KickStarter Pathologic 2 (AKA Pathologic remake)

[LESS T_T]

What's this, then? http://labs.ice-pick.com/en/

It's The Marble Nest demo for everyone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/505230

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Robert Jarzebina]

Darth Roxor review this

 

[kain30]

Just like the tittle says. Not only we have the remake but a second part!!!

 

[LESS T_T]

Looks like the remake is renamed to Pathologic 2, to avoid confusion with the original game I guess.

This is the remake's Steam page, changed to Pathologic 2:

 

[Perkel]

Why this is General Gaming when Pathologic is RPG ? I mean game has proper C&C...

 

[Infinitron]

alphyna What's going on?

 

[LESS T_T]

KS update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts/1976564

Introducing Pathologic 2, with live gameplay

Hey everyone! My name is Alex Nichiporchik, I’m the producer of games like SpeedRunners, Party Hard, Punch Club, and Hello Neighbor. Today I bring some good news to the backers of Pathologic. I’ll be producing the game from tinyBuild’s side, as we’ve partnered up with Ice-Pick Lodge to help finish this gem.

This has been a while in the making, and we’re finally ready to take the curtain off from where Pathologic is heading as a franchise, and what this means for the game you’ve Kickstarted.

First, the drill-down:

• What we referred to as Pathologic is now Pathologic 2 to avoid confusion between the original game, Pathologic Classic HD, The Marble Nest, Mor. Utopia, and so on
• tinyBuild partnered up with Ice-Pick Lodge to bring Pathologic 2 to market in 2018
• All original pledges are still in effect
• We’re changing the development methodology to become more open, similar to what tinyBuild did with Hello Neighbor — allowing in-development access to game builds to fans who support the development

Full game is coming in 2018, alphas are coming sooner
In the good old days of game development, typically you’d get a publishing deal in place — receive funding from a publisher, and lock yourselves in for a couple of years until you ship something. Repeat every few years. It’s clear this work method no longer works, not for us or for the industry as a whole. Releasing The Marble Nest gave Ice-Pick Lodge an insane amount of feedback, and after seeing what tinyBuild was able to achieve while being completely open with their fans about games like Party Hard, SpeedRunners, and Hello Neighbor, it was clear the dev process needed a change.

To be clear: tinyBuild is coming on board to help produce Pathologic 2, acting as a publishing partner.

Being Kickstarter backers, soon you will receive the first Alpha build of Pathologic 2. The build will have a slightly smaller town and a few systems in place to demonstrate the atmosphere and some of the upcoming gameplay mechanics. We will gather feedback from fans, and adjust the direction of development based on this feedback.

In the old structure, we would spend months on getting complicated systems in place, and hope everything comes together in the end.

Today we spend shorter sprints on accomplishing smaller tasks, and playtest what we’ve accomplished — figuring out if the direction is still the right one. This empowered us to come up with a few fun mechanics that’ll be playable this weekend at PAXWest in Seattle.

If the reception of the PAXWest demo is positive, that’ll be the first alpha we release to you guys. Stay tuned.

Take a look at the PAXWest demo in action. This is all live gameplay.



Thank you for following the development of Pathologic 2.

Alex Nichiporchik

CEO @tinyBuild

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

So... no HD remake of the original game then?

 

[Perkel]

So... no HD remake of the original game then?

There is one. You set up resolution in options to 1280x720 lol.

"HD version" was already released i think. This was supposed to be remake of P1. P1 on other hand back in production was supposed to feature 5 characters to play with i think general being largest which was cut completely along with 1 other character.

 

[alphyna]

Looks like the remake is renamed to Pathologic 2, to avoid confusion with the original game I guess.

This is the remake's Steam page, changed to Pathologic 2:

This is correct. The "2" is just a cosmetic change.

Basically, there's been too many Pathologics (the original Mor. Utopia, the international release, the Classic HD remaster, the Marble Nest demo), so we figure out we need to emphasize the fact that this is the latest installment. It's still the same story, characters, town, 12 days, etc.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

alphyna
While you're here. There's been some rumors about you being short on people and the game being stuck in development hell. Would you care to comment on this?

I mean, what's up with you suddenly looking for an AI coder?

 

[Jinn]

That PAXWest demo is extremely eerie. They are absolutely nailing down the atmosphere. It was already amazing in the original, but I think this will take it even further.

 

[alphyna]

alphyna
While you're here. There's been some rumors about you being short on people and the game being stuck in development hell. Would you care to comment on this?

What is the blessed place where people even care about Ice-Pick rumors? Is it /vg/ or something?

