Pathogenic news & patch notes

Hey Parasites!

A MASSIVE thanks to all of you for such an incredible launch weekend! Seeing everyone playing our microscopic shooter and giving us so many kind comments and feedback these last few days really felt like a fever dream (or maybe the pathogen solved the puzzle and got to my brain?).

As of the time of this post, Pathogenic has reached 75,000k sales with Overwhelmingly Positive Steam reviews (95% positive and 1,000+ review count!), as well as a peak concurrent player count of almost six thousand!

We are super grateful to every one of you, whether you just joined the war against the immune system or you are a veteran parasite since demo launch. Appreciate all of you checking out Pathogenic and helping us shape the pathogens into what they are today.

And one more awesome piece of news: Pathogenic is officially Steam Deck Verified! Time to infect the host anytime, anywhere, and evolve the ultimate pathogen at the palm of your hand.

If you haven’t played Pathogenic yet, you can still pick up our game with a 20% launch discount, or even a bigger discount from some awesome bundles with our friends like Brotato, Everything is Crab and Voidling Bound. For those who enjoy our sick (pun intended) beats and concept art, we have a supporter pack for you to download all the OSTs and the artbook!

Once again, thank you, our dear community, for all your support along the way. The dev team is now hard at work fixing any issues that have popped up since launch. So if you have any feedback or suggestions, do let us know by commenting on Steam Discussions or on our Discord bug report channel!

We hope you’re enjoying the pathogens’ adventures in the human body. And if you are, please consider leaving a review for Pathogenic if you can, because it really helps us spread the pathogen across Steam!

Follow us on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram!

Hey Parasites!

Pathogenic has passed the 25,000 sales milestone within 24 hours after launch!

On top of that, our cellular roguelike shooter has reached 3,000+ peak concurrent player count. These are incredible numbers for a game made by a humble dev team of two. The pathogen truly is spreading everywhere! From the bottom of our plague-ridden hearts, a big thank you to each and every one of you for making Pathogenic such a viral (medically) success.

If you haven’t started infecting the human body, Pathogenic is now on a 20% launch discount. Be sure to pick up our game while it lasts! And check out some awesome bundles we’ve set up with other excellent indie titles, including Brotato, Voidling Bound and Everything is Crab!

We’ve also seen quite a few players discussing strategies and tips on the discussion board. Just want to mention that we have an official Discord where players talk about lore, share gameplay tips and show off crazy pathogens.

Finally, we really appreciate the glowing reviews and kind feedback so far. We can’t ask for a more active community to support our launch and help us keep improving the game. If you like Pathogenic, don’t forget to leave a review too as it really helps us push the game on the Steam (and spread the infection even further)!

Always remember, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Change Log

Matt has been grinding out updates since launch to catch any new issues, and you might noticed several patches have been implemented throughout the last 24 hours. Here's a compilation of the changes to Pathogenic all the way up to the time of this post:

New content

• ~20 new Stomach & Liver rooms; retinted Lungs backgrounds.

Accessibility & UI

• New Text Size setting (Normal / Large / Extra Large) under a new UI tab - defaults to largest on Steam Deck

• Added 30 and 45 FPS cap options.

• Graphics & physics settings are now saved per-machine and not synchronized with Steam Cloud

Balance

• Apoptosome damage 600 -> 800

• Continuous Laser now scales damage with charge

• Heart boss arcs are more forgiving to dodge

Quality of life

• Draft mutation picks (for amoeba and nanobot) that need placement can now be cancelled to refund the pick

• Ballistic Flagellum no longer fires over the level-up and pause screens

Fixes

• Fixed full-game owners getting stuck in "demo mode" and walled after the Liver.

• Fixed a blood-particle crash/hitch and a dense-Liver-room crash

• Added a deeper save backup

• Fixed localization errors

Hey Parasites!

The Pathogen is out of the petri dish.

Pathogenic 1.0 is OUT NOW.

You are a disease, a lone parasite waging a desperate war against the immune system. Choose one of our 7 distinct pathogens and fight through 6 vibrant organs of the human body, each with its own set of defenders. Loot and combine over 120 powerful organelles and mutations to craft game-breaking combos.

From the winding maze of the Intestines to the abrupt airflows in the Lungs, only the deadliest pathogen can survive this onslaught. And if you are big-brained enough, perhaps you can find your way into a secret level.

For those who are looking for more evolution possibilities, we've set up a Steam mod workshop for Pathogenic. Feel free to start experimenting and explore new potentials of infection!

Alongside the main game, we also have a supporter pack for those who enjoy our music and art! It contains a full collection of our 15 thematic soundtracks, and a concept art book looking behind the scenes of the game’s making. It is now available at an SRP of $9.99/£9.99/€9.99, with a 40% launch discount.

We are also spreading the plague to other developers. Here are a few viral (medically) and evolutionary bundles for you!

Our pathogen has come far, and we couldn't have done it without such an amazing community helping us grow. From the bottom of our plague-ridden hearts, a massive thanks to each and every one of you for all the support along the way, for all your encouragement and for the helpful feedback. We hope you enjoy spreading the infection in the human body and pushing the limits of evolution (or our game's performance).

Lastly, don't forget to join our Discord community! From tips and guides to git gud to sharing the most broken pathogen you can assemble, you'll find many fellow pathogens there! And follow us on YouTube, Twitter, TikTok for more Pathogenic news!

We've had some questions about the exact launch timing of the game tomorrow so we made this handy graph to let you know when the game will be available to purchase and play!

Release Times

• 5am PDT

• 8am EDT

• 1pm BST

• 2pm CEST

• 8pm CST

• 9pm KST

• 9pm JST

• 12am NZT

Official Soundtrack and Artbook

You may have seen yesterday that we shared a look at the artbook launching alongside Pathogenic tomorrow, but now we have a nice treat for you to tie you over until launch - we've made the official soundtrack available on YouTube! Of course, if you purchase the Official Soundtrack and Artbook, you will get access to the tracks, plus their loops as both MP3s and FLACs.

You can wishlist the official soundtrack and artbook here!

Discord

I also wanted to shout out to the game's Discord, where you can gather to share your Pathogens and discuss the lore of the game amongst other things! We also run regular server competitions with giveaways, like the banner contests in which participants not only get a free key, but also their cool screenshots displayed as the server banner!

Join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/vKEek8PBA4

And check out these cool entries from the last banner contest we ran!

Hey Parasites!

Just want to give everyone an update: Pathogenic's demo will go offline 2 hours later than announced, at UTC 17:00 today. If you want to do one last run before launch, there's still time!

While we're sad to see the demo go, the wait won't be long. We are only two days from launch, on this Thursday July 16!

A massive thanks to everyone (all 150,000+ of you!) for loving the demo so dearly and sharing all the helpful feedback and reviews on our game that really helped our pathogens evolve. Soon, you'll be joined by 2 new parasites with an array of new organelles and mechanics to conquer the human immune system, including all the upcoming organs. We're in the final stretch now, and the pathogens are almost ready to be unleashed upon the world!

One of the great things about the demo was seeing everyone take part in the daily challenges and leaderboards, which will be making a return in the full game! We've put some stats together, and in total, 24,216 unique players submitted a score to the leaderboard!

And for a bit of fun, we've totalled up the top 20 players by score across all demo leaderboards!

