10 Video Games Made INTENTIONALLY Bad To Prove A Point
3. Pathologic
Pathologic is a game that does not want you to play it. The horrifically taxing hunger and health mechanics, inexorably slow movement speed and drab aesthetics all seem to actively work against the player's enjoyment.
Even the game's most ardent advocates seem to tell you to not play the game, and a scant 13% of players actually beat it on the first in-game night.
Despite some intensely deep philosophical concerns, multi-faceted dialogue and an atmosphere of gorgeous melancholy, it is hard to describe the game as "immersive". The constant ticking clocks that are your survival stats, time sensitive missions and intuitive controls constantly remind you that you are in a game.
Not only that, but the game you are in feels horrid to play.
However, in a game that wants you to remember that "the world's a stage" - the artifice of jarring gameplay mechanics is an essential one. The developers Ice Pick Lodge do not want you to sit back and relax, turning off the critical thinking part of the game and just shoot stuff in an RPG.
If you try that in Pathologic, you will miss people. After that you will die. Pathologic intends to generate a real sense of desperation in its players, with the intentionally frustrating and obtrusive mechanics meant to emulate the terrifying, overwhelming fear that is a deadly plague.
This rings especially true during COVID19. Managing an outbreak is never an easy task, with a huge range of conflicting and often deadly approaches that are so difficult to manage.