Anyway, this is the first time I'm seeing anything of the kind. No, that's not true at all. As you can probably tell by the delay, management has never been our strongest suit (hopefully the aforelinked partnership changes that), but I think we're operating well within the bounds of normal indie development. I mean, sometimes people come and go (currently we're looking for an additional programmer, AFAIK), and as an indie team, we do get more crunches than bigger companies, but it has always been like this. I wonder where that rumor originated from.

EDIT: Ah, I saw your edit. Well, like I said, people come and go sometimes. Is it so unusual for a company to be looking for a programmer?

 

[alphyna]

4chan's /v/, basically people were complaining about delays and then one of the posters mentioned the fact that (at the time of that post) you had IIRC 3 open positions at your company, so it did look like the things had gone south and we shouldn't get our hopes up.

This is quite a bold assumption to make.

 

[Perkel]

4chan's /v/, basically people were complaining about delays and then one of the posters mentioned the fact that (at the time of that post) you had IIRC 3 open positions at your company, so it did look like the things had gone south and we shouldn't get our hopes up.

This is quite a bold assumption to make.

You know that after P2 you need to do The Void/Tension Remake ? It was released in 2008 when no one really cared about small releases in press nor there were a lot of ways to promote game.. I feel like The Void with some expanded amount of content + better graphics + tightened gameplay would be something which would sell A LOT considering it is fucking stellar game.

 

[Ranarama]

You know that after P2 you need to do The Void/Tension Remake ? It was released in 2008 when no one really cared about small releases in press nor there were a lot of ways to promote game.. I feel like The Void with some expanded amount of content + better graphics + tightened gameplay would be something which would sell A LOT considering it is fucking stellar game.

Better nude models...

 

[LESS T_T]

About some concerns (a new confusion that a not-sequel is named like one; business tone of the update penned by the publisher's CEO) over the update: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...osts/1976564?cursor=17905062#comment-17905061

This is still the same game—a reimagining. Same town, same characters, same project we Kickstarted. The name change is purely cosmetic. (Well, it will probably concern the game's marketing somewhat, but it's not like any of you need to have it pitched to you, right?)

And yes, this is a business update penned by a business person—which is precisely the reason for this partnership. We're not sure partnering up with someone equally gloomy and prone to lame puns as us would lead to fruitful results. Gloominess is our area of expertise. We're not ready to share.

So please do not worry. Yes, it's true that projects that are delayed sometimes suffer from developers' passion dying out (which is not necessarily their fault, stress does bad things to people). But this is not our case at all. We'd sell kidneys to deliver the Pathologic we promised to you, if need be.

(Which probably wouldn't do much because it turns out that organs are dirt cheap or something. We only checked for storytelling purposes. Nothing shady going on here.)

-IPL

 

[alphyna]

You know that after P2 you need to do The Void/Tension Remake ? It was released in 2008 when no one really cared about small releases in press nor there were a lot of ways to promote game.. I feel like The Void with some expanded amount of content + better graphics + tightened gameplay would be something which would sell A LOT considering it is fucking stellar game.

Personally, I'd love to see a modern Void with better visuals and great boss fights... you know, Shadow of the Colossus-style. But I doubt it'll happen. The Void itself is already a remake/remix of the original game, which was Russian-only and called Tension (I believe). Remaking a remake seems a bit excessive.

 

[prengle]

on one hand, i'm really concerned about tinybuild's business speak calling pathologic a "franchise", fucking with the development model and taping a 2 to the end of the name even though this isn't a sequel. on the other, i hope that them taking care of the marketing allows ipl to get the game out the door as soon as possible without worrying about handling the shit they're not so good at

i've got butterflies in my stomach while at the same time being cautiously optimistic

 

[LESS T_T]

The publisher showing the game on Twitch PAX West show. It starts with an unseen trailer:



The demo itself is mostly following the same sequence with the 5-minute trailer.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

The Void/Tension Remake

 

[prengle]

The publisher showing the game on Twitch PAX West show. It starts with an unseen trailer:



The demo itself is mostly following the same sequence with the 5-minute trailer.

"it's like if silent hill met a bethesda game"

i get that it's tinybuild but this physically hurt to listen to

 

[LESS T_T]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic/posts/1980629

Recent News FAQ

We have received a bunch of questions after the recent announcement. A perfect opportunity to make a real FAQ instead of inventing questions, like we do sometimes! Without further ado, here we go.

On the Publisher
Q. Tell us more. Who is in control now? Who makes creative decisions?

We kept our independence, IP, and creative control. tinyBuild is an indie publisher. They work with small teams and have no reason to change our style. They merely want to make the game known to broader audiences—a desire that we share.