Rank

Player

Total Score

Leaderboard Submissions

🥇 1

76561198165337348

856,952

158

🥈 2

北落师门

775,570

153

🥉 3

StellarDevil

648,126

130

4

Da \-

'' - Bae

613,631

136

5

FDXFGC

604,720

131

6

Vandelo

559,587

122

7

iogurt422

548,060

110

8

tatsuo

546,302

117

9

Ian

544,234

122

10

++257++

513,886

117

11

brandonscottball2003

510,547

140

12

Bubble

502,784

84

13

阿修克斯

497,804

140

14

Funner33

495,905

133

15

Zheng在发光

492,892

107

16

290194979

474,705

112

17

V♠♠D♠♠

461,575

77

18

Lonewolfmk1

455,453

110

19

Warden Wolf

435,798

114

20

MaJasTer

433,611

151

Artbook and Official Soundtrack

We'd also like to share that we will be releasing a 43 page Digital Artbook and the Official Soundtrack alongside the game when it launches on Thursday. You can wishlist the DLC below and take a look at a couple of pages from the Artbook!

Hey Parasites!

Pathogenic has reached 100,000 wishlists!!!🥳

Thank you so much for supporting Pathogenic! The infection is spreading fast, and reaching this absolutely MASSIVE milestone means so much to us!

We can't ask for a more passionate community to get us this far. Every review, every piece of feedback, every broken pathogen you shared helped us shape the game to what it is currently, and what it's going to be on release.

Pathogenic will launch on 16 Jul 2026, and we're putting the final pieces in place during this last sprint. Please look forward to it, and wishlist our game if you haven't!

(Don't forget to join our Discord to discuss all things Pathogenic, and get tips to evolve the ultimate pathogen!(

A heads-up to all our fellow parasites: the Pathogenic demo will be taken offline on July 14th 15:00 UTC, exactly two days before launch.

We’ve contemplated this decision for a while. Seeing everyone enjoying the demo so much and sharing all the crazy builds has been a big part of our motivation to keep working on the game, and we will dearly miss all the ridiculous combos from your pathogens (until the full game comes out, at least). Unfortunately, as a small dev team of two, we simply don’t have the capacity to maintain the demo while working on the full game.

You might have noticed the demo has received multiple updates since Next Fest started. We’ve been continuously implementing optimizations and fixes, the very same ones added to the WIP full version, to make sure the demo properly represents the final gameplay. Now that Pathogenic is in the final sprint, simultaneously working on the full game and maintaining the demo is stretching us thin. 

That’s why we have decided to disable the demo, to shift the focus towards the full game instead of juggling between the two versions after release. Good news is that it will only be a couple days from launch, so the wait won’t be long. A massive thanks to everyone who tried our demo, left a review, sent us feedback, and, of course, wishlisted Pathogenic. Our pathogens have come a long way thanks to your passionate support for our demo, and we will miss it as much as you do.

That said, your infection in the demo still matters! All accumulated plasmids will be transferred to the full game, giving your pathogen a strong start to conquer the human body at launch. The pathogens are only hibernating for a couple days -- they will soon come back stronger than ever on Jul 16.

In the meantime, we’ll be sharing more news about the full game until launch! Stay tuned on our socials and/or join us on Discord for more info and/or talk about all things Pathogenic!

Discord, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok

Hey everyone, just wanted to let you know that Matt, developer and composer of Pathogenic will be in conversation with Hei Man from Slug Disco, Pathogenic's publisher, tonight at 6pm BST!

Thanks to all the submissions from our Discord community, we have quite a long list of interesting questions to delve into the making of Pathogenic and perhaps even the game's future plans. You can catch the livestream on YouTube here - why not stop by the chat and show your support!

Hey Parasites!

We are going into Next Fest with an update! Invade the human body with the shapeless Amoeba, experiment with new organelles, and more!

New Pathogen: Amoeba

The Amoeba is our latest playable pathogen in the demo. Unlike other parasites, it has no defining shape – literally just start out as a tiny blob of 3 organelle slots. While this gives the Amoeba a tougher start (tip: get stash slot upgrades for extra organelles), players will be able to add new organelle slots as the Amoeba levels up.

This means the Amoeba can grow into unique shapes to suit your specific builds. There are some restrictions in place to make sure it doesn’t break the game, but otherwise the layout and playstyle of the Amoeba are totally up to you.

New Organelles

In addition to the Amoeba, we’re adding new organelles for you to play with!

• Chromatophore Lens: Charge and activate to release a deadly laser beam

• Trophic Pseudopod: The first of pseudopods, a new type of organelles that automatically reach for the closest enemy to damage them and activate unique effects. This one in particular provides overcharge.

• Ballistic Flagellum: Shoot down your pursuers as you sprint or dash away. Perfect for kiting. This screenshot might exaggerate things a bit though – a Triosome is attached to multiply the projectiles.

Challenges

We know plenty of you have already played the 4 demo levels tens or maybe even hundreds of times. While new levels will have to wait for the full game, we do have a new challenge mode to spice things up for you.

In the starting loadout, you can now select challenges that modify your runs with special conditions. The demo currently has 4 of these new challenges to put your skills to the test. Do you have what it takes to conquer them all?

And before we go to the changelog, just want to remind you that Pathogenic has a local co-op mode to play with friends! While we don’t have online multiplayer, you can connect remotely by using Steam’s Remote Play Together function. Here's our video guide to setting it up:  

And that concludes our new patch! Hope you all enjoy playing and shaping the Amoeba with all the new content. Join our Discord to chat about tips and feedback for Pathogenic, and remember to keep an eye on our socials for the latest news on our game!

YouTube, Twitter, TikTok

Full Changelog

As usual, this update also contains a range of improvements, fixes, and balancing changes. See below for the full changelog:

Main Changes

• Added the Amoeba playable parasite

• Added 4 challenges to modify your run with

• Added 3 new organelles: Trophic Pseudopod, Ballistic Flagellum, Chromatophore Lens

• Added a separate plasmid map for the Diatom

• Added blood stream flows to the veins connecting rooms

• Added ???

Improvements

• Shaders now pre-cache on startup (with a loading screen) to cut in-game stutter

• Steam Workshop / mod support added

• Japanese and Korean localization added, Turkish coming this week

Balance Changes

Player

• Dodge cooldown reduced: 1.3s → 1.2s

• Taking a hit and entering a room grants a slightly longer invulnerability window

Organelles

• Bacteriophage Launcher: damage now scales with rarity; stamina cost 20 → 25; spawned minions have less HP

• Nidublast: damage 16 → 20; spawned minions have less HP

• Pyroflagellum: damage reduced

• Rotary Extruder: stamina cost reduced (0.7 → 0.3)

• Cluster Ejector: stamina cost 5 → 6

• Oxidator: now applies a burn-on-hit (doubled at Epic+ rarity)

• Dorsal Lysosome: backstab damage bonus reduced

• Echosome: splash damage slightly reduced

• Triosome: charge damage bonus slightly reduced

• Elusive Mitochondrion: detection area is now much bigger and is easier to trigger

• Entrant Mitochondrion: charge duration reduced at higher rarities

• Metabolic Mitochondrion: charge duration 2.5s → 2.0s

• Regenerator: heals slightly less often

• Mutagen: produces DNA slightly slower

• Ossificator: armor builds slightly slower at higher rarity

Enemies

• B-Cell HP: 900 → 750

• Dendritic Cell HP: 1400 → 1000

• T-Cell speed buff reduced

Mutations

• RNA Retriggering removed from the random mutation pool (still available as a reward)

• Additive Momentum reworked: bonus now scales off lash thrust instead of your movement speed

Fixes

• Out-of-bounds recovery: players or bosses stuck in walls are detected and pushed back into the room

• Degenerate levels regenerate instead of crashing

• Every floor now reliably has a shop

• Many crash and stability fixes

• Performance optimizations

• Leaderboard fix

Making the world a better place

Hey Parasites! Pathogenic is in Bullet Fest now!

