Pathologic and The Void are two video games from the same Russian company: Ice Pick Lodge. Since they have a lot in common, I've decided to make only one topic for both.

Pathologic is some kind of RPG/FPS. It's set in a strange town at an unknown time (looks a bit like the early 20th century). You have the choice between 3 characters (well 2 for the first game): the scholar, the haruspice and the healer. Each has his own way to deal with dieases because that's what you'll have to deal with.
So your character arrives in the town, for one reason or another. It's not a very nice town, not colorful at all and it has some strange customs and very strange buildings (including a few that are just physically impossible). There are also rumors about gruesome things going on in some places, but you don't really care. Soon, you discover that there's a strange new and powerful illness around.

So you start doing whatever you can to help. But as the dieases spread, the situation becomes more complicated. Prices go up, people are getting angry against the nobility. Soon you're more concerned about surviving than really helping. Especially when you realize that nearly everyone is lying to you and that most NPCs (especially the most influent ones) are just using you to serve their political agenda rather than really helping the town. And then you have to go to the places about which you've heard those horribles rumors and discover a truth that's sometimes even worse. You start selling the organs of your enemies to strange creatures that aren't really human anymore or realizing that you really need that medication that kid has, but you don't have anything to barter... anything except that scalpel in your hand, in a place where no one can see you...

It's a wonderful game, in a very twisted way. It's a game that you have to force yourself to play sometimes, because you know it'll be hard and you're not sure if you want to know what it has in store for you this time.

The trouble with this game, beside that it's quite hard (surviving in the town is MUCH harder than surviving in STALKER's Zone), is that the translation is awful. At first you think it's because people speak in a strange and mysterious way, but then you realize it's just a bad translation. It's still good enough to understand what happens though.

The Void has a lot in common with Pathologic, especially the dark and gloomy atmosphere. But if Pathologic was somehow a resources management game hidden behind a RPG/FPS, The Void is clearly a resources management game, with a first person interface. But it's still very good.
You play a dead man who fell in The Void, a place akin to the Purgatory. The first person you meet there is a girl, a Sister. She tells you that this grim world used to be filled with beautiful color but is now nearly dead. Since you arrived, color has started to grow again in some places. She tells you you have to harvest that color, transform it in your heart and give it back to restore life. That's the center of the game: you get color from different ways in different places, and it transforms into something you can use to give life, fight or use different powers (by drawing on the screen a bit as in Okami). Once you get enough color, you give it to a sister who'll then bath in it naked (yeah it has naked women rubbing sensually their body) and reward you with something you'll need to keep on doing that. Simple, heh? Yes. Until the Brothers arrive. They are strangely (and horribly) modified men. In any other game, they'd be the de facto bad guys. Not here (or are they?). Some of them like and trust you, other don't. More concerning: some of them say that giving color (what you've been doing this all time) is a bad thing. You realize that maybe you've been doing the wrong thing all along. Except that you can't survive any other way (or can you? and do you really need/want to?), and that you're not sure if the Brothers are telling the truth either. So you're lost in a world that's getting more and more aggressive against you.

Both games are completely unusual games. Pathologic might still be considered as a RPG/FPS, though a very twisted one but The Void is just unique. And both games do something that's very rare in video games: they lie to you and leave you in a situation where you've lost your directions , don't know what to do but still have to do something to stay alive.

They're not for everyone, but they're great games that deserve to be a little better known.