Boredom is usually considered to be the death of a game. You play, you get bored, you switch off. Popular thought demands that videogames be engaging at all times, whether through direct action or intellectual thrill. It matters less as to how it’s achieved as long as boredom is avoided. But Pathologic, a game by Ice-Pick Lodge released in 2005 but re-released in HD last year, goes against this thinking—it forces its players to get bored and for good reason. Pathologic is a game about an epidemic. However, it does not follow the clichéd narrative of a crisis revealing the…