Play the Pathogenic demo in Steam's Bullet Fest as a lone parasite, and fight the bullet hell by becoming a bullet hell yourself. Build broken combos, and obliterate the immune system with the ultimate pathogen.

With more than 75,000 wishlists and over 100,000 demo players (thank you for your support!), the plague is multiplying quick. Try our demo now and get ready for the Amoeba, a new playable pathogen coming soon in the upcoming Next Fest update!

ATTENTION PARASITES!!!

Pathogenic is officially launching on 16 Jul 2026!!!

That's right, we have a release date! Check out our new trailer, featuring gameplay in new levels with new organelles coming soon to the full game:

The Lungs and Heart will be completing our full set of vital organs for you to infect. These new areas will have their own thematic defenders and environmental hazards, posing unique challenges to your pathogen’s conquest. And don’t forget, new levels also mean new boss fights. Are you ready to take them on?

Good new is, your pathogens will also receive a boost to their arsenal. A total of 7 parasites will be playable in the full game, with more organelles, mutations and layout evolutions available at their disposal. We can’t wait to see you breaking our game with all kinds of ridiculous builds.

And alongside the release date, we have another surprise for you when Steam NEXT Fest arrives next week.

New Pathogen Incoming

The shapeless Amoeba will join the demo soon as a new playable pathogen in the upcoming Steam Next Fest update. Unlike all other existing pathogens, the Amoeba does not have pre-defined shapes. Instead, you can add new organelle slots and shape the Amoeba yourself as your pathogen grows with every battle.

This new pathogen will start as a tiny blob. As you fight through the human body, your pathogen will grow, adding new organelle slots and combo possibilities. Customize and define your parasite as you evolve, and design a truly one-of-a-kind pathogen each run.

Alongside the Amoeba, we'll be adding additional challenges and language support in the Next Fest update as well. For those of you looking for tougher battles, 4 new challenges will be coming to the demo to put your skills and knowledge to the test. Japanese and Korean will soon be supported, just to make sure the pathogens can spread across the world regardless of languages and borders.

Thank you again for waiting so patiently and supporting our small indie project throughout this infectious journey. The incubation period is almost over, and we can't wait to unleash this deadly plague of broken combos and over-the-top destruction upon Steam.

In the meantime, we'll continue sharing sneak peeks of our upcoming content and community submissions on our socials. Join our Discord to encounter fellow parasites, and follow us on YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok to get the latest news!

Hey Parasites!

Throughout the past month, we’ve been making a lot of progress with the new levels and organelles for the full game. We don’t have a demo update for you just yet, as we are deep inside the human heart, mapping out the maze of arteries.

What we do have, though, is an almost-complete Lungs level all set for the full game, and the Heart, which we’re working on right now. Below is an early preview at some of the dangers in the Lungs, as well as a sneak peek at the Heart.

Lungs Early Preview

Lungs literally hold the breath of life. Air flows in and out of this crucial organ every single second to keep us moving, which is why air will be the element we want to feature in traps and enemy attacks.

Inspired by the air sacs of lungs in real life, this future level will be laden with traps that harness the power of air flow. Once triggered, every organism nearby will be sucked in, sometimes with an explosive follow-up. Will it be the doom of your pathogen? Or an exploitable opportunity to capture your enemies?

New immune cells patrol this new organ, and they will be deadlier than ever with special air-based attacks and abilities. Supported by the already-in-game Adaptive immune cells, your pathogens will be expecting a tough fight.

Sneak Peek into the Heart

With the Lungs mostly complete, we are moving our focus towards the next level: the Heart. As one of the two most important organs inside our bodies, if the Heart goes down, so will the human body.

The immune system will be mustering its most powerful defenders in one last desperate attempt to shut down your infection. And even if you get past these cells, there will still be one final gatekeeper standing between you and victory…

Concept art of ????

The new levels are coming together nicely over the last few weeks and we're very happy with development progress, More organelles and other new content are gradually added to the game and an exciting piece of news is right around the corner. We don’t want to spoil all the surprises just yet, so be sure to follow us on our socials to get the latest news of Pathogenic, or join our Discord server to discuss strategies and share your builds with fellow pathogens!

YouTube, Twitter, TikTok

Hey Parasites!

Just want to let you guys know that we don’t have an update to Pathogenic's demo today, as we’ve been busy developing new content for the Lungs and Heart in the full game. That said, with all the work on the new levels, we’re really excited to share what’s going on behind the scenes in today’s dev blog. Shall we begin?

Fleshing Out the Lungs

The Lungs is coming together nicely behind the scenes, as you might have already seen in our previous posts with an early preview of the level. We have a great basis to build upon, and now the focus is on expanding it with thematic props and mechanics.

This new level draws a lot of inspiration from the lungs' air sacs, in which our blood exchanges oxygen and carbon dioxide to sustain our bodies. In Pathogenic, they will appear across the Lungs level, sometimes as mere props, and sometimes an impactful traps.

And of course, you can't have Lungs without air, though just like everything else, too much air can still be lethal to the human body. That's why, while we are incorporating air into this area, it will only appear in small doses each time.

Concept Art of the Beating Heart

Here's a mock-up of what the heart level will look like. As the beating core of the human body, this organ will be pulsing with life, literally. We aim to create a dynamic and everchanging environment engaging with elements of heartbeat and blood flow, not only in visuals but also in gameplay. We even have some props drawn up already!

With a new area comes new enemies. We’ve been exploring new designs for macrophages of the Heart level to give you a unique combat experience that matches the importance of the organ itself. These new immune cells will possess unique abilities. We don’t want to spoil the surprise just yet, so further details will still be a secret for now!

Pathogens of Our Community

Something else we want to share today is our appreciation for you, Pathogenic's community. Ever since the demo came out, you all have come up with all kinds of experimental organelle combos that we never even imagined, and we love every crazy pathogen build you guys shared on our Discord server. Here's a few of the cool pathogens we came across:

Let's start with a this deadly laser beam from zOmbiesrock. The size of your projectiles scales with their damage, so a laser beam THAT wide is certainly packing a heavy punch.

Light contorts with way too much gravity with this build of Attractor and Magnetosome, made by pAInter. I think they're trying to create a point of singularity here.

A particular popular combo is the metabolic mitochondria feedback loop. Here's one from Who am I, filling the entire map with a ridiculous amount of armor and HP hearts. Guess it doesn't matter how many hits you take if you can simply out-heal the damage.

And one final parasite from ThatPurpleMage, taking the "Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell" way too seriously. Sir, that's a whole nuclear factory in your cell.

From perpetual loops of overcharge to explosive damage covering the entire screen, time and time again you've pushed the limits of our pathogens (and sometimes the game itself) to incredible lengths. We always love seeing you post new, broken parasites, and we just want to say a big thank you for being so passionate about infecting the human body and messing around with evolution.

That's all for this dev blog. We hope this gets you excited for what's to come in Pathogenic, as we continue to work on the full game. If you're also interested in sharing your pathogen, or if you want to share your thoughts on our game, join our Discord of parasites! Or follow us on YouTube, Twitter or TikTok for more news on Pathogenic!

