Worthplaying reports on the PC date for Pathologic 2 and has some new screens and a trailer.

Pathologic 2 is coming to PC (Steam) on May 23, 2019, with an Xbox One version (retail edition by Gearbox Publishing) to follow later in the year.

tinyBuild will be showcasing Pathologic 2 at PAX East 2019 this weekend in Boston.

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Thanks Farflame!

PC Gamer learned that development on Pathologic 2 has been a struggle and that the game will now release in chapters, with the first part expected in mid 2019.

Dybowski acknowledged that some fans will be disappointed but said that Steam statistics show that the vast majority of players take the game slowly and methodically—"First one story, then the next, and much later, the third"—rather than powering through all three of them one right after the other. "We don't think it would be right to force into waiting the people who will play this game slowly, steadily, iteratively, step by step," he said.

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Thanks Farflame!

Rock Paper Shotgun covered Pathologic 2's public alpha release.

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To play the public Alpha, you’ll need to sign up for it on Ice-Pick’s site here. You should get your link to it almost instantly via email – a 10gb download. As Ice-Pick say, “Have fun suffering.”. There’s still no release date for Pathologic 2, but TinyBuild have stepped up to publish it. You can find the game on Steam here and on its official page here, rich with juicy development blog posts.

Thanks Farflame!

Farflame spotted that you can download the free Pathologic teaser spinoff The Marble Nest now:

Pathologic: The Marble Nest Trailer

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Pathologic is a game about defeating an unvanquishable plague.
The Marble Nest is its free teaser spinoff that plays for ~2 hours -> download.

Farflame spotted VG 247's first impressions from recently released pre-alpha demo of Pathologic:

The new Pathologic is still one of the best games it’s no fun to actually play

Pathologic still isn’t for everyone, but if your idea of worthwhile pursuits includes horrifying vacations in plague-ridden cities that crumble around you as you fruitlessly battle disease, wow: you’re in for a treat.

The original Pathologic is a highly-divisive cult-favourite first-person horror RPG about a city gripped by plague, which isn’t really any more accessible now that there’s Definitive Edition which actually runs on modern computers. Fixing the translation issues and updating the textures hasn’t changed the fact that it eschews many design principles considered fundamental in mainstream gaming.

For starters, Pathologic has never been interested in catering to your power fantasies. It doesn’t care that you feel cheated by things you can’t predict, inconvenienced and hassled by the structure, and exhausted by the pace. It gives you plenty of freedom, but at the same time, the game’s world and story march on independent of the player’s actions, not in step with them.

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Thanks Farflame!

Farflame spotted some Pathologic teaser videos and information at Gamepressure:

New Pathologic remake atmospheric teaser videos – Kickstarter demo coming soon

The creators of Pathologic remake are ready to share a glimpse of their upcoming horror adventure game. A couple of atmospheric teaser videos come along with the announcement of a playable demo, exclusive to some of Kickstarter backers.

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Vignette #2: The Workshop

Vignette #3: The Stillwater

Vignette #4: Time

Vignette #5: The Steppe

Pathologic: The Marble Nest (Part 1)

PCInvasion reports on the Pathologic Classic HD version being released soon. Its a retouched up version of the original game, not the remake that was kickstarted (which is still on its way).

Russian dev Ice-Pick Lodge have teamed up with Gambitious Digital Entertainment and General Arcade to remaster the original Pathologic and bring it to Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store. It'll have updated effects and graphics and cloud saves and - thank Christ - a completely re-done English translation, with re-recorded voice overs and reinstated dialogue. "Legible for the first time ever," apparently.

Hilariously, the update about this on the Pathologic remake Kickstarter page refers to this version as "Pathologic Classic HD: Now Comprehensible." To quote the page: "We are still not entirely sure as to how our English-speaking players have managed to enjoy the game at all; sometimes the dialogue of the original release made no sense." Presumably, this means that the Devotress/Changeling will actually be playable, because her plotline was utterly incomprehensible before.

Heres some video so you can see for yourselves.

Nikolay Dybowski is back once again in a new kickstarter update for Pathologic where he talks about the work done to modernize the new HD version of the game.

Nikolay Dybowski with you once again. I’m here not as a writer today, but as the director of our game.

Most of the updates we’ve published during the campaign were personal. All the Ice-Pick Lodgers have marched before your eyes, each of them speaking their own mind, not being a representative. Each of them will influence what the game looks like in the end. Each of them has their own will, plans, and opinion on the original Pathologic. Their own unique view. These views can clash, and sometimes it even feels like there’s no common vector to unite them.

