Platform: PC (Steam)

Developer: Ndemic Creations

Publisher: Ndemic Creations

Release Date: February 20, 2014 (Early Access)

Genre: Simulation / Strategy

Nerd Rating: 8 out of 10

Imagine the day when you turn on the television and the news is reporting a nationwide pandemic, claiming a product that you use every day to be contaminated by a horrifying pathogen that was incubated in India and resistant to every drug you and your health insurance can afford. The symptoms awaken as the announcement flashes before your eyes, and the list is growing fatal, ending with a coma, and then… You’re not the person in this scenario, though…you’re the plague itself!

This is the reality of Plague Inc: Evolved, an epidemic simulator and strategy game where the goal is to evolve your virus into the germ that can wipe out the human race. From its origins as a simple mobile game, now available under Early Access on Steam, the one-man production known as Ndemic Creations has brought the science of epidemiology to the hands of thousands of casual gamers, and just like the diseases the game portrays, its appeal can be rather contagious! But has its infectious spread been the result of a finely-crafted genome, or simply a well-timed lucky mutation? Put on your breathing masks and follow me into the autopsy room…

In Plague Inc: Evolved, your goal is to take a single variety of pathogen infecting a Patient Zero and build them up from a localized infection to a world-threatening plague. Utilizing a combination of transmission methods, lethal and nonlethal symptoms, and crucial resistance traits, your goal is to be the one that leaves no survivors. However, this is easier said than done, as the world’s events play out randomly and realistically, with wise countries closing off access to the outside world if the symptoms are too dangerous to risk trading, and all countries eventually investing everything they can into cure research.

The sheer variety of options, from the country you start in to the economic stability and general climate of nearby countries, all factor into how likely your plague is to smother civilization in red death. The success of your disease is all dependent on your choices, and the consequences correlate very close to how an epidemic with your conditions would actually travel through today’s fast-paced world.

Early on in Plague Inc: Evolved, you only have access to bacteria, which is very controllable and not too difficult to infect the world with, even if you’re just experimenting. But with every victory with a new pathogen, you unlock another one to play with, and genes you use to better tune your disease to your intended strategy. Viruses mutate rapidly and it’s harder to undo the damage of getting symptoms you don’t want, fungus has a hard time spreading to other countries unaided, and then you move onto parasites, prions, nano-viruses and even bio-weapon agents with time, all of which posing their own deadly challenge.

As part of the full version of the game, you also get access to the three expansion-only contagions from the original Plague Inc: the Neurax Worm, which mind-controls the populace to spread it across the world and can either slaughter or enslave humanity; the Necroa Virus, which reanimates the dead and begins the zombie apocalypse; and the Simian Flu, a Dawn of the Planet of the Apes tie-in where you get to play with the plague that set the scene for the 2014 movie. Each infection’s genome has its own inherent advantages, and in some cases, disadvantages, that need to be fully understood if you want to exploit the full killing power of each one.

DNA is your key resource in Plague Inc: Evolved. You get more of it through infecting more people, and passing into new countries, and this is made easier by investing in transmissions, from animal-based spread and infected blood to water and air transmission, which makes it a lot easier to spread your disease to those pesky isolated island countries, which are a constant source of irritation for any seasoned Plague Inc: Evolved player. Proper symptoms can do a lot of legwork in spreading your disease too, though also increase the risk of your plague being noticed and triggering the cure (though with some diseases, this is inevitable, especially on the higher difficulties like Mega-Brutal), and can potentially be too effective, scaring distant countries into closing their ports ahead of schedule and killing your carriers before they can infect new ones.

Pathogen abilities are another vital piece of the puzzle, allowing you to build up your virus’s resistance to hot and cold conditions that would otherwise slow it down, as well as resistance to drugs produced by wealthy countries, and even hampering cure progress. Through selective and strategic planning, you can make your once-lowly virus into a global pandemic that floods nations with panic and bodies. Or you can mess up, get locked out of Madagascar, and spend the rest of the game fuming as you watch the rest of the world die while it sits there, clean as a whistle, and laughs at your misfortune.