Hi Parasites!

Hope you are enjoying the new battles with the Adaptive Immune System! We’ve received a lot of your feedback since the last patch, and today’s update will be focusing on addressing these concerns with a wide range of improvements on UX and gameplay balance.

Evolution Previews

The main change this time is the evolution preview function. You can now switch between all the different layouts and experiment with organelle combos when choosing your evolutions. Before confirming your evolution by pressing “Evolve”, you are free to swap to another evolution type and preview different outcomes.

UX Improvements

The community feedback has provided us with a spectrum of insights on how to make the gameplay more comfortable with everyone, and this patch includes a series of UX improvements to address some of the mentioned issues. Here are two of the more important ones:

Not sure which organelle to pick after a boss fight or in a room with organelle rewards? When picking up organelle rewards, as long as you don’t equip them on your pathogen, you can cancel the selection by quitting the editor panel! Though, do beware that mutation rewards do not benefit from this change and cannot be cancelled.

Some players also expressed confusion about the term “modifier”, as this word sometimes might be misinterpreted as an effect when we actually intended it to mean a specific type of organelle. We’ve renamed the term “infuser” to avoid further confusion.

Full Patch Notes

We’ve added many more improvements in this update, including easier seed sharing, better indication of important information, optimizations, and, as usual, numerous balance changes. For more details, please see our full patch notes below, and let us know what you think in the comments or in our Discord server!

YouTube, Twitter, TikTok

Main changes

• Evolutions now give have a confirmation preview phase where you can try out different organelle builds

UX Improvements

• You can cancel an organelle pickup before equipping

• Warning when starting a run with empty organelle slots

• Attack Modifiers renamed to Attack Infusers

• Cursor size setting (small / normal / bigger / biggest)

• The seed is now clickable to copy it to clipboard

• Right stick scrolls menus on gamepad

• Plasmid menu and shop flashes the cost when you can't afford an upgrade

• Argentic Coating now shows current damage bonus

• Flagella show their thrust power

• Choose one rewards now show a "Choose" tooltip instead of "Pick Up"

Other Improvements

• New explosion visuals for neutrophils

• Improved lighting, enemies shouldn't overglow anymore

• Codex loading times improved

• Many CPU and GPU optimizations and stability optimizations, especially around level generation and panic recovery

• Decreased zoom in the intestines

Balance Changes

• Item rooms re-tuned: 1-item rooms rarer, 2-item rooms more common

• Toxisome now spreads many toxins when triggered by Explosive Charge

• Pyrosome damage slightly reduced

• Photoreceptor attack speed increased

• Dorsal Lysosome: Backstabs get detected more consistently now

• Lateral Vent stamina cost reduced

• Galvanic Infuser overcharge bonus slightly reduced

• Stamina mutation is now more common

• T-cell buffed enemies now take 4x less damage instead of 10x

• T-cells also stick to and buff B-cells now, not just macrophages

• Helper T-Cell HP: 600 -> 450

• Helper T-Cell Armed HP: 800 -> 600

• Dendritic cells no longer heal/buff each other

• Dendritic Cell HP: 2000 -> 1400

• Spawner Neutrophil HP: 550 -> 450

• Kupffer Cell (boss) HP: 18500 -> 17500

• Diphyllobothrium (segmented worm): only the head segment deals contact damage now; body segments are safe to touch

Fixes

• When the player or a boss gets stuck in a wall, this gets automatically detected and the soft body gets pushed inside the room

• Fixed audio volume sometimes getting stuck near zero after dying

• Secondary key mapping persists after a save

Hey Parasites!

Thanks for waiting! The new immune cells are now in the demo, alongside a complete codex of organelles, mutations and enemies!

Adaptive Immune System

With your parasite leaving multiple ravaged organs in its wake, the Adaptive Immune System is activated to send out more specialised immune cells against the invading pathogen. Helper T-Cells, B-Cells and Dendritic Cells now appear in the Liver level (and in the full game, later levels as well) as the human body attempts put an end to your adventure.

Helper T-Cells

Like their real-life counterparts, the Helper Ts activate and buff other immune cells to combat infection. Macrophages attached with the Helper T Cells are enraged, fighting with heightened fervour. Now we have a question for you: would you target the mount (Macrophage) first, or the rider (Helper T)?

There are two Helper Ts variants: one packs extra fire power, while the other unleashes a vengeful surprise when its Macrophage companion dies.

B-Cells

B-Cells are responsible for producing antibodies that target invading pathogens, which translates into a homing missile attack in gameplay. These tracking projectiles will follow your parasite’s every move until they crash into an obstacle or, eventually, fade away.

Don’t get too comfortable just because you dodge a shot once – it might come back!  

Dendritic Cells

Dendritic Cells, the scholars of the Adaptive Immune System. While in real life they are the ones activating the Adaptive Immune Response, in Pathogenic they appear as healers. Their far-reaching tendrils can connect with other immune cells, shielding and healing their allies in combat.  

A small tip that you might already knew: always go for the healer first in a group fight.

Codex

We've added a Codex to help you keep track of everything you've collected! It contains a everything about our organelles, mutations and enemies in this database. You can now locate any specific organelle with the filtering system, or browse our catalogue to learn more about your enemy, as long as you’ve discovered them in your previous adventures.

One more thing: some of the advanced organelles are now locked, and can only be acquired after the challenge is completed.

We hope you enjoy fighting these new enemies in the Liver area. If you have any feedback, especially on the new enemies and the Codex, feel free to let us know on our Steam discussion board or on our Discord. More content is in the works, and we'll have more news to share with you soon! Be sure to follow our socials for the latest gossips on Pathogenic!

YouTube, Twitter, TikTok

Full Patch Notes

As always, outside of the new content, this update brings a myriad of improvements, balancing changes and fixes:

Main changes

• Adaptive Immune System enemies: T-cell, B-cell, dendritic cell

  • T-cells stick to macrophages and activate them, buffing them

  • B-cells produce antibodies, dangerous homing projectiles

  • Dendritic cells use their tendrils to heal and buff other immune cells

• Codex, including a list of organelles, mutations and enemies

• Advanced organelles are locked behind challenges for better experience for first-time players

Other Improvements

• Improved lighting, specular highlights are now more visible without overpowering the brightness

• Updated music tracks, better looping

• Added a settings slider for transparency of player attacks

• Optimizations and stability improvements

• Added a bit of internal pressure to enemies, which should help with them twisting inside out

Balance Changes

• Entrant Mitochondrion: duration 10s -> 15s base, rarity scaling 5 -> 7; charge bonus removed (every rarity now grants full extra duration instead of 2x overcharge)

• Turgosome: damage-per-second while not attacking 0.4 -> 0.5, rarity scaling 0.1 -> 0.15

• Sinoatrial Node: max damage multiplier 1.0 + 0.4*rarity -> 2.0 + 0.7*rarity (much bigger payoff for hitting the beat)

• Galvanic Infuser: proc chance scaling halved (+0.1*rarity -> +0.05*rarity); damage multiplier base 0.6 -> 0.5

• Scavenger's Gland plasmid: 20% -> 10% chance

Fixes

• Fixed attractor and magnetosome beams not firing their hit signal

• Fixed Lung showing up as the final level in the leaderboards

• Fixed pickups occasionally blocking each other or clipping into level geometry

• Fixed tooltips appearing off-centre above UI elements

Hey Parasites!

