sandplague

[sandplague]

20 years

It’s the anniversary of Pathologic’s release

[sandplague]

Pathologic 3 "Amalgama Trailer"

[sandplague]

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.

Pathologic 3 is a game that grants exactly that wish.

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

The Cost of Mistakes

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?

12 Days Until the End

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.

Be Ready to Answer for Your Actions

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.

Minutes of Life Are Worth Their Weight in Gold

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.

Everything Can Change

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.

[sandplague]

the one spoken line I still hear in my mind from Pathologic 2 no matter how much time has passed is "If only I could live a year longer, a whole, endless year..."

[sandplague]

Hi there,

It’s time for a new patch.

This time, we’ve added Chinese language support and the ability to switch between different HUD versions.

If you’ve played the prologue before, we’d love for you to try the alternative HUD options and share your thoughts in the comments.

Changelog

• Added Chinese language

• Added alternative HUD and HUD switching functionality

• Fixed audio bugs in infected areas

• Fixed interaction issues with procrastination objects

• Fixed disappearing microscope

• Fixed display of text in the settings menu

Thank you for all your feedback.

We’ll be back soon with news and updates about Pathologic 3!

Time to start rehearsing again,

Ice-Pick Lodge

[sandplague]

Hi there,

We continue to improve the prologue based on your feedback, and this time we focused on customization options and interface updates:

• HUD updated

• Map now correctly displays open and closed gates

• Added tutorials for HUD, health, mental metabolism, and Amalgam

• Added gamma settings

• Added separate language settings for voiceover and text (you can now listen to Daniil complain in his mother tongue while still reading everything)

• Added animation for kicking trash bins (yes, it’s a thing)

• Fixed bug with body display in inspection

• Fixed mouse and gamepad stick sensitivity

• Fixed issue with "double" button presses

• Fixed gamepad hint, added quick slot switching

• Fixed gamepad icons in the mindmap

• Fixed various graphical bugs

Thank you for your feedback!

In the near future, we’ll be adding Chinese localization to Quarantine.

As the “mental metabolism” system and the way it influences resources is unique, we’re experimenting with UIs to communicate them. A new (and probably not the last) version will be available in the next patch.

Meanwhile, the core team is returning to development of the main game. Stay tuned for more updates!

Replacing burnt-out spotlights,

Ice-Pick Lodge

[sandplague]

a full version of the bachelor's map background in quarantine, with all its scribbles in the margins. (more high quality version here). you can see other (former?) kin settlements on the other side of the river, that weren't visible on the patho 2 map.

i also found a translation for the italian text on the top right:

La colpa seguirà la parte offensa in grido, come suol; ma la vendetta fia testimonio al ver che la dispensa.

The blame, as usual, will be cried out against the injured party; but just vengeance will serve as witness to the truth that wields it.

it's from Paradiso, the third part of Dante's Divine Comedy. i don't have the full context, but a super reductive reading of it from what i just looked up is that Dante is essentially talking about what a persecuted martyr he is for being unfairly exiled from his home city of Florence. he was either exiled for "financial and political corruption", or because he was a "victim of the local and papal politics that roiled Tuscan cities", depending on what search result you believe, lol.

i'm not sure what the russian(?) text at the bottom says because i can't read the cyrillic alphabet well enough, definitely curious about it though.

[sandplague]

Quarantine Hotfix №2

Crashes are gone!

Hi there,

Throughout the week, we’ve been working on a critical issue affecting quality of the gameplay: crashes.

We’re happy to let you know that the issue has been resolved, and a hotfix was uploaded yesterday. The patch is already available for download.

The main cause of the crashes has been fixed, but let us know if you encounter any new crashes in the game, we’ll do our best to address them in upcoming patches.

Next week, we’ll be back with a balance patch.

Have a great weekend!

Why does a theatre need a bouncer?

