Pathologic 2

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The first game was weird, but fun to watch on youtube. I backed the 2nd on kickstarter.

Pathologic 2 is an open world survival thriller set in a town that’s being consumed by a deadly plague. Face the realities of a collapsing society as you make difficult choices in seemingly lose-lose situations. The plague isn’t just a disease. You can’t save everyone.
Get to know it, winning the affection of the locals and gaining allies, or try to carve your own path alone. Explore the Town, its inhabitants, and their traditions; fight both the plague itself and its victims; try to make a difference before the time runs out.

Figure out who killed your father while fighting a deadly plague. It’s up to you to assume his mantle of the town’s Chief Medic.
Find your alleged twin sister. Was she the one who had brought the plague to this town?
The local kids are hiding something. Try playing by their rules.

You only have 12 days.

http://www.pathologic-game.com/

The game will now be released in 3 parts, the first is the Haruspex which comes in Q2 2019. I actually don’t mind that they are only releasing one character at a time, would be good to have a break between characters. The Haruspex was the one I played the most in the original, gonna cut me out some good organs.

I really liked Pathologic but I didn’t understand it and didn’t come close to beating it. I mean, people were dying and I didn’t seem to be helping or figuring out why, but the mood and the sense of place was really strong. I am definitely curious about the sequel.

This can’t not be awesome. Even the alpha demo was pretty great IMO.

How long was the alpha demo? I avoided it since I thought it was the actual full game only unpolished and buggy, but if it is something like the Marble Nest where it just gives you a taste I’d be up for it.

Ah the Marble Nest is what I played, I didn’t remember it had a fancy name.

From the Steam page I see there’s a public alpha, but I havent tried that:

I hope they’ve eased-up on the difficulty a bit, or whatever else it was that always stymied my attempts to get into it. I really want to love Pathologic, but plying it always seemed a bit much. It might not have been a difficulty issue, maybe it was some UI problem or something. The presentation was certainly rough. But what atmosphere!

If anyone is on a mailing list for Ice-Pick Lodge or TinyBuild you may have received an email to get a key for a demo for Pathologic 2 recently.

The demo features two intros, part of the first game day and the unique ending , which won’t be available in the final version of the game.

Full game releases May 23rd.

Put about 2 hours into the demo, but ran out of time before finishing everything. Might give it another go tomorrow, but it’s pretty awesome so far. Loving the atmosphere and soundtrack. The game is creepy as hell. Looks like there are ferrymen now to take you all over the town. That should help remedy one of the bigger flaws of the original, which were the tedious walks all the way across town. Looks like you can only save in certain places, which is good for me since I would savescum like crazy otherwise. I’m glad they are starting off with the Haruspex, he was the character I played the most in the original. It’s really cool how both familiar and new it all is. It still needs some extra polish and bug fixes though.

Nice trailer.

I hope this time the game is slightly easier.

Did they announce it for consoles?

Keys are up on the backer portal. FYI.

RPS didn’t like it, it seems to be as harsh survival game as the original

Would be so hard to have a fucking difficulty selection option?

It’s coming to PS4 at some point, and if you backed the KS, you can wait until that’s out to redeem your reward. I originally intended to get it there, but I may pull the trigger on the Steam version because I’m not sure I’ll have a PS4 when it’s available for it.

The comment section is full of people explaining that it’s supposed to be miserable. You’re supposed to hate playing it and resent every moment. It’s a design sensibility that’s supposed to be making the player feel like the protagonist does. I’m not sure I have enough hours in my days to seek out that kind of experience. It also seems like, from the review, that the miserable gameplay gets in the way of the worldbuilding, narrative, and atmosphere, which seems to undermine the point of it. I’m not sure this game is for me.

I’m actually into games about careful resource management and being always thrifty, but I’m not into feeling miserable and repeating sections of game a dozen of times until I do it pitch perfect. :(

Hah, I remember save-scumming like crazy in order to never get infected by the Sand Plague.

I mean, on the one hand, it kind of defeats the purpose of making a game about living through an epidemic, but on the other… well, I guess they didn’t make this game any less of an ordeal than the last one, it seems?

That’s why I liked not being able to save everywhere in the demo. In the first game I’d get hit by a cloud of plague and immediately reload the game. I’m gonna try to roll with the punches more this time around.

If there is a ton of outcry that it is too difficult I think they will patch it. I remember The Void ended up getting a difficulty patch.