Platform: iOS, Android
Players: Single
Release Date: Ocptber 5th 2012 (Android)
Developers: Ndemic Creations
Publishers: Self
Genre: Puzzle / Strategy
Price: Free…ish
“It’s You vs. the world – only the strongest can survive!”
Ever since I was little (by little I mean young not a short ass) I’ve always been interested in how the world would end, I used to panic reading about meteors and asteroids hurtling by our planet, the Millenium Bug and the Sun exploding and taking all of us with it, nuclear disasters and all out war. You might be wondering what kind of kid concerns himself with Sellafield going kaboom while he slept in his bed but I was what most would consider odd and to this day my fascination with ‘THE END’ continues and there are a lot more things that could cause humanity to be wiped off the face of this planet.
So when I stumbled across a game one night while browsing the Google Store on my Tablet that gave me the chance to plot my own attack on the global population I jumped at it! Plague Inc. is brought to us by independent developer Ndemic Creations a one man studio ran by James Vaughn in London. You are a disease, your objective is to infect and wipeout the entire race by spreading and mutating. That’s it! That’s the whole deal behind the game, nothingm ore or nothing less! Pure and simple!
The game is split across various types of pathogens from simple bacteria to the virus, fungal spores, bio weaponry and even nano viruses and each of these pathogens comes with their own obstacles to overcome. While the basics of the game are rather simple, pick your starting point, infect one person, spread and evolve while trying to outwit those working to cure you, you will quickly find that what works for a bacterial plague doesn’t work so well for a fungal outbreak! Each pathogen must overcome challenges from the rapid mutations of a virus to the extremely efficient killing abilities of a bioweapon.
As your plague progresses and infects more and more people you will recieve DNA points allowing you to mutate, increasing infectivity through water, air, animals and more, adding additional symptons to increase not only the rate of infection but the severity and lethality of the plague. You can also spend these points increasing the complexity of the disease increasing the amount of work needed to cure it or enhance your chances of infecting and survivability in more extreme weather conditions.
Graphics and music are rather plain but don’t detract from the gameplay at all. As you spread across the world your progress is coloured in blood red that covers countries and continents, your screen is littered with planes and boats, white for clean and red for infected. The game lacks in background music and even though there are some intermittant coughs, buzzing insects or creepy children singing nursery rhymes, something creepy or sinister could have added a little more depth to the experience.
Plague Inc. is free to play but can be unlocked further by paying a small amount (I believe I paid less than a euro?) to open some new features and for additional stages (if you manage to get through the seven stages) you can cough up some more pennies (literally pennies) for access to new pathogens and levels.
Plague Inc. is a superbly executed game, simple in design it proves to be a worthy challenge testing your skills across some very well thought out stages and while at first it might seem that your superior intellect and ability to craft the perfect killing machine have outwitted the game you will soon find (as I did) that it takes more to wipe the silly human race off this planet. Future games where you play the bad guy need to look at Plague Inc for some serious inspiration, a must have for all Android and iOS devices!
Good Points
Genius Gameplay
Difficult and challenging
Bad Points
Plain graphics/music
Rating: 9 /10
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