The element of Plague Inc: Evolved that is both brilliant and dastardly is how luck-based it is. The epidemic model that this game follows includes many events that are randomly triggered. Some games will see airplanes or ships get improved sterilization conditions, making it impossible for your pathogen to travel on them unless you invest in a transmission to overpower this. Sometimes the game will throw a curveball like hot countries growing hotter, rich countries being harder to infect, the medical community having an easier time curing diseases with symptomatic tumors, and so forth.

The luck spring does bounce both ways sometimes, with you being blessed with a spontaneous infection on an enclosed island or bird migration patterns making it easier to spread your plague through countries with closed borders, but it’s completely unpredictable. You can save your game, play it out, get locked out of Greenland, load your game, and the next time you play, you can get Greenland but lose the Caribbean, or almost get the world completely infected only to have a breakthrough in the cure research spoil your victory cheer.

You can never really plan for events in Plague Inc: Evolved, only react to them, which is very good for the scientific aspect of this game, and very aggravating for the sheer gameplay aspect, especially if you’re an admitted achievement chaser like me. Don’t be afraid to save-scum if you have to, it’s absolutely necessary to get some of the more complicated achievements without pulling yourself through ten levels of Hell along the way.

Today’s Plague Inc: Evolved is a lot more robust than it was in its mobile origins, with not only a smorgasbord of awful ways to afflict the world, but a handbasket full of official scenarios, letting you play with infamous epidemics like the Black Death, Nipah, Swine Flu, and alternate universe versions of the world where climates, economic stability, and the international reaction to disease outbreaks are radically altered. Using included statistic charts, you can track the progression of your disease’s infectivity, severity, and lethality over the course of your game.

You can even create your own custom scenario using the included standalone Scenario Builder program! And Plague Inc: Evolved continues to evolve during this Early Access stage, having recently attained Multiplayer functionality, letting you compete with a friend to send your plague across the world and stymie the progress of your rival! Just like a young bacterial strain, this title has a lot of potential to keep evolving and spreading through the libraries of more and more Steam gamers each day.

I will say that Plague Inc: Evolved has a small soundtrack, which hurts it a bit for me. I’ve gotten rather tired of the standard music that plays on loop on the menu and during the standard main game scenarios. I will say, however, that I do like the expansion disease themes a lot, and suggest that if they give each of the standard pathogens its own distinctive theme, we could be well on the way to improving the limited music selection! Take a listen to the delightful theme of the Neurax Worm, with its piano disguising the true danger of what lies beneath, taking you on a journey so gentle and harmonious that you have no idea there’s a worm riding on your brain telling you how to think.

The Necroa Virus theme is especially powerful, bringing to mind the uncertain days of the early infection, with friends and neighbors losing sleep, drooling, eating their own fingers for some reason, and then before you know it, you’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse that you’ll never see the back of. And then there’s the Simian Flu theme, very much related to its inspired IP, alluding both to the extinction of the human race and the rise of a new species of intelligent, sapient apes building their own civilization in the shadows as the old world around them dies off in droves. Plague Inc: Evolved doesn’t have too much in the way of music just yet, but these three inspired themes hint at the fact that it could become much better very easily.

Yes, learning about diseases may seem like something reserved for a special brand of sociopath, and it can be, but at the same time, Plague Inc: Evolved has fast become one of the most successful ways to educate people across the world about epidemiology, to the point where its been praised by the CDC for its role in spreading awareness of disease transmission and the behaviors of deadly contagions. A single play of the game is also very fast, to the point where you can call a half-hour for a long game, making it easy to pick up and play and just experiment with.

It’s very addictive too, I was glued to this game for a week when I got it, and I expect to lose more and more of my personal free time to this viral phenomenon once greater mutations in the gameplay and soundtrack traits take hold. Ultimately, I would recommend this game to any gamer, casual or hardcore, not just because it’s fun (though it is), but also because it’s a very innovative degree of educational. The appeal has spread to me, and now it’s time for me to spread the appeal to you, so breathe deep so that the encephalitic spores can descend into the folds of your brain, and give Plague Inc: Evolved a try. And remember to pass it on…

Did I do that right, brain worm? Do I get the dopamine surge? I do? Thank you, Worm Zero, I’ll always love you…