Welcome back to our community blog! We don’t have an update for you just yet, though it’s been two weeks since the last patch so we want to keep you informed on our development progress.

The human body is about to unleash new enemies to target the ever-growing infection (you), and they are slated to arrive by the end of next week. While these new immune cells still need a little more time to cook and smooth out some kinks, here's an early preview of them!

Immune Cells Work-in-Progress

The host’s vitals deteriorate as your pathogen wreak havoc across the first few organs, forcing the Adaptive Immune System to release a new series of immune cells against your lethal threat: T Cells, B Cells, and Dendritic Cells.

T Cells

These T cells will be joining the fight to boost the body's defence. I wonder what they'll do?

B Cells

Known for their antibodies, the B Cells will be fielding a special ranged attack to combat the ever-evolving pathogen.

Dendritic Cells

The Dendritic Cells stretch their tentacles far and wide, not only able to destroy invaders, but also to support other immune cells in the fight.

Codex Preview

With more and more content introduced to Pathogenic, keeping track of everything is bound to get a bit tricky. Matt and Roberto are now working on a Codex where you can easily find any specific organelle, mutation or enemies you've discovered. This new feature will be coming alongside the new enemies next week.

With all the exciting content all planned out, I hope you are looking forward to the update as much as we do! See you next week as we bring in new challenges for your pathogen to conquer! In the mean time, follow us on our socials! Discord, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok

Welcome back parasites!

Over the past few weeks we’ve received a lot of useful feedback from everyone, and we really appreciate all your suggestions to help our pathogens evolve! That’s why in this biweekly update, the focus is on resolving some of the more important issues you’ve brought to our attention. Here’s what’s new to Pathogenic’s demo:

Editor Info Display

The Editor panel has received an informative upgrade to always keep you updated on your pathogen's status and the host's conditions. Some of these changes have been introduced earlier in minor patches, like the vitals at the top left showing how successful your invasion is so far (or how dire is the state of the human body).

As you might have noticed, antibiotics data is also available right next to the body's vitals, and plasmid upgrades are shown at the top right of the editor. Should be a good reminder of what kind of challenges you'll be facing in each run, especially when you jump into the randomized daily challenge.

Stash Slots

A new plasmid upgrade and a new mutation now give you stash slots. This allows you to store organelle(s) that are not currently needed, no longer needing to sell organelles with powerful potential just because you are running out of space on your tiny pathogen. Swap out organelles with more flexibility and save them in case you need them later, though try not to go off the deep end with hoarding.

Mutation Rerolls

Similar to stash slots, a new plasmid and a new mutation have been added to enable mutation rerolls. A second chance for your mutation line-ups, you can now try your luck if you can’t find anything useful the first time. Of course, this comes with a limit, so don't be rash with your rolls.

Tertiary Shooting/Ability

We got some requests to add more customizable key bindings to weapons and abilities. There's now a third key for this purpose, and you can assign organelles by pressing the tertiary shooting key when your cursor hovers over the organelles in the editor panel. Press again to remove the designation.

We hope this latest patch addresses some of the grievances you might have with our gameplay previously and improves your infection experience. We are very thankful for your supportive feedback that really helped us identify all the issues in Pathogenic until now. So keep them coming, whether it's here on Steam or on our Discord server.

Be sure to keep an eye out on our socials too! More news about the upcoming new enemies will be posted soon! And please see the full patch notes down below.

Full Patch Notes

Main changes

• Improved editor

  • Visual improvements showing vitals of the human, size of the parasite, darker background with parallax effect

  • Showing names of all applied mutations, plasmids and antibiotics for more informative screenshots of your runs

• Added a plasmid and a mutation to add a stash slot to store organelles that don't fit the parasite

• Added a plasmid and a mutation for mutation rerolls

• Added tertiary shoot button

Other Improvements

• The exit to next organ has particles and pulls you in

• Sprinting now has a particle effect

• Polished intestine track

• Many CPU and GPU optimizations

• Stability improvements

Fixes

• Fixed daily run having different starting organelles in different languages

• Daily run can no longer have Rotary Extruders as a starting weapon

• Fixed broken organelle drops in the tutorial

• Fixed the segmented worm boss clipping out of the boss room

• Fixed broken organelle pedestals after continuing a run

• Fixed core chests not appearing on the map

Hi parasites!

Time for a new update! This week we continue with fleshing out the Intestine level with a new environmental hazard, alongside improvements to map generation and a new type of loot chest to make your invasion and exploration of the human body more rewarding. Let us begin with this week’s dev blog!

Intestinal Villi

The Intestine now has its unique trap! The Intestinal Villi stem from the walls of the Intestine, their branches will latch onto your pathogen if it strays too close. This will significantly slow down your movement and make you sitting ducks in front of enemy attacks. Be sure not to get caught!

Core Chests

A new type of chest can now be found across all levels. The core chests don’t ask for your health, but instead take cores as payment for unlocks. Make sure to keep some spare change in case you need some extra loot!

Map Generation

Map generation in the game has undergone a series of improvements. Harder rooms, including the boss room, will be spawned further away from the starting position. Reward rooms are now more spread-out and dead ends now always contain a chest or an organelle reward to encourage exploration.

The aim is to make progression in every level feel more natural, and reward players for fully exploring the map without feeling their effort was wasted. We hope that this will make your runs more enjoyable with the more gradual difficulty scaling and more predictable rewards.

Lungs Work-In-Progress

Last time we showed a blurry teaser of new content in the works – and quite a few correct guesses showed up in the comments. Yep, Matt and Roberto are working on the Lungs level! This will be a new level for the full game and currently not planned to be in the demo. Here’s the clear version of the screenshot, with the colours changed up as we think this is closer to what we envision:

Still, with how quick and accurate these guesses were, you guys scare me, and that’s just from a blurry screenshot. We definitely need to increase the blurriness or crop out more stuff to up the difficulty next time.

Before we go into the patch notes, just want to give everyone a quick heads-up about future updates. With Pathogenic’s demo getting closer to feature completion, we will be slowing down demo updates as production is now shifting towards content of the full game, like the Lungs. That doesn’t mean there’ll be no new updates – more new content will be added to the demo as development continues, and we even have a new series of enemies scheduled to join the fight in April!

And of course, we’ll be sharing our development progress with you along the way as we would love to hear what you think about them. So please look forward to more news from Pathogenic, and be sure to follow us on our socials (YouTube, Twitter, TikTok)!

Full Patch Notes

Main changes

• Added intestinal villi, a new slowing trap in Intestine

• Added core chest, a new reward option that costs cores to open

• Daily runs now have a 50% chance to start with completely random weapons and attack modifiers

Other Improvements

• Improved map generation

  • Reward rooms are more spread out

  • Boss room is always placed the furthest from the start

  • Hard rooms are placed on the edges of the map

  • Dead ends always contain a chest or an organelle reward.

• Camera zoom is now more adaptive based on the room size

• Updated intestine track

• Updated intestine props

• Improved main menu screen and start animation

• Improved UI

• Many CPU optimizations

• Improved stability

• Improved Fast Physics setting is back which should help with CPU load and not compromise the physics accuracy as much

• Updated enemy AI of various worms

Balance changes

• Slightly buffed Multinucleated Giant Cell, slightly nerfed Blood Monocyte

• Slightly nerfed Bacteriophage multiplying

Fixes

• Fixed some unlock conditions not accumulating correctly

• Fixed exit halls sometimes letting the player go through

AMAZING NEWS!

