Hi.

I really love Pathologic. I'm sure we all do =)

It is the atmosphere of the game and the feeling it gives you when you play it that I like the most, the sort of eastern european gothic styling.

Do you know of any books or such that have a similar feel to this game? I'm sure they will exist..

Books:
'The Ugly Swans' - Boris and Arkady Strugatsky
'The Plague' - Albert Camus (not really the same atmosphere, but similar subject matter)

Films:
'Stalker' - dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

Can anyone suggest any more?

Naked Lunch

I thought of another one. Not quite the same atmosphere - but it is an amazing, atmospheric book set in mediaeval Europe at the time of the Black Death:

'Narcissus & Goldmund' - Hermann Hesse

Thanks for the suggestions. I watched stalker the other day, i really enjoyed the scenery and atmosphere but I really didn't understand what they were trying to do with the dialogue and I thought there was a bit too much symbolism that is all open to interpretation. It almost seems lazy.

I very much enjoyed roadside picnic though so I have much respect for the Strugatsky brothers, I will read the ugly swans soon.

Hmm, maybe "Epidemic" by Lars von Trier? It's quite a weird movie, and a least a part of it is in a similar theme. Like Pathologic, it's pretty obscure too!

For something stylized European with great atmosphere (not very eastern or gothic, though) you could try "The City of Lost Children" and "Delicatessen" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro.

Another film with amazing atmosphere (but not gothic either, rather a bit sci-fi), this time more Eastern European, see "Avalon" by Mamoru Oshii. At least the colour palette used in the movie should remind you of Pathologic a bit.

Nimród Amtal's "Kontroll" also has a great Eastern European atmosphere. Alas, it's not gothic either, rather very modern and gritty. Good, though, and worth trying!

"A Prayer for the Dying" by Stewart O'Nan.

A young sheriff/priest/coroner in a small town in the United States, just after the civil war, tries to save the town from a plague. Despite trying his best to do the right thing, he winds up committing atrocities by the end of the book. Pretty Pathologic-esque.

Black Mirror is fantastic pc game with similar atmosphere.

would be great if they made movie based on pathologic

I've found books by Fyodor Dostoevsky tend to create a similar atmosphere. In Dostoevsky there is a broader sense of meaning lurking beneath the surface of the world. One often gets a sense of spiritual and symbolic plays going on where the symbols and the "spirit" are more central to the story than the actual characters.

Part of it is the author's mentality, with a more holistic approach than is often used and his subtly moralistic intentions in some of the writing. Part of it is the fact that different sets of values and character types were often shared by broad groups of people in 19th century Petersburg - so characters sometimes blend with their part of society in a way which doesn't happen in more fluid societies (or is ideologically ignored in modern writings). Part of it was that he was writing some of the books for financial reason, and completed in a rush, his subconscious leaks through.

I've found that there is a dream like residue with these books (similar to how Pathologic can play on the Reticular Activating System). I can probably think of a few other works with atmospheric similarities - but none have these nearly unique neurological effects.

I feel awfully trivial to say it, but I find M.Bulgakov's works quite similar by mood and way of storytelling.

I'd agree with Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment was pretty bleak too with an underlying ugliness about everything, everyone telling half-truths and outright lies. It's heavy going though.