Pathologic 2 (Russian: Мор, romanized: Mor, IPA: [mˈor], lit. 'Pestilence') is a 2019 horror-themed role-playing game developed by Ice-Pick Lodge and published by tinyBuild. Pathologic 2 was originally conceived of as a remake of the developer's earlier 2005 video game Pathologic, but during development grew to encompass a much greater scope. The game has variously been described as a remake, a reboot and a remaster, and draws elements from all three. Three storylines had been planned for the game, mirroring the stories of the Bachelor, Haruspex and Changeling from the original Pathologic. The game was released with the story of the Haruspex on 23 May 2019. On 7 October 2024, it was announced that the Bachelor's route would instead be released as a standalone sequel, Pathologic 3, with a dramatically different gameplay and scope. The game released on 9 January 2026. A playable demo (released on 2 December 2016) called The Marble Nest with its own short story is freely available on the internet, as well as an alpha build which was released on 11 September 2018. Another playable demo was released on 24 April 2019, one month prior to the game's release. An updated version of The Marble Nest was released on Steam as DLC content on 28 October 2019. It was available for free to players who had owned the base game before this date.
Gameplay
Overview Gameplay in Pathologic 2 takes place primarily in the Town on the Gorkhon River, with occasional diversions for tutorial sequences and other one-off events. The town is divided into a number of districts named after various body parts, such as "The Gut" or "The Hindquarters", which may become infected or abandoned throughout the game as a result of the plague. The player's actions often directly affect which districts become infected with the plague and which remain healthy, and travelling through infected districts (which the player must do for some objectives or to scavenge supplies) greatly raises the player's own infection risk. Pathologic 2 takes place over day cycles, consisting of a day and a short night. During the day, most things will be available for the player to pursue and townsfolk will take part in their daily activities (as long as the district is not infected); shops will be open, children will be playing in parks and on streets and citizens will move around the city. After midnight, the night phase begins. Many events that could have occurred during the previous day will be locked off, either until the next day or sometimes permanently. During the night, many shops are closed, there are very few citizens other than night watchmen roaming the town, and the player may be attacked by roaming bandits, who may also rob any citizens caught unaware. Each night, a play is rehearsed at the theater in the center of the town. These short plays consist of bizarre and surreal scenes that cryptically predict future events. After the play is performed, the Dead Item Shop opens at a random location in the town, which allows the player to exchange normally useless "dead" items (such as wrappers, broken bottles or used bandages) for various, sometimes very rare, goods.
The player is able to obtain items in three primary ways; they can be purchased from shops or merchants, bartered for with townsfolk, or found in containers in the game world. Shops will often be the player's only source for very rare items such as high quality food, antibiotics or surgical equipment, but such items will usually come at an extremely steep monetary cost. Many items can be bartered for, which will allow the player to offload mostly useless items (such as candles, soap or religious charms) for useful ones. Each item in a barter has a barter value, which represents how much the person values said item, and the value of the offer against the request must be zero or positive to be accepted. The identity of a person determines what items they will be willing to barter and what items they will be interested in from the player's inventory. Workers, for example, will usually prioritize items like chisels or grindstones from the player, and be willing to give up metal scrap or tools that the player can use to repair their items. Finding items in containers is a way to acquire items without any material penalty, but comes with its own downsides. Trash cans will often have items in them, but they are rarely useful. Better items can be found inside houses, but getting to them requires either committing burglary and possibly becoming hated by the community, or breaking into an abandoned home that has been infected with the plague. The player can also acquire organs by performing an autopsy on a body, provided they possess a scalpel. Organs sell for very high prices and can be sometimes useful, but the process involved in obtaining them is frowned upon by the town, causing the player to lose their trust if it is done too many times. The player's activities are guided by the "thought map," which displays the thoughts and events of the main character in a chart that can be accessed at any time. These thoughts often point to locations on the map where the player can go to advance a certain plot thread or learn new information. When a thought thread has reached a conclusion, the connections will terminate in a thought with a yellow icon which summarizes the results of the endeavor. Pathologic 2 is designed specifically so that, especially on later days, the player does not have the ability to investigate every curiosity or thought in a single day and will often be forced to choose what they consider more important, with the knowledge that they may lose the chance to investigate certain things once the day ends.
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