Pathogenic just passed 60,000 parasites/wishlists! A massive milestone for our tiny pathogens, thanks to your support! We really appreciate all of you for helping us shape the evolution of our microscopic roguelike project. Every piece of encouragement and feedback helps make our pathogens deadlier AND a lot more fun to play with.

Currently, Matt and Roberto are polishing and consolidating existing content to make sure Pathogenic has a solid foundation before building new content on it. Particularly, this biweekly update’s focus is on refining the intestine level and improving the quality of player experience.

Polishing the Intestine

We've received a lot of valuable feedback since the introduction of the intestine, and changes have been made to address some of those issues. Some of the rooms and enemies in the new area have been rebalanced and reworked to give everyone an easier time before diving into the higher levels.

At the same time, more content is being added. A new enemy has joined the battle: the Heavy Worm, a resilient adversary that attacks with bursts of energy. Try to keep your distance when fighting this menace.

You might also notice the Intestine sounds a bit different. That's because the Intestine OST has been added as well, though it still needs a little bit more work. Now you can fight all the new enemies while giving yourself a hidden boost with our music (literally, with the help of the sinoatrial node organelle).

Gameplay Improvements

Need a break in the middle of your run? We got you -- you can now exit a run and return to menu or desktop with the game saving your progress! Simply hit "CONTINUE" on the menu screen to hop right back into where you left!

To help your pathogen traverse the human body even faster, the Pathogen can now enter a "sprinting" state with increased movement speed by holding down dodge and sacrifice the ability to attack. Along with other QoL changes and fixes, hopefully your invasion on the human host will be a lot smoother in this new patch.

Lore Intro Video

There's now an introductory cutscene to give you more insight on why a random pathogen shows up in the human body. A dangerous experiment, a careless mistake, an unfortunate coincidence, everything sealing the fate of the doomed host. Starring our programmer and music composer Matt as the Scientist, you can also find new visuals for the menu screen.

....though seems like Steam's image compression is not happy about the grainy CCTV footage

Teaser Time!

Before we go into the full patch notes, here's a blurry preview on what Matt and Roberto are making after the Intestine level. It's still a long way before we can say anything else about it, and it might even change drastically over time. Regardless, we'd love to hear your guesses!

What kind of organ do you think this might be?

Full Patch Notes

For the full list of changes, please see below:

Main changes

• Intestine soundtrack, still WIP

• Lore intro video added

• New enemy: the Heavy Worm

• Save system, you can exit the game and continue from the last finished room

• Start rooms in each organ to connect them more visually

• Improved stability, game should be crashing less now

• Chaining system should be clearer now with arrows pointing which organelles affect which ones and better tooltips

• Improved UI

Other Improvements

• Rooms are now exclusive to each level to make each level more unique

• Ability to reassign individual plasmids, reassignment is now free

• Ability to sprint by holding the dodge button

• Weapons on cooldown are now darkened

• Improved diatom handling

• Added option for disabling controller vibration

• Added option for borderless fullscreen 

• Damage dealt in the last room by each organelle added to the expanded tooltip

• MacOS ARM build available

Balance Changes

• Rebalanced some intestine enemies

• Reworked some intestine rooms, added a couple of smaller rooms

• Mitotic Nidus now doesn't share cooldowns with the player, has lower attack speed instead

• Auto-firing from Photoreceptor doesn't take stamina anymore, has lower attack speed instead

• Vacuole doesn't get charged while discharging

• Increased Recuperative Mitochondria energy generation on higher rarities

• Improved some Helminth evolutions

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

Hey Parasites!

Welcome back to another biweekly update! As mentioned in the last patch notes, Matt and Roberto have shifted their focus to working on a major update that will soon be revealed, so this update is a bit smaller than usual. Though because of that, they've been making some great progress with the upcoming Intestine level. Take a sneak peek at this work-in-progress area!

Intestine Sneak Peek

The Intestine will be a winding labyrinth filled with dangers and surprises, and new enemies lurk around every corner. Below are some of the adversaries you'll face during your conquest of this new area:

The Intestine level is shaping up very nicely with all the new flora and fauna, giving it a unique charm and, of course, its own challenges. We can't wait to finally add this to Pathogenic for your parasites to explore.

Starting Loadout

The spotlight of this update is the Starting Loadout Screen. You can now customize your pathogen before hopping into a new run, giving each parasite its own playstyle.

You might start with limited customizations, but don’t worry! You'll unlock more starting organelles as you complete different challenges.

We hope this change will give you more customizability for new runs and further distinguish the various pathogens!

Daily Challenge Leaderboard

And last but not least, for the more competitive parasites, you can now see your scores on the Daily Challenge Leaderboard. Complete the daily runs and see how you fare against other pathogens!

Full Patch Notes

Main changes

• Starting loadout screen

• Unlock system to get more starting loadout options.

• Daily runs now have Steam leaderboards

• Most non-red enemies now only deal contact damage where their spikes are

• Reworked some enemies to only deal contact damage during their dash attacks (while glowing red)

Balance Changes

• Increased payouts from cursed chests, armor hearts are now more likely

• Increased base dodge i-frames from 0.2s to 0.3s

• Increased base bacteriophage damage from 9 to 12

• Slightly decreased stamina usage of Rotary Extruder

• Halved the stamina usage of Stinger Tendril

• Reduced maximum number of shrapnel from Ruptusome to 3, damage gets higher instead

• Fixed Resonant Cavity getting too much attack speed, halved the amount of attack speed gained/lost per hit

• Increased Conductive Cnidocyst attack speed from 1.5s to 1s

• Increased Recuperative Mitochondria overcharge time gain per rarity from 0.5 to 0.8

• Increased Pyroflagellum damage from 5 to 7

• Lowered Phagosome permanent damage increase from 1% to 0.1%, increased base damage from -70% to -20%

• Increased Metabolic Mitochondrion base overcharge from 2s to 2.5s

• Difficulty settings no longer affect daily runs

Other Improvements

• Updated to Godot 4.6 which includes performance improvements

• Switched from Vulkan to DirectX 12 which should be more stable

• Added integration with Steam overlay

• Bullets are now not affected by glow, improving visibility

• Improved recognition of controller models

• Genetic Reshuffle can no longer reroll a weapon into a lash

• Updated plasmid map UI for max cap

• Performance optimizations, like improved culling of the level

• Color grading for each level, other visual improvements

• Triosome and Bifurcator now spawns melee attacks further apart

• Reduced maximum projectiles spawned for some lightning organelles

• Increased thickness of Chinese font

Fixes

• Fixed invisible walls blocking a level

• Fixed overlapping hallways that got generated on top of each other

• Fixed loading text that would stay on screen

• Fixed disappearing long hallways

• Fixed plasmid damage improvements on the bottom half of the body

• Mutations will now be more consistent with the same seed

Welcome Parasites!

Time for the first update to Pathogenic's Demo in 2026! This week, we are bringing you more than just new organelles: reworked tooltips, new game mode, difficulty adjustment and more! We know you’ve waited long enough since the last patch so let’s dive right into the patch notes!

New Features

• Daily Challenges: Introducing daily runs with random conditions – random parasites, random plasmids and random antibiotics. Test your skills and combos for extra rewards, and compare your runs against the community to see who has the ultimate pathogen! Runs are also now seeded so you can take on the same challenges again and again to improve with practice!