No one says stuff like, “Let’s recolor the Changeling—blonds are all the rage now”, or “Twelve days are too much, how about five?” We always have the final say in all things creative.

That said, tinyBuild are not silent, of course. They do provide feedback. “Adding a lamp made looting much more engaging.” “Currently, recoil doesn’t make it clear if you have more ammo or not.” “The street ambience works really well, adding to the atmosphere; can we have more of that?” An outsider’s look is useful—especially late in the development, when you tend to get tunnel vision.

Most importantly though, they do truly like Pathologic 2. So we have a common goal.

Q. Why do you need a publisher?

If you take a closer look at the modern game industry, you’ll notice that only 2-3 unusual projects a year enjoy significant success, be it The Stanley Parable or the recent Hellblade. Apart from its quality, there are other factors that determine if an indie project becomes a hit. And marketing is key here: finding a way to convince the audience to try something new and unexpected can go a long way. This is why we partnered up with tinyBuild—the people who both know how to market games and love Pathologic 2.

Q. But you’ve got a ton of money from Kickstarter. And now you run to an investor?

We would very much liked to live in the world where truly crowdfunding medium-sized projects is possible. But we’re not. Torment: Tides of Numenera got way more money than us and was made by a much more notorious team, yes Brian Fargo still invested personal money into it.

Unfortunately, gamemaking is more expensive than you might think. Especially if we’re talking about a 3D game that requires many assets and animations.

We knew from the start that we would never collect enough money for the whole development and have already invested much more personal savings into it than we got from Kickstarter. So you and us are in the same boat.

On the Two
Q. Why “Pathologic 2”? Are you making a sequel after all, not a remake?

Pathologic 2 is neither a sequel nor a remake. Remember what we told you back in 2014? “We want to show what really happened.”

What do Lara Ravel and the Haruspex discuss in the evening of Day 1? In the original game they didn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence. Maria doesn’t give the list of the Bound to the Bachelor anymore, but there is something else. Who saves the Changeling from the train tracks when the Inquisitor arrives? Are you sure that Inquisitor is Aglaya Lilich? You don’t even know what’s going on inside the Polyhedron.

The characters are still pondering the same questions, sure, but they act differently and say different words.

Q. Well, you should have called it Pathologic Recuperatio or something then. You would at least get the cool points for Latin.

Pathologic 2 explores the ideas of Pathologic much in the same way like Silent Hill 2 does with Silent Hill or Dark Souls 2, with Dark Souls. Neither of them is a sequel. Pathologic 2 is a second attempt to save the town, if you will.

This game is, indeed, different from the original. Like a counterpoint. Monologues are boring, dialogues are engaging, because any dialogue is a conflict. But it takes two to have a dialogue. The “2” in Pathologic 2 is honest. (And Latin is for show-offs.)

On Early Access
Q. Early Access works well for story-light, systems-heavy games, but Pathologic 2 is the opposite. Do you think Early Access will be effective for Pathologic 2?

The Marble Nest worked, didn’t it?

Early access exists to polish gameplay, that benefits greatly from numerous testers, since its purpose is to be handy. Note that ‘handy’ does not necessarily mean ‘easy’; the game itself can be very hardcore. But struggling with barter UI should never become a challenge.

Obviously, this approach is barely applicable to the story, since its goal is not to be handy.

This means that early builds will most likely be gameplay-oriented and very light on story. That’s what the PaxWEST demo is like, for example.

Perhaps we will have to change our approach at some point—and then, unfortunately, you will have to endure the Trial By Spoilers. But please keep in mind that we love mysteries just as much as you do, so we’ll try not to unveil too much too early.

On the Marble Nest
Q. Funny you should mention The Marble Nest, ‘cause I can no longer find the “Download Demo” button on Steam.

We had to remove it. You have all been warned that The Marble Nest is poorly optimized and does not represent the final quality. New people who come to our page through tinyBuild might miss that memo. Giving a pre-alpha to a less-informed audience may hurt their impression of the game. Bad performance is a deal-breaker to some people.

Q. So what, is my access to The Marble Nest revoked?

Not at all!

Firstly, everyone who’s got it on Steam via a code (i.e. the alpha and beta backers), still have the game/demo in their library.

Secondly, you can now download the standalone version of the demo here. Just download, unpack, and play. Also useful for those of you who do not like Steam.

We trust that if you’ve made it this far through this FAQ, you definitely belong to the “better-informed” category.

The Russian version of the update is here. Русская версия апдейта — здесь.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

We knew from the start that we would never collect enough money

Torment: Tides of Numenera got way more money than us

the people who both know how to market games and love

Adding a lamp made looting much more engaging

:ehue: