Pathologic 3 News

Sorry Pathologic 2 fans, but I am one of those people, the ones who say how much they like the look of Ice-Pick Lodge's pestilent immersive sim, but wish it was more willing to meet them halfway on the challenge front. It's not simply that Pathologic 2 is hard. I don't mind a game kicking my ass so long as it does it quickly. But the idea of playing a game for 40 hours only to spend that whole time slowly losing is just a bit too real for my liking...
Read more.

Hello.
We all know the feeling: you’ve already lost an argument and then, two days later, the perfect comeback pops into your head. Or you’re late for an important meeting because of traffic and think, “If only I’d taken the subway instead of a taxi!” And that’s to say nothing of more serious losses, which make you wish even harder that you could go back in time and set things right.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Pathologic 3 is a game that grants exactly that wish.

Today we’ll show you how to fix what normally can’t be fixed.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3199650/



You step into an unfamiliar town for the first time. You meet its residents, explore its districts, learn their customs. You encounter death. You find allies and make enemies. You commit irreversible errors. You face the consequences of your choices.

You bear responsibility. You live with it.

This is all a fascinating process, because failure in a video game isn’t as frightening as in real life. Yet even in games, people are sometimes so afraid of making mistakes that they reload saves, read walkthroughs, watch YouTube essays or quit entirely before reaching the end.

In Pathologic 3 we decided to flip that concept and look at mistakes from the other side. What if any mistake could be undone — like in the fantasies above? Walked into a dead end — turn back, and take another path?



What would we learn about the price of decisions and errors then?



A renowned doctor from the capital arrives in a steppe town in search of immortality. Instead of an immortal man, he finds a corpse. Instead of eternal life, an epidemic of a monstrous disease. The town descends into chaos and dies in twelve days. The end.

Pathologic 3 begins in the middle of that story. You’ve already made every possible mistake, taken every wrong turn. The plague tears the town apart, key figures are dead or have turned against you, and catastrophe is just around the corner. There is no hope.

…And at that moment you gain the power to rewind time and attempt to save the town — by making different choices.



Like in previous games, you will study the town and try to save its inhabitants from what seems inevitable: examine patients, issue harsh decrees to fight the epidemic, visit plague-ridden districts. And if time corners you, you will rewind and try again.

Unlike previous entries in the series, now you must fight for every new day of the town’s life, because the story keeps trying to end prematurely. You need to find a vaccine as early as possible; your diagnostic skills and medical knowledge will be crucial.



The narrative frame is: Dankovsky is interrogated about what happened to the town. He’s blamed for everything but what exactly happened isn’t always clear.

Battling a plague is no child’s play. No one trusted you. People barely learned to wash their hands, yet you had to invade their private lives: impose forced quarantines, curfews, burn down entire districts, punish those who broke the decrees.

Dankovsky will be accused of failures, cornered: he’ll have to change his testimony to defend himself. Confronting unexpected consequences, he must choose other paths until he assembles a version of the world that suits his will. Because, as we know, any choice is right so long as it’s willed.



We aimed for as few obviously good or bad decisions as possible. Many stakes are hidden: sometimes you only know that “the price will be something important,” but what exactly (and whether it’s worth it) will be revealed later. In a game with linear time that would feel cruel; the ability to rewind lets you explore the unknown boldly and err without fearing permanent ruin.

Study the possibilities. Build theories and test them. Own the consequences.



Within the game world you need something called Amalgam to travel to another point in the story. It can be:
• obtained by completing quests;
• “taken” from those beyond saving (euthanasia);
• harvested by breaking mirrors every reflection doubles life, and therefore time.

(What Amalgam is and where it comes from will be explained in-game by the Kain family – if they feel like it.)

Spend Amalgam and leap into the past: for example, jump from Day 5 back to Day 3, save a doomed character — and return to Day 5 in an altered reality.

If the result displeases you, the updated Mind Map comes into play, letting you manipulate memory: erase an entire branch of events and try a different combination. In other words, if one decision bothers you, you can go back and change only that, leaving the rest of the day untouched — provided the events aren’t logically linked.



These jumps in narrative and time aren’t an optional gimmick — they’re the essence of the game. Certain endings, locations, and crucial story answers unlock only after you arrange specific combinations of events. It’s the path from hostage of circumstance to a person trying to build the perfect puzzle of occurrences. Assemble the world into a single riddle — and become something greater.



We continue gathering feedback and polishing the Amalgam mechanic, the balance of jumps, and quest overlaps.
Some details above may change by release, but the desire to explore mistakes and rewrite fate will remain at the heart of Pathologic 3.



It’s the perfect TIME to add Pathologic 3 to your wishlists.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3199650/

Timing the stage,
Ice-Pick Lodge

Hello.

The release of Quarantine was a new experience for the studio. We’ve made demos before (The Marble Nest for example) but we’ve never gathered feedback this systematically. Hundreds of thousands of players tried the prologue, and we got to hear their thoughts: via the Steam community, on social media, and of course, in the survey. Quarantine helped us test new mechanics that will appear in Pathologic 3 and draw some valuable conclusions.



Even Quarantine itself, which we don’t plan to update further, received rebalanced difficulty, QoL improvements, and several HUD variants after launch. But our main goal, of course, was to figure out what and how to calibrate in the main game.

Oh, and by the way, add Pathologic 3 to your wishlist! It’s the easiest way to stay updated on development news.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3199650/Pathologic_3/

[h2]Hospital gameplay[/h2]

The medical detective gameplay (examining patients and diagnosing them) is clearly the highlight of the prologue. That’s obvious from both the feedback and the survey ratings. Good news: there will be a lot more of it in the main game! Of course, getting to know eccentric townsfolk and grappling with the existential drama of human boundaries won’t go anywhere, but you’ll also have to engage deeply with the tragedies and illnesses of ordinary people. We can’t even say “way more than before,” because, well, this mechanic simply didn’t exist before.