But it's there.

There is a principle lying beneath all those multidirectional wills and opinions—a principle that any decision we make, from grand concepts to minor details, is based upon. Telling truth from lies. And I’m not only talking about professional fidelity and being honest with yourself. I’m talking about being honest with the game.

There is an peculiar axiom underlying everything we do. An assumption we treat as a fact. We believe that the people, the events, the space presented in Pathologic are not our fancy’s children. They’re real.

Pathologic has a new update from Ice-Pick Lodge about the Steppe Alphabet that will be part of your physical backer reward as part of an amulet.

It’s finally time to show you one of our physical rewards—The Brand!

The Brand is a 35mm-high and 2mm-thick metallic item wearable around your neck (although you can find a different use for it). It’s produced in several designs. If you choose it as one of your rewards, you’ll be shipped a random Brand. Randomness is part of the language the Steppe speaks, and it’s never truly random.

 

In semiotics, a sign is something that can be interpreted as having a meaning, which is something other than itself, and which is therefore able to communicate information to the one interpreting or decoding the sign. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, a sign is composed of the signifier and the signified.

The Pathologic kickstarter was successful funded with earning $255,908 of  the $250,000 goal with nine days left, and ce-Pick Lodge posted a new update.

We’re there! Or rather “here”, seeing how we we’ve moved to the Land of Funded Projects overnight and are currently looking at its inhabitants curiously. The requirements for entering the place are a feverish glint in the eyes and cheering people in the comment section. Seems like we have both.

And the funds. Pathologic has been successfully funded.  

Before the campaign has even started, a lot of people have told us that we're likely to succeed because we have many fans already. Something felt off about this statement, but we couldn't quite put our finger on it. Was it the air of overconfidence? Perhaps. But we have come to realize that there's something even more wrong here.

We don't have fans. We have friends.

A good friend is not necessarily someone who approves of every step you make—friends can and should be critical. But it's also someone who's always there when you need them. It's not even about the money; money is important, of course, but it's only a tool.

What you've done is you've fuelled our small factory. And yes, it just so happens that it's us standing behind the benches and the presses, but your contribution to the process is equally important. You're not consumers, not merely an audience we work for, not a crowd whose emotions we feed upon. You're the engine of the ship we're steering.

So this update is dedicated to the most important member of the Ice-Pick Team. You. You’re the ones making this happen. Onward! We can see the towers of the Land of Stretch Goals from here.

Pathologic has eleven days left to get funded on kickstarter, and Ice-Pick Lodge has released a new update that with a few thought on the campaign.

A lot of the things that have happened during this campaign were quite unexpected for us. We never thought we’d have such a spectacular launch, and it never even occurred to us that all the $3,000 rewards will be taken in the first day or two. We were a bit at a loss as to what to do next. We’ve tried to introduce other “big” rewards (the ragdolls), but they didn’t work. It makes sense: while getting EVERYTHING is neat, receiving a single doll out of three is probably less cool. So that begged some changes.

Some of you have already noticed them, but we’d like to elaborate on what exactly has changed and why.

We’ve increased the number of $3,000 pledges to ten! We’ve asked our previous $3,000 backers for permission, and they’ve allowed us to do so (thanks a lot to them!). So while the dolls are gone now, you still have a chance to get everything listed—including an Executor Mask—if you want to do so. We’ve planned to make five masks first; now we’ve decided to make ten, but the number will still be very limited. There should never be too many Executors, it’s a bad omen.

The Polyhedral Room will become available to everyone who’s pledged $100 and more. The Polyhedral Room is a mystery, a musical snuffbox, a clockwork construction. The idea behind only making it available to those who’ve offered $100 was ritualistic. You have to be precise with rituals. You have to step a certain number of steps, and spin a certain number of spins, and spit a certain number of spits, and clap a certain number of claps so that the magic works. 

But there’s another aspect to magic too: honesty. The Polyhedral Room cares more for your intentions than it does for how many finger snaps you make. It’s decided to make itself available to you, and who are we to argue? 

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It also seems like a good time to address some questions concerning the pledge rewards. 

Will you show us the designs of the Iron Heart and the Brand? 

We will! Please stay tuned for the future update. 

Will the tabletop game released simultaneously with the video game? 

