This year marks the 25th anniversary of Capcom's survival horror juggernaut Resident Evil. While many fans are content to celebrate the series' massive popularity and staying power, others might be looking toward the future of the survival horror genre. One small indie developer is looking to the future of survival horror and, in doing so, bringing the past forward for a new throwback-style experience that fans of early 2000s survival horror can get behind.
Developed by itch.io users sodaraptor and ragnaroksixx, Pathogen X is a throwback third-person survival horror game that not only echoes the Resident Evil: Code Veronica era of RE games but also instantly evokes other more obscure titles of that era, including Sega Dreamcast titles like Illbleed and Blue Stinger. With its early 3D styling, and surprisingly colorful visuals, Pathogen X is a specific throwback to an era where the mechanics were weird, the setting was strange, and the tone was overwhelmingly cheesy.
Pathogen X places players deep inside the dangerous labs of the Delta Corp, a clear reference to the classic Resident Evil antagonist Umbrella Corporation, whose bioengineering of viruses unleashed zombie plagues onto the world. Delta Corp has been developing the eponymous Pathogen-X, a deadly virus that breaks out in the facility, producing horrible mutant monsters. As special forces Agent Hawk, the gas mask-wearing hero of Pathogen X, players must complete a search and retrieval mission. Players must infiltrate the lab, fight the mutant monsters and find the vaccine before the entire place is nuked.
One look at Pathogen X's gameplay, and it quickly becomes clear that this game is attempting a clear visual style, which it completely nails. Characters and levels in Pathogen X are the distinct kind of polygonal models and environments that fans would find in games of the early 200s era. Monsters are brightly colored and distinct, and even the player character is clad in a completely unrealistic tactical outfit full of various shades of blue and purple. Pathogen X nails the look of the aforementioned games like Blue Stinger, a rather obscure but perfectly cheesy survival horror game from Sega.
Furthermore, the attention to detail and clear inspiration from the early 3D era is evident also in the itch.io page for Pathogen X, which features a mock-up of an old PlayStation 1 game case cover, in this case, dubbed the "Hauntstation." It is clear that the two developers have a distinct love for the late '90s early 2000s era of survival horror, and it shows in the design and visuals of Pathogen X. The developers even mention classic games like Dino Crisis and Deep Fear as direct inspirations for Pathogen X on the game's page.
Pathogen X's gameplay is where this survival horror game comes into its own and fuses its throwback visuals with new roguelike concepts. While not a true roguelike in every sense, Pathogen X features procedural generation to switch up the gameplay, bringing this popular mechanic to a survival horror setting and interesting concept for the genre. Not only the enemies and item placements are random, but the layout of the lab itself. This is an interesting mechanic for survival horror, as the genre relies on finding vital weapons, ammunition, and live-saving health items to propel the action, with the best survival horror games always challenging players to conserve and strategize.
On top of this, players will also be graded on performance after the fact, with the website challenging players to reach the ultimate "X" rating as a badge of honor. This rating system paired with the random generation mechanics ensures that multiple runs will be encouraged for Pathogen X, another staple of the Resident Evil series. The full release of Pathogen X will include a more traditional story mode and the full-featured Arcade Mode, which features the procedural generation mechanics. The developers of Pathogen X even have plans to add the option to enable fixed-camera angles and extreme difficulty modes as an added layer of nostalgia for classic survival horror fans.
Overall, the combination of new procedural generation mechanics and randomization with the throwback early 3D visuals makes Pathogen X a game to keep an eye on for nostalgic fans of the early 2000s and survival horror fans alike. Pathogen X is available now in demo form, which features the Arcade Mode and is about 30 mins to complete. Pathogen X is clearly a game still in development and doesn't have a concrete release date as of yet. However, it already looks to be another interesting entry into the challenging survival horror genre.