Pathologic is an unusual game. It's a first-person psychological horror/survival game released by Russian studio Ice-Pick Lodge in 2005 that probably didn't make a hell of a lot of sense in its native language and was rendered absolutely impenetrable by a notoriously bad English translation. Few people who played it managed to get anywhere with it, and those who powered through to the end had no idea what the hell they'd just been through. It was wall-to-wall bonkers, and not in a fun, Monty Python kind of way, but in more of a "I just sustained a significant head injury and now these creepy emaciated children are trying to stab me" kind of way.
Despite all that, it managed to amass something of a cult following, and there was some legitimate interest around these parts when a remake was announced in 2014. Half a decade later it's just about ready for release (and confusingly named Pathologic 2). To give the uninitiated a taste of what it's all about a demo is now available to everyone.
The demo is short, covering an introductory segment and half a day as the Haruspex, one of Pathologic's three playable characters, but developer Ice-Pick Lodge said that it has "tried to structure it in such a way that it would be representative of the game and what people might find interesting about it." The standalone installer is small, but the full demo will require a download of about 11GB.
The Haruspex chapter of Pathologic 2, which I have no doubt will be every bit as weird as the trailer above promises, is scheduled for release on May 23.