No, it’ll become available earlier. Pathologic the tabletop game will be sent to its owners in Q3 2015 or even earlier, so you won’t have to wait till the release of the video game. 

Will the art book be hardcover or softcover? 

Hardcover. 

What about the posters? Will they feature the art seen on your Kickstarter page or something else? What size will they be? 

As you are well aware, there are five poster designs planned. Those will be new arts by Meethos, not the ones shown during the campaign—the latter have served their purpose, although there is a chance we’ll add some of the Kickstarter arts too if there’s enough demand. They’ll be printed in A1 size, vertical and horizontal. 

That’s all for today. Thank you once again for being with us. This campaign feels like a small adventure being taken with a group of very nice people. We’re quite sure no dragon can scare us anymore.

Developer Ice-Pick Lodge sent out another press release for Pathologic with information on how the developer will be re-making the flawed Masterpiece.

The re-imagining of a flawed gaming masterpiece

How and why Ice-Pick Lodge’s 2005 game is on the verge of making a triumphant return

MOSCOW, Russia – 24 September 2014 – Critically acclaimed in its native Russia upon release in 2005, the Western release of survival RPG Pathologic was endlessly problematic and deeply flawed. Despite this, it has gained a cult following and is deeply loved by a hardcore following. It is because of this audience that independent developer Ice-Pick Lodge decided to revisit their iconic game, totally reimagining it as the game they originally intended, bringing it to Kickstarter where it is on the verge of reaching its $250,000 target.

Succeeding despite the plethora of aforementioned flaws and its poor implementation, Pathologic captured the imaginations of gamers due to the novel and arresting ideas behind the game along with its surreal and ambiguous storyline and characters. Ice-Pick Lodge’s very first title as a game development studio, Pathologic reflected the inexperience of its team with the amount of mistakes that were made. “It was clunky, it looked outdated even in 2005 and the English translation was horrific. It just didn’t make a lot of sense.” commented Creative Lead, Nikolay Dybowsky.

In the intervening years since 2005, Pathologic gained somewhat of a cult following despite its numerous flaws, a loyal and vocal audience who recognized the flawed masterpiece that it was. It was in no small part because of this audience that Nikolay and his team at Ice-Pick Lodge decided to revisit their beloved first child.

Dybowsky continues, “With three games now under our belt we felt confident that we had the skills and expertise to finally make Pathologic the game we originally intended. But as a small, independent developer consisting of a team of nine, we knew that we couldn’t finance the development alone in order to make the game that we wanted, which is why we hesitantly turned to Kickstarter.”

Dybowsky and his team at Ice-Pick Lodge were taken aback by the response. “From day one, the response of the fans has been overwhelming, We were originally reluctant to set the target at $250,000 feeling that perhaps that was a bit too ambitious, but we soon realized that anything less than that would mean we would have to compromise our vision which we did not want to do. So we bit the bullet and decided on $250k.  The immediate feedback of the fans was unbelievably positive and justified our decision, which is why with almost two weeks left of the Kickstarter campaign we are on the verge of hitting that incredible milestone.”

For more information on the game and the crowd funding campaign, the Pathologic Kickstarter page can be found at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic

Or visit the official Pathologic website at http://pathologic-game.com/en/

The enigmatic trailer can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded in a variety of formats from http://vimeo.com/icepicklodge/review/106494991/e3e327883b

Ivan Slovtsov the game designer at Ice-Pick Lodge has posted a new update with his opinion on the Pathologic kickstarter, and what he wants done to the game.

Since the launch of the Kickstarter campaign there’s been a lot of discussion about how the new Pathologic might turn out gameplay-wise. The subject has piqued the interest of both those who have played the original Pathologic and those who have never heard of the game before. So I thought it may to be a good idea to give you a sneak peek at how it will hopefully turn out by explaining what goals we're setting.

The original Pathologic was a game of choices… or perhaps it’s better to say “a game of dilemmas”. Let’s take one of the classic examples which is well-known to the people who have played the original game and which was mentioned in our Kickstarter pitch.

Ice-Pick Lodge announces the stretch goals for Pathologic in the games latest update.

We’re 86% and more than 4,500 backers in! Thank you all so much—that’s wonderful news. it also means that we finally feel comfortable announcing stretch goals. If you’re not interested in our babbling on how we believe they are supposed to work, please just scroll down to the stretch goals themselves. But for those of you who are interested, here’s a bit of the thought process that went into our planning.

