’s interaction with the infection within their organism was very much akin to that with, say, hunger; but it will be different now. (There are, of course, many old ideas and tricks we’re preserving to some extent, like the plot-related and awesome characters you came to know and love being able to just straight out get infected and die if you don’t care for them enough.)
RPS: Can we still expect to see those creepy-as-all-hell plays parodying the events of the previous day?
Alexandra Golubeva: Yes. We’ve also reached the Lucid Dreaming stretch goal, which means there are going to be dreams in the game. Interactive dreams that you’ll sometimes see – and play through – instead of blackscreening into a new timepoint. And they too are going to be related to the events you live through. (More on that here.)
RPS: Why is the beak-face looking at me? What did I do? Why won’t he stop looking at me?
Alexandra Golubeva: Oooh, that’s a good one! So good, in fact, that answering it would be a major spoiler. What did you do? Is his looking at you good or bad? Is he good or evil? How can he even look when you were explicitly told that these are not real eyes?
RPS: There was something poetically beautiful about the broken English of the original game. It also helped to make the experience even more obscure. What plans do you have for changes to the script this time out?
Alexandra Golubeva: When we were re-translating the original game, preserving the somewhat unnatural language of the old translation (and, for that matter, the original Russian text) was one of our chief goals. Whether we were successful is, once again, not for us to judge. Ask Adam’s opinion – as far as I understood, he tried the new translation. I like to hope that the non-broken poetry can sometimes work just as well as broken one does. The new translation, for example, keeps or rebuilds wordplay and puns – and it’s worth mentioning that one of the main twists of the Bachelor’s storyline is completely based on wordplay! You can read more about our approach to translationhere. (Warning: a ridiculous wall of text.)
The new Pathologic, however, will only feature parts of the original script – since, well, a lot of events are going to change. We’re not just transposing old quests onto a new engine, we’re inventing new ways to tell old stories – more effectively. Actually, we’re getting rid of the whole idea of “quests” – they give this unnatural, errand-boy feeling. Players don’t accept quests out of conscious choice, but rather because that just what you do in video games. This is not the state of mind we’re after.
We’re implementing a new storytelling system of Events. It boils down to a very simple structure: things are happening in the town. Rumors are circulating about this. You are rarely summoned by letters (like you were in the original game), but rather gather information yourself, talking to people in the streets, and find out what to do – or not do. Everything that happens becomes a small mystery that has to be uncovered first (because it’s not like you are always told things in a straightforward manner; sometimes you have to connect two and two first).
All in all, a lot of things are going to be rewritten – out of necessity, if nothing else. We are also aiming towards more short dialogues rather than fewer long ones (a long discussion can be a great climax to a plot, but breaks the pacing of the game if used inappropriately; verbosity doesn’t equal literariness and is not actually a virtue).
We are, however, keeping the tone and general style of the script. Major plot points based on puns? Names that are charactonyms and have, like, thirteen layers of meaning? Having three various dialogue options that all sound condescending since you’re not roleplaying a random character, but rather the Bachelor, who is, in all honesty, a prick? Having characters lie to you, be mistaken, refuse to talk about the matter at hand – because that’s just what people do? Having them passionately discourage you from doing the thing that would yield the best rewards for your character – because, once again, that’s just what people do, and you’re not a friend to them? Town drunks talking in flowery metaphors? Children being more reasonable than adults? Yep. All of that remains.
RPS: Thank you for your time.
Update 40: Moving Forward · Pathologic
We have some good news and some news that are less exciting. Would you like to sit down and grab a cup of coffee first?
(This is what PR people tell to the attendees if they can’t show them the game straight away, e.g. if the rig is already occupied. We’ve been told that coffee works wonders.)
The release of Pathologic will be postponed until Autumn, 2017.
What? How?
Is this a fake FAQ now? Okay.
The original plans for the release date were set with the basic scope of the game in mind. It seems a bit immodest to admit, but we did include our first stretch goal, the Town Expanded, into that; but not the rest of them. The game has grown in scope now, so developing it properly requires additional time.
Also, the vision for this version of Pathologic has shifted during the development. What started as a humble rejuvenation of a classic beloved by the studio turned into a full-fledged reimagining rather quickly, but it took us time to realize what that truly entails. The corners that we were planning to cut turned into diamond quickly. However faithful to the original vision, this Pathologic is a new game in many aspects, from the engine to the concept art.
Oh come on. You just bit more than you can chew. Admit it.
While we are—and always will be—vehemently defending our chewing abilities, there’s no denying the fact that we are facing technical challenges. Creating an open-world game in Unity is trying. We are solving the riddles the game’s code throws at us valiantly, but then again, there’s no point in releasing a pretty, but stuttering thing, right? And teaching it proper enunciation turned to require a bit more man-hours than we were hoping.
I dunno. It all sounds kind of fishy.
Look. Pathologic is the thing for most people in the studio. It is the game that gave Ice-Pick Lodge its identity; it’s like both a beloved parent and a firstborn to us.
Our miscalculation was embarrassing, and we are fully prepared to accept the thoroughly-deserved stones you may be willing to throw in our general direction, but we want to do it right. If nothing else, the game itself deserves it.
It’s not your intentions that I doubt, it’s your abilities.
In all this time, there wasn’t a single issue we weren’t able to overcome (or work around). In a painfully postmodern turn of events, he only thing that failed to bend to our almighty collective will is time itself.
Look at it this way: we can either mar our conscience by missing the deadline in a rather spectacular fashion, or by releasing a game that falls short on its promises. But only one of these outcomes leaves everybody with a good game in their library in the end.
And now it’s time for us to bathe you in trinkets and goodies that are supposed to distract you and calm your understandable outrage.
First of all, we have a first playable… thing that will in a couple of months go to the backers of the QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS tier and higher (basically, the alpha backers). This is not an alpha though, but rather a short spin-off story that we used to showcase the mood and setting of Pathologic at Gamescom. It doesn’t feature every in-game mechanic and offers the content that won’t be present in the final game. But first we’ll need this couple of months to polish it so that it would run better and wouldn’t require developers’ hints to play properly.
We actually made this small thing for the purposes of Gamescom, but it’s so self-sufficient that it can work as a separate small game. If the feedback from the alpha backers is good, we may release is a a free Pathologic demo at some point down the line.
Secondly, the new Pathologic has a Steam page now, that you can subscribe to.
Thirdly, on said page you are welcome to behold the splendor of our semi-new screenshots. Including the current dialogue UI
It’s almost like the game is tangible now. And it will be. Later rather than sooner, sadly.
On the bright side, now you can probably tell why we made a game that features time as one of the main foes of the protagonist.
There has to be a bright side, right…?
