Plague Inc. - Part 1

Plague Inc. by Ndemic Creations Games

Plague Inc. is a game by Ndemic Creations Games. The main objective is to infect the entire world with a disease that you control using points and eventually destroy mankind. But doesn’t that sound oddly familiar? Plague Inc. is to say it mildly, a copy of the online game Pandemic 2 which itself is inspired by the board game Pandemic by Matt Leacock. Plague Inc. has profited heavily on their app despite the fact that Dark Realm Studios (the developers of Pandemic 2) also released a mobile app version called Pandemic 2.5. Ndemic Creations claim that they game is unique and has nothing to do with Pandemic 2. Which is odd since the Pandemic series by Dark Realm Studios have been out for several years while Plague Inc. was released in May 2012. If you look past the heavy influences from Pandemic 2, Plague Inc. stands out as a quite satisfying game.

As stated above the objective of the game is to infect the world by spreading your disease and in order to win you must infect and kill every living soul in the world. When opening the game we are presented with a clear cut main menu that is well designed. There is a gear symbol in the top left corner which leads to the settings manual. In the middle of the screen is well placed How to Play sub-menu that is well detailed and explains almost every aspect of the game. The game also automatically saves high scores instead of having to log into various apps such as Gamecenter or Openfeint. Starting a new game directly prompts you to a menu asking you to chose a game difficulty. Each setting offers something different, with three different variables – washing hands, amount of time doctors work and how sick people are treated. Casual is the easiest and shortest game mode since no one washes their hands, doctors don’t work and sick people are given hugs. At normal difficulty 67.3% of people wash their hands, making it harder to infect, doctors work 3 days a week and sick people are ignored. On brutal everybody is a compulsive hand washer, doctors never go home and sick people are locked in prison. These three variables change the infection rate of your disease as well as how fast it is treated. Games won on Normal unlock new plague types and new genes, while games won on brutal unlock more genes. Much like Pandemic 2 there are different disease types, here they’re called plague types, and there are 7 main plague types. Each plague has different qualties that may affect what strategy a player should use and they all offer different game experiences. A new player can only play as the bacteria but will unlock the virus after winning a game. After selecting your plague type you must name your disease and then modify the genetic code (if you have any genes to add). These genes give your disease small boots such as easier transmission on land or increased chance of mutation.