Cellular roguelike shooter

Pathogenic is a top-down roguelike shooter where you control a customizable lone pathogen infecting a human host. Released July 16th from developer Aberrant Labs and publisher Slug Disco, they sent GamingOnLinux a key to check it out.

You could say it's like Spore meets The Binding of Isaac. Elements of Spore for the way you keep growing and evolving, and The Binding of Isaac for the room-based action and progression. Nice simple controls too, since it's a twin-stick shooter it's very accessible since it's mostly just move, dash and shoot but there's a lot more to it than that due to how your creature evolves during the run.

When you take down certain types of enemies they will drop body parts, which you pick up and open an editor to graft them directly onto your body in special slots. These could be entirely new weapons, buffs to existing weapons or your movement and so much more. The amount of combinations you can do is quite surprising, some are even a little bit game-breaking due to how ridiculous they can be.

You also collect DNA as you take down various organisms, which acts as a level-up system. When you hit a new level, you get to pick from a few different mutations like faster attack speed, more dodge charges, more stamina and so on. So on top of the actual full evolutions that can completely change your shape, there's a lot of ways to change how your run goes.

With all the different types of enemies there's a whole lot of varied action to be found in this one. You get to fight off basic immune cells like macrophages and T-cells, and even some fancy looking rival parasites such as tapeworms or protozoa. Of course, no roguelike action game like this would be complete without powerful bosses, of which there's a good few of those to be found too.

I like that there's a simple fast-travel system too. As you explore you'll find shop rooms to spend some of your earnings, but you might not have enough to buy what you want. So you can progress a bit more and then just warp on back to it later.

I absolutely love the artwork and overall design of this one too. It really looks like you're inside a body, with blood flowing between sections of the map and the way your organism actually changes so you see the organelles directly on your character is awesome. And quite silly, because your creature will end up looking quite hilarious when you get further into it with all sorts of things wobbling around as you move.

This has become one of my new favourite roguelike shooters. The amount of customization you can do with all the different organelles and the way you move them around to tweak your buffs is brilliant.

Great to see another really good game made with the open source Godot Engine too.

Absolutely worth the money. Easy recommendation. Works great on Linux (Fedora KDE 44) with the Native version and no problems with the Steam Controller. You will want a controller for this one.