Don’t fix what ain’t broken. That’s the rule of thumb that applies to many things—including video games. When you have a solid vision of what you want to make, adding something on top doesn’t necessarily result in a better product—in some cases it can even water your vision down. And if during the development we realize that Pathologic needs more than we’ve promised—say, additional mechanics—we’ll include them anyway. We love this game too, you know. 

Stretch goals during crowdfunding are like a mini-game in and of themselves, so it’s very easy to get carried away and overpromise when setting them. We’ve heard sad stories of developers that have achieved more than they were comfortable with. So we did our best to plan stretch goals that wouldn’t make us overextend. 

As is stated in “Risks and Challenges”, we do have investments that would allow us to make Pathologic in any case, and this whole Kickstarter is like a huge stretch goal for us. The pitch says the money we ask for is what we need to make a perfect game, and that’s true. We don’t want to add superfluous entities on top. 

Still, we have more ideas that we believe will fit Pathologic. They’re mostly non-essential, but Pathologic is a game about different points of view—and these ideas would allow us to bring even more angles to look at the events of the game from. These are things we really want to make, but they would require a bigger team (or postponing the release, which is something we’d like to avoid). If we get more funding, they will become possible by the planned release date, though.

The new Pathologic kickstarter has 17 days left, and needs another $30,000 to get funded. The games developer Ice-Pick Lodge also released more information.

12 days to fight an enemy you cannot see in a town with no name and where innocent lives will be sacrificed. This is Pathologic.

The ambitious open world Survival Adventure game closes in on its Kickstarter target

MOSCOW, Russia – 19 September 2014 – Driven by seven years of frustration to see their original vision realised, independent developer Ice-Pick Lodge have turned to the Kickstarter community in order to ensure that Pathologic, their audacious and breathtaking plot driven, open world Survival Adventure game for PC, Mac, Linux PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, finally emerges fully formed as the game they always intended it to be. With 18 days left on the crowd funding campaign, Pathologic is rapidly closing in on its $250,000 target.

Taking place over a 12 day period, Pathologic is set in a small but mysterious town hit by a deadly and highly infectious disease whose origins are unknown. To fight the epidemic the local authorities send in a doctor, an inquisitor to assess the situation, and then a military commander with orders to destroy the town as a last resort. Along with the authorities’ agents, two volunteer healers find their way to the town-with-no-name along with the doctor, each of them with their own ideas on how this sinister disease came to be.

Taking on the role of one of these three doctors, players explore the town, its weird traditions and the complex relationships of its inhabitants in their quest to overcome this invisible evil called the Sand Plague, trying to find a way to fight and destroy the contagion itself, whilst endeavoring to save as many lives as possible and not to succumb to the disease themselves.

The plot of Pathologic is broken down into 12 chapters reflecting the 12 days the game is set across, each of them carrying new stories, quests and events. Time, however, flows mercilessly; if you fail to finish a task when it is due the opportunity is lost, as are human lives…

12 days in a town devoured by a plague. An unseen enemy you cannot kill. A game where you cannot save everyone. This is Pathologic.

The enigmatic trailer can be viewed on YouTube or downloaded in a variety of formats from http://vimeo.com/icepicklodge/review/106494991/e3e327883b

For more information on the game and the crowd funding campaign, the Pathologic Kickstarter page can be found at: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic, Or visit the official Pathologic website at http://pathologic-game.com/en/

Ice-Pick Lodge has another update for Pathologic this time from writer Nikolay Dybowski who writes the games plot, and he talks about the games story.

My name is Nikolay Dybowski. I’m the person behind the plot, the setting, and the script of Pathologic.

The story of Pathologic is not fictional. Or rather not entirely fictional: it’s based upon artistically adapted facts and phenomenons that come from the real life.

I often compare my job to something a cryptographer or an archaeologist does. It’s about reconstructing things, not making them up. My task is understanding, deciphering, and recreating a story that originates from beyond my imagination.

Some of its pieces are usually obvious from the get go—they don’t require much work. A good example of that would be the character set in Pathologic and the general outlook of The Town. They weren’t hard to discover.

But some troublesome pieces just aren’t there. They make me feel like an astronomer. He knows there must be a star of a certain brightness and weight in a particular section of a galaxy even if he doesn’t see it through a telescope; his maps tell him so. Just like an astronomer, I’m goofing off and lying when I’m trying to lay my calculations aside and start ad-libbing. The red giant may look fantastic in my mind’s eye, but it’s just not there.