• Difficulty Customization: You can now manually adjust difficulty in settings. This will affect enemy health and heart drop rates to make the runs easier or more difficult. In addition, we know some of you want to take your time with your runs, so here's a button to turn off the death zone in the Stomach anytime you want.

• Plasmid Cost Reduction: The Plasmid Tree upgrades are now a lot cheaper for all pathogens to make the unlocks less grindy (especially now that each parasite has its own tree). A max level cap is applied to across all plasmid trees, and can be increased for a price.

• Reworked Tooltips: We noticed the game previously lacked detailed instructions and newer players might need some extra details on the more complex features. That’s why we’ve reworked the tool tips with clearer and more concise information while adding more hints about the overcharging and chainable mechanics. And the UI graphics are overhauled to go along with this change.

• Marked Entrances: Check the difficulty of each room before charging in! Entrances now visually indicate each room's difficulty to help you navigate the human body and choose your invasion route.

New Organelles

Now the part you’ve all been waiting for: the new toys of the week! The organelles of this update puts the limelight on consistent damage, perfect for a patient playstyle to strike down enemies with multiple hits.

External Organelles (Weapons/Flagellums)

• Tri-Phase Tendril: Three-hit combos! A melee weapon that deals 3x the damage on the third and final strike

• Gyrase Wheel: Nicknamed the pizza-cutter, this deadly saw blade will keep cutting through cell tissue until your stamina runs out.

• Mucus Emitter: Releases a large, slow-moving bubble that melts everything on its path.

• Bacteriophage Launcher: Did someone say virus? Send out bacteriophage to whittle down immune cells as they multiply from your dying enemies.

• Pyroflagellum: Leaves a blazing trail as you dodge, burning any foe passing through.

Internal Organelles

• Mitotic Nidus: Clone your pathogen! Spawns a minion that uses weapons connected to this internal organelle.

• Ruptusome: Projectiles of connected weapon explode into lethal shrapnel, shredding enemies in the vicinity.

New Mutations

Your pathogens now have access to new mutations to open up even more possibilities in combos and synergies when paired with all the organelles added over the last few updates.

• Viscous Secretion: Slows down enemy projectiles by 25%

• Stenosis: Reduces projectile spread by 50%

• External Omnireceptor: Enables a random external slot to accept internal organelles

• Recombinant Adaptation: Gains a random attack modifier

• Energy Adaptation: Gains a random mitochondrion

• Cilium Growth: Increases movement speed

• Endocytic Suction: Attracts loot drops from a further distance

Before we go into the full patch notes, just want to take a bit of time and keep everyone informed on our updating plans. Pathogenic's Demo has seen quite a few regular updates until now, and Matt and Roberto are preparing something big. While this means the next couple regular updates will be slightly smaller in scale, we are hoping to bring you a plethora of new content when the major update arrives. Please look forward to it!

Full Patch Notes

Content

Organelles

• Tri-Phase Tendril

• Gyrase Wheel#

• Mucus Emitter

• Bacteriophage Launcher

• Pyroflagellum

• Mitotic Nidus

• Ruptusome

Mutations

• Viscous Secretion

• Stenosis

• External Omnireceptor

• Recombinant Adaptation

• Energy Adaptation

• Cilium Growth

• Edocytic Suction

Balance changes

• Magnetosome now makes projectiles pass through walls and works with beam weapons

• Resonant Cavity now decreases attack speed bonus instead of resetting

• Increased conductive Cnidocyst attack speed from 2.5s to 2s

• Increased range for activating Galvanic Sac

• Increased Swarm Nidus activation overcharge cost from 3s to 4s

• Decreased Sympathetic Detonator damage from 100% to 80%

• Decrease Triosome overcharge damage scaling

• Recuperative Mitochondria no longer provides 2x overcharge at Epic level and provides longer overcharge instead

• Reduce Echosome overcharge size scaling at higher rarities

• Increase Blastocyst Mortar self-hit immunity time

• Slightly decrease Galvanic Conduit damage

• Decreased overcharge time of Metabolic Mitochondrion to 2s

• Increase drop rates of Mitochondria

• Reduce minion iframes from 0.8s to 0.6s

• Nidublast minions no longer draw aggro

• Increase dodge invulnerability from Survival Reflex from 0.1s to 0.2s

• Increase dodge cooldown bonus from Enhanced Boosters from 25% to 30%

• Increase Vacuole base capacity to 20s, activating now releases at most 5s of overcharge

• Reduce Chronosome trigger time from 0.4s to 0.5s

• Laser attacks have clearer telegraphing

Gameplay

• Added the Daily Challenge Mode

• Added Difficulty Customization settings

• Plasmid tree upgrade cost now significantly reduced, with a shared plasmid cap across all parasites

• Room entrances now indicate each room's difficult

• Reworked tooltips for more detailed explanation on game mechanics

• Dodge invulnerability no longer works on cursed chests

• Limit total Nidublast minion number to 30

• DNA drops now properly disappear after timing out

• Fix minions attacking angered Shopkeeper

• Reduce Nidublast minion i-frames

• Now possible to play with gamepad and mouse simultaneously

UI

• Reworked editor UI

• Number of DNA to level up is now shown in the editor

• Added confirmations to ending the run

• Fixed Chinese font on Mac

• Photo mode now hides UI and some postprocessing layers for clearer images

Visual

• Graphics optimizations

• Plasmid trees now have special backgrounds corresponding to each parasite

• Apex Nidus is now green

Happy New Year everyone!

2026 is here! And we hope you have an amazing start to the year! Usually this would’ve been a patch notes post, though the next batch of new content needs a little more time to cook. Still, we want to keep you updated on the development progress so instead, we have a dev blog for you today on what we’ve been working on lately.

Tool Tips Rework

Pathogenic has seen a significant growth in wishlists ever since the demo launch, and we are incredibly grateful for that. With new parasites joining the battle every day, we want to make sure everyone can quickly grasp the fundamentals to invade and survive a hostile immune system. That’s why Matt and Roberto are overhauling the tool tips, which is a sizeable task across all localizations and we would like to take the time to get it right. Ultimately, you can expect more insightful and concise guidance as you begin your microscopic conquest.

Concept Art Showcase

At the same time, Matt and Roberto have been exploring new ideas for Pathogenic. Here’s a collection of concept art on work-in-progress content:

After the recent changes, we believe the UI still has room for improvements. Here are some possible combinations of a new UI. Which one do you prefer?  

A much requested feature is to customize Pathogens before starting a run, and you can see some ideas of how it can be incorporated on the left. We are also thinking of introducing challenges to your runs, which players can complete with their ever-growing collection of organelles. This should provide players with a fun and rewarding incentive for more variations of playstyles.

In the previous patch notes we’ve shared a screenshot of the WIP intestine, and we have some unique flora and fauna in mind for this new area. New enemies will lurk around every corner to shut down your advance, and your pathogen won’t be the only one with new tricks here!

On that note, let's conclude this quick dev blog. We hope you are looking forward to the new content that will be coming to Pathogenic, and Matt and Roberto have plenty of things planned. 2026 is going to be a big year so keep your eyes peeled for more news from us! We wish everyone an amazing start to the new year, and we’ll see you again when the next update arrives.

Greetings, fellow parasites!

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

• Nidublast: Throw 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.

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!

Welcome back everyone!

It’s been two weeks, so time for a shocking update! We’re back with a fresh batch of brand-new content, as well as a plethora of changes to gameplay, balancing and UI.