Ice-Pick Lodge

[sandplague]

haven't played the demo yet (is it bad)... what do you mean unsubtle

i've only had enough time to get to that point where you finish diagnosing the 3 townspeople (due to my own schedule but also my game keeps crashing lol) so I don't want to say if it's bad or good. so this is just my thoughts so far regarding the use of the term unsubtle. that's it not on the game as a whole or anything. I guess I can say it like this. Pathologic 3 quarantine demo compared to the marble nest (also dankovsky PoV) or patho2 imo this is a little bit like an original film vs its western market remake in regards to subtlety... this is spoilers for the beginning of the demo but i just need an example. in one of the beginning scenes you see these nightmare/hallucinations, they all do these played out "spooky twitchy movements" when you light bonfires and a generic sound effect. this can be cleaned up. you get to the train and a big one jumps down grabs you and kills by slamming you into the ground or something. compare it to how haunting that beginning of pathologic 2 was, or how dreamlike and defamiliarizing the bull in the house and Aspity's conversation was in the marble nest.

similarly with the survival mechanics, they're just way too goofy. the suicide animation is kinda cartoonish, especially for the amount of times you're going to dip down low enough to get it. that should be rare. the voice acting when taking stimulants sounds ridiculous, I don't need to hear this mf say "more thoughts...MORE THOUGHTS" if we didn't have to hear artemiy say "more meat...MORE MEAT" every time he ate. i thought the fact that dankovsky needed to eat way less in the marble nest was a more subtle way to show his declining mental state wrt survival mechanics. i think there's more mature ways to do this while still having him use drugs and keeping a "psychological" type system if they want. i knew i was making him take a shit ton of painkillers in pathologic original, i mean it was like I was using bulgakov's morphine as a strategy guide lol. he didn't need to say all this shit out loud in a wacky "unhinged" voiceover for me to understand that. what character is this...

the minimal voice over in the marble nest was OK, the amount they have it here is indulgent and needs to be edited. honestly i feel the same way about the Q-button "thoughts", it's revealing too much, some of it (along with some dialogue) feels out of character, like some cards should be kept close to the chest. i wish these were eliminated or heavily edited. if they want to keep the "thoughts" in, relate the mechanic more with the theater or something, the Mind Palace Floating Thoughts are not a creative way of relaying information for a game like this.

leaving the theater and just getting the message that was like "you diagnosed everyone correctly" was like......ok. lol. right now I also don't understand the pseudo-"fast" travel. you go 5 steps and have to stop anyway. but these seem like things that would be changed for final release? i'd play more to see what happens but since the update it crashes every time i open the theater doors. but imo a competent and hardline editor can fix a lot of these things i mentioned. as for everything that happens after the part ive played idk

[sandplague]

sorry I didn't realize post replies have been follower restricted here or something... i don't remember changing any settings. i fixed it

[sandplague]

is this like... incredibly un-subtle to anyone else

[sandplague]

Quarantine Hotfix №1

First fixes and plans on the next patch

Hello,

Quarantine only started yesterday, but today we’re already making some adjustments.

We've released a small hotfix that addresses a few issues (the ones we could fix quickly):

Added mouse sensitivity settings

Fixed a couple of bugs (for example, the revolver staying in aiming mode after death)

Slightly improved stability

Over the course of the week, we’ll be releasing a larger patch, where we’ll tweak the balance of “mental metabolism” (the Apathy/Mania scale), work on better explaining some of the more unconventional mechanics, and most importantly, try to resolve crashes.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t fix them in just one day. We’ve determined that the crashes are mostly caused by NVIDIA driver failures. Since we have to gather information on these crashes indirectly by reproducing them ourselves, it will take some time (and, sadly, unlike Daniil we can’t harvest it from the dying). At the moment we recommend playing the game on the latest NVIDIA drivers.

A huge thank you for your kind words and feedback in reviews and surveys. We’re reading everything carefully! It’s incredibly helpful to know what you think, so please keep sharing your impressions and filling out the in-game feedback form.

Clearing stones and flowers from the stage,

Ice-Pick Lodge

[sandplague]

what happened to Eva why did they greige her

[sandplague]

pathologic 3 demo quarantine released today march 17th

[sandplague]

IPL's statement

[sandplague]

Renata's tweet link, translation tweet link. the translator is right, Renata has been through an absolute living nightmare at the hands of IPL's head Dybowski. It's March now and I haven't seen anything from IPL in english regarding this, just posts about the new game, not that this would change his obscene and disgusting behavior that has already come to pass but it would at least be some sort of acknowledgment, removal or something. they seem to have someone skilled in english working PR lately so this should not be a barrier. there's really no excuse. i'll post it if they write anything but who knows after this long. ok here's the rest of the thread

[sandplague]

sorry i was in the hospital for quite a while so i'm just seeing all this disturbing news now, i'll repost it here in a bit