Pathogen-X

About Pathogen-X

Pathogen-X was meant to be a return to the action survival horror of the late 1990s, and its makers name Dino Crisis, Resident Evil and Deep Fear as the games they had in mind. The demo came out on itch.io in February 2021, was featured on the Haunted PS1 Demo Disc that year, and went through several updates before development was put on hold later in 2021. The itch.io page now marks the project as cancelled; what remains is the demo, free for Windows.

The story is set up in a few lines. A virus known as Pathogen-X breaks out without warning in the Delta Corp research facility, infecting the staff and producing droves of violent mutants. You play Hawk, a special forces agent in a gas mask, sent in on a quick search-and-retrieval job: get into the lab, find the vaccine and get out before the facility is nuked.

The demo is an Arcade Mode. The sprawling underground lab, its enemies and its items are arranged at random on every run, so you cannot learn the way by heart. You pick up three main weapons and two secret ones, among them a USP pistol, a Mossberg shotgun, an M4 carbine, a Desert Eagle and a missile launcher, manage them in a classic inventory screen with an area map, and are given stats and a rank at the end. The makers tease a top rank of X.

The look is low-poly and late-90s, all flickering strip lights, green specimen tanks and red blood on the floor, and the mutants range from human-sized to much larger beasts. It is more of a fight than a hide: it suits players who like the shooting side of Resident Evil and Dino Crisis and want a quick, replayable run through a monster-filled lab.

How to play Pathogen-X

1. Download the free demo from its itch.io page and unzip it on Windows.
2. Start Arcade Mode and enter the Delta Corp lab as Hawk.
3. Explore the randomly arranged lab, picking up weapons, ammunition and healing items.
4. Use the inventory screen to equip and reload weapons and check the area map.
5. Find the keycard and the vaccine, fight off the mutants and reach the way out for your rank.

Tips

• The lab is rearranged every run, so check the area map often rather than relying on memory.
• Watch your ammunition counts in the inventory screen and switch weapons before a gun runs dry.
• Search the side rooms: two of the five weapons are secret.

Questions