New Weapons and Organelles

This update contains both new weapons and new internal organelles. Check out all the new toys!

Weapons

• Galvanic Conduit: Zap foes with electric discharge (UNLIMITED POWERRRR!! ...actually, limited by your stamina)

• Conductive Cnidocyst: Sharing is caring. Bind your enemies together and make them share all damage taken.

Internal Organelles

• Galvanic Sac: Automatically discharges energy to nearby enemies

• Sentry Polyp: Spawns turrets for more firepower (and perhaps meat shields too

• Golgi Apparatus: Transfers connected melee attacks to connected projectile attacks (essentially, your projectiles can deliver melee strikes)

• Dorasal Lysosome: Become an assassin with the backstab damage boost

• Crytobiotic Core: An explosive second chance for your pathogen to fight on

• Resilinoplast: Reflect projectiles with your own attacks

Loot Changes

You can now find Cursed Chests floating around different organs. They contain random rewards, for a price. Do you feel lucky today?

Special rooms now also require an upfront payment before opening their doors. Gone are the days of walking straight in and looting everything clean. Be careful with how much you spend – You don’t know when you’ll need some spare “cash”!

Organelle Visuals Rework

We want your parasite to appear more visually distinct as it takes on different organelles to really show off the unique evolution progress. That’s why in this patch, we’ve reworked the backgrounds of the internal organelles so they can influence the look of your pathogen even more.

Music

Pathogenic’s soundtracks have always been integral to the combat experience. In this patch we’ve made them cleaner, longer, and now your cellular combat action is ever more hyped. It's a pity we can't put audio files in this blog, so do load up the demo and listen to the music yourself!

UI Updates

We’ve received requests from many players who want to take a closer look at their parasites. So here’s the Photo Mode, where you can pause the game and zoom in on your pathogen.

Great news for speedrunners: Pathogenic now has a page on speedrun.com! And to help you time your runs, a new Speedrun Timer has been added to gameplay settings.

Patch Notes

Aside from what was mentioned above, the update also contains a myriad of other changes in gameplay, optimizations and visuals. See below for the full details:

New Organelles

Weapons

• Galvanic Conduit

• Conductive Cnidocyst

Internal Organelles

• Golgi Apparatus

• Sentry Polyp

• Galvanic Sac

• Dorasal Lysosome

• Cryptobiotic Core

• Resilinoplast

Gameplay

• Cursed chests appear

• Special rooms now require payment to access them

• DNA now drops after killing enemies instead of finishing a room

• Improved Cnidocyst jankiness

• Toxic flagellum no longer deals damage to unangered shopkeeper

• Overcharge indicator showing the accumulated energy on some organelles

Balance

(Unless otherwise mentioned, all stats refer to organelles' basic rarity)

• Rework on how the organelle chaining works. Now cycles of organelles can no longer repeat and apply at most once. Sounds like a small change but some cycle builds that went out of control before are now significantly nerfed. Also these cycles should no longer crash your game

Buffs

• Magnetosome: attracted projectiles now pierce enemies and lifetime extended

• Vengeful Mitochondria: Overcharge time extended (5 seconds -> 7 seconds)

Nerfs

• Recuperative Mitochondria: Now only gets charged from connected attacks. Provides 50% less charge

• Sympathetic Detonator: Reduced splash damage (150% -> 120%)

• Pressurized Spicule: Reduced damage (60 dps -> 56 dps)

• Rotary Extruder: Reduced damage (225 dps -> 200 dps)

Visuals

• Added Environment Quality: Mid and Postprocessing Quality: Mid level for a good balance between performance and looks

• Internal organelle visuals rework with backgrounds to influence the look of your parasite more

Audio

• Updated music for skin and stomach, tracks cleaned up and extended

UI

• Photo mode on P to get your perfect screenshot

• Setting to hide damage numbers and disable pausing on lost focus

• Speedrunning timer added

Optimizations

• Better detection of borked physics state that previously led to crashes

Hi everyone,

Pathogenic's Demo will be getting a new patch every two weeks, starting with a bunch of new content today! In this update, we are bringing you new weapons, organelles, a new enemy and a range of rebalancing, optimizations and fixes.

New Weapons and Organelles

3 new weapons have been added to your arsenal. Your pathogen now has more firepower than ever before! (Try not to get hit by your own explosions though.)

• Dehiscence Lobber: powerful bombs with a risk of friendly fire.

• Cnidocyst: ties down target with a thread

• Rotary Extruder: bullets go brrrrr when overcharged

11 new internal organelles have also been added for more interesting synergies in your build combos.

New Enemy

The Wave Macrophage joins the battle, mostly appearing in the Stomach area. It has a wide AOE attack and can be dangerous in tight spaces.

Patch Notes

Aside from new content, I've also been working on improving Pathogenic's gameplay with UI and visual updates, as well as balancing changes. See below for the full patch notes.

Content

New Weapons

• Dehiscence Lobber

• Rotary Extruder

• Cnidocyst

New Internal Organelles

• Magnetosome

• Vesicle

• Iridophore Membrane

• Sympathetic Detonator

• Refiner

• Resonant Cavity

• Turgosome

• Phagosome

• Starved Oxysome

• Autophagic Mitochondrion

• Endospore

New Enemy

• Wave Macrophage

Balance and Gameplay

• Chronosome now works with melee attacks

• Reduced explosion scaling on Blastocyst Mortar

• Slightly reduced max HP of The Wall and The Rock

• Slightly reduced enemy HP scaling for each organ

• Nerfed a couple of very hard rooms in the liver

• Enemy bullets now disappear after beating the boss

• Toxins disappear after finishing a room with Toxin Spreaders

• Plasmid fragments are now attracted to you

• Rooms spawning next to the start rooms are now even easier

Optimizations

• Added control remapping and input icons matching the connected controller type

• Added controller rumble

• Improved Helmith jank, it should no longer tangle in itself and get stuck in walls

• Added a screen transition animation

• Significantly optimized level generation loading times

• Graphics and physics optimizations

• More graphics options

Visual improvements

• Improved the distortion of the cells in walls

• Added normal maps to special room hallway props

• Added more vein props to rooms

• Updated UI for the fast travel prompt

Localization

• Russian and Finnish translations now available

Thank you everyone for the continuous support, the reception has been really encouraging! We are working hard on addressing all of the reported issues, which is also the focus of this patch:

• Added a tutorial

• Many graphics optimizations

• More settings for older hardware (environment quality, postprocessing quality, physics simulation quality)

• French, Italian and Spanish translations added

• 2 new weapons, the Stinger Tendril and Pressurized Spicule

• UI changes for better discoverability

• Fast travel is now possible without expanding the map

• Removed limit for maximum active plasmids, additional plasmids grow in cost

• Tweaked sacrifice deals to offer lower-rarity organelles, but cheaper

• The collector no longer does contact damage unless angered

• Slightly increased the telegraphing time for certain laser attacks

• Slightly decreased HP of The Rock boss

• Fixed a crash with a Triosome, Bifurcator, Echosome cycle

More small fixes and balancing!

• Fixed an issue where mouse pointer lost focus and didn't grab it back

• First floor now spawns 2 item rooms instead of 1

• Item rooms now have always at least 2 items to choose from

• Slightly higher HP drop rate

• The storm now damages you after 15 seconds, up from 5 seconds

• Reduced knockback of Helical Proboscis a bit

• Fixed a bug where Tetraploa removed one organelle on evolution