And finally, there are some pieces that need to be cleared up slowly and methodically first. Here are the dusty ruins of an old dwelling. It’s obvious where exactly the hearth used to be: we can see the pipe section area, we can see pieces of ash. But what was the hearth like? How did it look? What was being cooked in it?

The kickstarter for Pathologic has earned $186,810 of  the games $250,000 goal with twenty five days let, and has a new update with some artwork.

My name is Gabriel but you may call me Meethos. 

This is the first time we meet each other, though, in all likelihood, not the last. I've brought you two scribblings today, something I did twelve years ago when the production of the original Pathologic was at its initial or, shall we say, wandering stage. You may have seen these somewhere before, for no particular reason at all apart from this awkward predilection people have for hoarding mountains of rather vacuous bric-a-brac that is largely irrelevant to the actual point of their concern. Generous piles of quite useless material are routinely mobilised as "concept art," or even "sketches" as if the quantity of stuff that may be put on display reflected actual effort taken to make the game. Which, rest assured, it does not.

This is the issue I would like to draw your attention to, really, this spurious classification that lays claim to most game-related artworks obscures the much more complicated psychic investments at work in the process of drawing for a game.

Let us go back to my two drawings for a while. It is all too easy to see that they are of no functional value whatsoever. The characters depicted are not the actual characters of the game. Their clothing lacks any serious detail. Importantly there is not a trace of a hint at what the game environment may look like. Instead, the characters are framed within some kind of a crude proscenium that defeats the very purpose a game production artwork may have. The reason is simple: the scribblings were never meant to be of such service.

The Pathologic kickstarter has made $169,162 of  the games $250,000 goal with 28 days left, and has a new update about the tabletop version of the game.

I’m Liu Sukhinina, and my job is making Pathologic the tabletop game. It’s time to come out of the shadow and tell you a little bit more about what it looks like. 

First of all, please keep in mind that while the visual and narrative design of the tabletop game is created by the Ice-Pick team themselves, its gameplay is being developed by a different team that has more experience with board games. The team is: Fuad "Funt" Kuliev, Andrey "Lenoran" Salik, Elena "Joker" Vishina, and me. We’ve been making games for more than seven years. Each of us has their own experience and tastes, but if there’s something we do have in common, it’s our love for original Pathologic and desire to make a great engaging game based upon it. 

Making a tabletop Pathologic game is hard. There’s too much story, too much detail, too much weird charm that’s hard to put into words and that we desperately want to keep. We’ve tried different approaches, but in the end decided to use the main plotline of original Pathologic, the plot points and characters you know and love.

Thanks to Spoonfull & Pladio I have have news about a new kickstarter project from Ice-Pick Lodge to raise money for a remastered release of Pathologic.

The good news is the game is already half funded.

Pathologic is a plot-driven survival open-world adventure game.

A mysterious and deadly disease breaks out in a remote town built upon old tanneries and butcheries. Whilst the disease can be identified by physical symptoms, its roots and origins remain mysterious. The disease is highly infectious and deadly. It affects the neural and the blood-circulating systems, crippling both body and mind.

To fight the epidemic the local authorities first send a learned doctor, then an inquisitor ordered to assess the situation, then a military commander. The first has to investigate the disease and find an optimal solution; the second has to save as many lives as possible while executing said solution; the third has the right to exterminate the whole Town should the others run out of options.

Along with the authorities’ agents two volunteers find their way through the Town along with the learned doctor, who goes by the name of The Bachelor. One of them, The Changeling, is a strange girl who believes she can heal with her hands, and the other, The Haruspex, is a talented amateur who’s fond of experimental surgery.

Taking on the role of one of these doctors, you’ll explore the town, its weird traditions, and the complex relationships of its inhabitants. You will only have twelve days to defeat the invisible enemy called the Sand Plague.

Time will become one of your most precious resources. Choices will haunt your every step. You’ll want to get closer to your goal, but sometimes it’ll all come down to mere survival. In a time when everyone is in danger, would you lend a gun to a person who may use it with ill intent? Would you try to save someone who claims they don’t need to be saved? Would you share your medicine with important figures who will unveil the Town’s numerous secrets in return, or would you rather help an ordinary stranger in need? Or maybe even selfishlykeep the pills in case you get sick? And sooner or later you will—Pathologic is a bleak and harsh survival adventure that’ll make sure of it.