Pathologic 3's full release is set for early 2026, and there's a fresh Steam Next Fest demo to examine

Image credit: Ice-Pick Lodge

Shortly aft you decorativeness celebrating the accomplishment of adjacent year, a plague volition stone up. Well, the afloat mentation of Pathologic 3, a crippled successful which you play a doc tasked with redeeming a municipality from a mysterious contagion volition stone up. I'm definite that if you crook disconnected each of the lights and wage idiosyncratic to beryllium successful the adjacent country coughing each 2 minutes, the difference'll beryllium negligible.

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This afloat merchandise has taken a tiny spot longer than developers Ice-Pick Lodge initially planned, but it's conscionable hardly slipped retired of 2025, with January 9th, 2026, being the freshly revealed merchandise date. "That day is nailed down, screwed in, wrapped successful commitments, and it isn’t moving," the workplace wrote successful a Steam post.

Alongside this announcement, they've released the archetypal successful a bid of trailers, due to the fact that seemingly Pathologic 3's acold excessively "hard to explicate with keywords" for a azygous video to bash it justice. Multiple trailers seemingly aren't capable to execute that task either, arsenic the workplace person opted to merchandise a 2nd demo - pursuing Pathologic 3: Quarantine's accomplishment this March - arsenic portion of the latest Steam Next Fest.

"This demo is simply a portion from the opening of the upcoming game," Ice-Pick Lodge explained. "Daniil Dankovsky, the Bachelor, arrives successful the City-on-Gorkhon. He wants to conscionable an immortal man. And past everything goes sideways." Sounds similar the mean travel into town.

As Brendan discussed erstwhile helium delved into the plague doc sim's Quarantine demo, Pathologic 3 treads a much detective-coded plague-doctoring way than its scrappier predecessor Pathologic 2. Here's an extract from his impressions:

For each its stitched-togetherness, the Quarantine demo remains bully astatine gathering atmosphere. As a taster paper for the unreliable narrator communicative that is planned for the afloat game, it is flavourful and stacked with acquainted names and faces for long-suffering fans. As a showcase for what the subordinate volition beryllium doing it's besides thing of a disjointed mess. I'm penning retired galore of its features successful elemental terms, but the demo itself doesn't ever present them that way, with minimal tutorials and a UI that mostly lets you fig things retired yourself.

Pathologic 3's besides the archetypal introduction successful the bid the studio'll beryllium releasing aft the departure of laminitis and long-time Pathologic manager Nikolay Dybowski, who near amid allegations of kidnapping and maltreatment earlier this year.

The game's Next Fest demo tin beryllium recovered connected its Steam page.