In the full game, these diagnostic stories will be more freeform than in the demo (where we were teaching the player, so mistakes were practically not allowed). We’re already experimenting with ways to make symptom logging (and therefore diagnosis) more convenient and engaging.

[h2]Localization[/h2]
Our plans haven’t changed: we hope to include English, Russian, German, Simplified Chinese, Italian and Brazilian Portuguese at launch.

This is the first time a Pathologic game will launch with localization beyond Russian and English. The script had a lot of words, and writing quality matters deeply to us. That makes localization hard, but we’re committed to making the game more accessible for a broader audience. If we manage to expand it further, we’ll let you know!

[h2]City traversal[/h2]
The main question after Quarantine: what’s up with the city? Why couldn’t you move through it without loading screens? And how will that change in the full game?



…Why change a game where everything “worked”? Why not just write a new story in the same setting? We know some players would’ve liked that just fine. But for us that wouldn’t be enough. Not creatively (there’s already a game about digging through Gorkhon’s trash cans), and not commercially: sequels to indie games statistically sell much worse than the originals, and we’re making a sequel to a sequel. Just repeating ourselves? That’s a dead end.

But trying new things is in the studio’s DNA. And that led us to the idea of a new kind of game — about a person lost in time, with narrative structure and space-time torn to shreds. That presentation will stay. It’s a core part of the concept — it can’t be changed. (And technically, it can’t be reversed at this point.)

What will change in the full game, however, is the feel of the city. More specifically:

• Route choice — this already exists, but was limited in Quarantine. Navigating the city should always feel like a small puzzle for Dankovsky.
  
• Non-linearity — don’t forget, events will continue to occur simultaneously in different parts of the map. Even within one district, multiple things can happen — sometimes even conflicting ones.
  
• Location content and situations — a lot more, and far more varied. Quarantine was a parade alley: a glimpse at the game, not the game itself. Many features that will be in Pathologic 3 didn’t make it into Quarantine.
  
• City impact — the effects of your decrees will be visible. (Told everyone to wash their hands? They’ll be standing there, washing!) That’s also part of the city connection: issuing an order and seeing it come to life. It’s an important aspect of Dankovsky’s path.
  
• Immersion… well, let’s talk about that in more detail.
  

[h2]Immersion[/h2]

While the Haruspex sank into the flesh of the city, the Bachelor sinks into both the city and his own mind. We believe it’s possible to create a consistent sense of presence — even without consistency in time and space. You can doubt where and when you are, and still not lose the thread of your thoughts.

That sensation is our goal in Pathologic 3.

[h2]Optimization[/h2]
Even over a few Quarantine patches, we significantly improved performance. But the main round of optimization for the full game is still ahead. In other words — we’re planning for things to get much better.

[h2]Apathy/mania[/h2]
Dankovsky’s mental state is a new mechanic. In short: we’ve seen that the overall concept works, but it’s not yet well-balanced (we’re working on it) or well-explained (we’ve improved it a bit with patches and HUD variants, and we’ll keep working on it). By release, we aim to fine-tune this “mental metabolism” so that it’s exactly as unnerving as we want: no more, no less.

[h2]Will there be an FOV setting in the full version?[/h2]
Yes.

[h2]Will the content from Quarantine remain in the full game?[/h2]
Originally, we planned to use Quarantine as the game’s intro. But we now believe we can make a smoother, prettier intro that introduces mechanics earlier. So most likely, some scenes from Quarantine will show up later in the game as flashbacks — but not at the beginning. As a complete experience, Quarantine will remain separate.

(Don’t worry — that means more Seraphima and Platon, more Inspector and Capital — not fewer!)

We’ll also give you a heads-up: the prologue’s store page will be taken down closer to the full game’s release.
Everyone who already added it to their library will still be able to play it — so make sure to grab this piece of the story while you can.

[h2]To sum up[/h2]
Quarantine turned out to be an interesting and very useful experiment — one we hope will help make the full version of Pathologic 3 even better. Thank you to everyone who took part.



From now on, we’re focusing on further development of the full game.
The prologue will remain available until… well, that’s not important. We’ll notify you when it’s about to go.

Don’t forget to wishlist and follow the main game’s page so you don’t miss any news about its development:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3199650/Pathologic_3/

See you soon.

We’ll need a wider curtain for what comes next,
Ice-Pick Lodge

Hello, dear friends.

Today, we are thrilled to announce that Pathologic 3: Quarantine, the free prologue to the upcoming game, is now available.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3389330/Pathologic_3_Quarantine/

This is your first glimpse into Pathologic 3.
The Bachelor arrives to the Town-on-Gorkhon for the first time, discovering its secrets and inhabitants. Or does he?
The prologue offers a chance to explore the transformed world of the game, some of its new mechanics, characters, and locations.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Save a town from a mysterious plague.
Learn the stories of its unusual inhabitants.
Shape their lives with your decrees.
Diagnose patients. Face the Plague.
Connect the dots.
Find out who killed the immortal man.
Correct your mistakes in the past.

Welcome to Pathologic 3.

The first run begins,
Ice-Pick Lodge

nnounced in October 2024, Pathologic 3 promises to blend the notorious weirdness of the Pathologic series with a new twist: Time travel, enabling players to "revisit key events and alter them" in hopes that things will turn out slightly less awful than they did the first time around. We still don't have a release date, although it's slated to be out in 2025, but we'll soon be able to get a taste of what's coming in Pathologic 3: Quarantine, a free prologue chapter that's set to arrive in March...
Read more.