Biweekly Update 06: Intestine

Welcome back, Parasites!

The news you’ve all been waiting for: the Intestine is here!

In this update, we are adding a whole new area and a local co-op pathogen to the demo. Featuring native enemies and a unique layout, the Intestine presents a new set of challenges to your parasite’s invasion on the immune system. You can even explore it with a friend, playing as the Diatom that allows two players to control it at the same time!

Please note that Matt and Roberto are currently still working on refining the new Intestine area and the new Diatom pathogen. If you run into any issues, do let us know via Discord bug reports or the Steam forum discussion so we can look into them as soon as possible. With this out of the way, let’s check out what’s new in Pathogenic’s Demo.

The Intestine

A new area for the demo! The layout of the Intestine is rather different from the other levels, consisting one large main chamber that branches into smaller rooms to the side. New enemies lurk around every corner, ready to ambush your lone pathogen with lethal attacks, and you will even encounter several waves as you travel along the main chamber. Are you ready to face off this new challenge?

While there are still some kinks to be ironed out in the Intestine, we want to get this new area in your hands early so you can try it out asap, though some elements are still work-in-progress such as the soundtrack. Let us know what you think so we can continue to perfect the new level.

2-Player Co-op Parasite

The Diatom is a peculiar parasite that takes 2 players to control, essentially a local co-op game mode. Each player controls one half of the Diatom, each side having its own movements, attacks and dodging. Do be careful, for one half of the pathogen moving will drag the other half along, and conflicting movements might mean getting your pathogen stuck in awkward situations. Put your teamwork to the test as you and your partner will need to coordinate your actions to survive the lengthy journey through the immune system.

While regular online multiplayer isn’t available with Pathogenic, we recommend using the Steam Remote Play Together function to try out this new pathogen with your friends online. And similar to the Intestine, the Diatom is still in an experimental stage. That’s why right now there is no independent plasmid tree yet for this new parasite. Let us know if you have any feedback or issues with the Diatom to help this new pathogen evolve!

Full Patch Notes

We've also taken this chance to implement several improvements, balancing changes and fixes to the demo. For the complete patch notes, please see below:

Main changes

• Added the Intestine organ with new map generation, 6 new enemies, 2 bosses, 15 rooms

• Added Diatom, a 2-player local co-op parasite

• Both are experimental and will be polished in next updates

  • Music is not done yet for the intestine

  • Plasmid tree is not done for Diatom

Other Improvements

• Improved map generation, special rooms are now more spread throughout the map

• Unlocks now pop up when their condition has been fulfilled and are shown at the end of the run

• Daily challenge leaderboard can now be opened after finishing a run from the main menu and the run can be replayed (without leaderboard placement)

• Daily run score decreases on hit, changes to score are shown in the UI

• Improved loadout screen UX

• Glow should be not going out of control as much anymore

Balance Changes

• Instead of having bacteriophage kill an enemy, bacteriophage now places a status effect on hit enemies for 1 second. If the enemy dies with that status effect, it spawns more bacteriophages

• Increased bacteriophage damage and lifetime

• Increased Phagosome damage up on kill to 0.5%

• Slightly increased Spore Cannon damage and improved SFX

• The Vein is unlocked after beating the Stomach boss

• Added Resilinoplast to helminth's starting loadout

• Increased Gyrase Wheel damage

Fixes

• Fixed unlocks getting relocked

• Endospore now doesn't generate infinite HP with external omnireceptor slots

• Minions now spawn and teleport further from the player

• Fixed Vengeful Mitochondrion unlock