Biweekly Update 03 - The Swarm

We have a Christmas gift for you! It's been two weeks and you know the drill: time for a biweekly update. This week we are bringing in a whole new playstyle – summoning. Tired of getting outnumbered all the time? With the new weapon and organelles, you can become the swarm yourself.

New Weapon and Organelles

This batch of new toys features an array of auto-attacking tools - let your minions do all the fighting for you!

Weapon

• AddedNidublastThrow an army at your problems with this new gun that spawns minion

Internal Organelles

• Swarm Nidus: Spawns weak and fast shooting minions to overwhelm with numbers

• Apex Nidus: Spawns one strong melee minion – quality over quantity

• Galvanic Weave: A net of lightning! Attacks connect to each other with an electric arc

• Toxisome: Chemical warfare with your attacks leaving behind a toxic trail.

• Necrolytic Igniter: Triggers explosions with enemy gibs. Even dead enemies can be useful!

• Galvanic Infuser: Electricfy your attacks and make them arc towards nearby enemies.

• Sinoatrial Node: Do you like rhythm games? Boost your damage when hitting on the beat of the music.

• Elusive Mitochondrion: provides overcharge as you dodge and weave through enemy projectiles

• Metabolic Mitochondrion: picking up loot doesn’t just give your resources – it gives you overcharge too!

• Vacuole: Stores overcharge so you can save it for later. Activate to release the charges, when you need a little extra oomph

Specialized Skill Trees

We want you to have even more flexibility in your gameplay, so we gave each type of pathogen their own plasmid skill tree. You can now customize your playstyles specific to the pathogen of your choice!

Holiday Bonus

Christmas is coming and the human host is celebrating. Even the immune cells are feeling festive with their new hats! (We're crashing their party though.)

Teaser

Before we go into the patch notes, here’s a little teaser of what Roberto, Pathogenic’s amazing artist, has been working on. He's been the mastermind behind the art of Pathogenic's levels, organelles and all organisms, and there’s so much he has in store for you all.

Steam post image A sneak peek at the intestine, a labyrinth of danger awaiting your pathogen’s arrival.

The editor looking a little different, doesn’t it?

Full Patch Notes

Aside from the new content, this patch also introduces a myriad of rebalancing, UI adjustments and visual improvements. See the full details below:

Content

Weapon

• Nidublast

Organelle

• Swarm Nidus

• Apex Nidus

• Sinoatrial Node

• Galvanic Weave

• Elusive Mitochondrion

• Metabolic Mitochondrion

• Vacuole

• Necrolytic Igniter

• Galvanic Infuser

• Toxisome

Metaprogression

• New plasmid skill trees for the Helminth and the Fungal Spore

• Moved specialized plasmids for Bacteria to the sides of the tree

Gameplay

• Make cursed chest payouts chances for better rewards higher

• Remove recuperative mitochondria from starting pool

• Shops now sometimes have a reroll machine

• Range and overcharge strength upgrades are now additive instead of multiplicative

• Improve beam thickness scaling with damage

• Improve lightning beam homing

• Very slightly buff the rock and the wall boss

• Fix broken chronosome overcharge that didn't do anything before

Balance

• Increase scaling of DNA needed to level up to 3

• Increase Golgi Apparatus base damage from -30% to -10%

• Golgi Apparatus now also triggers on missed hits

• Increase Sentry Polyp's i-frames from 0.8s to 1.2s

• Reduce sympathetic detonator base damage from 120% to 100%

• Reworked Toxic Flagellum to deal damage every 0.5 seconds

UI

• Updated DNA bar

• Moved UI to the bottom left

• Actives can now be bound to the secondary fire button

• Added UI hint for aiming with the controller

Visuals

• Added glowing veins and other props to most rooms

• Lashes now have colors based on rarity

• Updated image for Cnidocyst, Galvanic Conduit, Resilinoplast bubble

• Added Santa hats

Music

• Cleanup stomach fight music

And that wraps up the third and final biweekly update of this year. Hope you all like the new toys and have fun with it during the holidays. Also, thank you for making 2025 such an amazing year for us – we can't ask for a better community and demo launch. It's been a great pleasure seeing everyone enjoying the game. If you have any new ideas and feedback for us, join us on Discord and let us know what you think! We'll be back with more updates in 2026. In the mean while, merry Christmas and have a happy New Year!