This Is Only For The Five People Out There Also Obsessed With These Two Niche Games Too But Disco Elysium

This is only for the five people out there also obsessed with these two niche games too but Disco Elysium and Pathologic are basically the same game conceit taken it exactly opposite directions. Both games are about being an outsider coming into a small, weird town and trying to solve an increasingly dangerous problem on a time limit of a little over a week, which is mostly accomplished by talking to every weirdo in town until they finally do what you want. Which is a *very* specific premise to have in common! But it’s kinda incredible how swapping one mechanic dramatically changes each of the game’s vibes.

In Disco Elysium, time only progresses when you talk to people, and only if you are hearing new dialogue. With that, and the fact it’s really hard to not progress the story even if you avoid the main plot, you will inevitably be able to complete about everything the game has to offer for a single playthrough before the time limit. You have to go out of your way to be a bad detective to fail. The decision of what to do on any given day is largely dependent on whatever happens to be compelling to the player, and having to run around the far side of town doesn’t risk getting people killed.

Conversely, in Pathologic, an inversion of that aforementioned game mechanic creates a MASSIVELY different play style. Time is always progressing in Pathologic, outside of dialogue and save menus. The game is a routing simulator disguised as a psychological horror. You have two hours to talk to eight people on opposite sides of the map with about five different modifier potentially altering your optimal way of getting through town (are you hungry? do you need more bottles? is the district infected? etc.). There is NO fuck around time, maybe if you’re lucky you can take ten seconds to stare at the Polyhedron, but that’s about it.

It just stuck out to me as a case of how one technically minor change in a gameplay mechanic can entirely alter how you interact with the world. Sure, there’s a lot of other differences between the two, but this one change felt like a condensation of how each chooses to approach their premise.