Plague Inc: Kill Everyone using Mobile Platforms

I’ve discovered that the bitter taste of my initial disappointment in mobile gaming has faded; I begrudgingly purchased a mobile game at the recommendation of my best friend: Plague Inc. It’s a strategy title for iOS and Android by single-man developer Ndemic Creations that asks a simple question: can you engineer a plague to wipe out the Earth’s population before they discover a cure?

Total Annihilation

In Plague Inc. you are engineering a disease that will start from humble beginnings and will hopefully wipe out the population of the Earth. (Or, if you’re like me, you like to pretend that you are the plague, instead of simply engineering it.) Plague Inc. is a surprisingly nuanced strategy game that requires you to sneak across the world unnoticed, spreading and infecting literally everyone while making them all sick enough to die. You’ll spend the “DNA points” you earn by spreading to add new vectors of transmission and develop new lethal symptoms. Everything that a burgeoning plague could want is available, from spreading through rats and through water to causing coughs, rashes, insanity, and total organ failure.

The simulation of the game is surprisingly thorough for the limited number of buttons available to you. The game takes into consideration a large number of factors for each country, from economic prosperity, technology levels, major trade routes, and climate. You’ll find that your mosquitoes are much more effective in dry human climates, blood transmission will work in rural areas with little medicine, and taking to the air will allow your plague to hop planes and make it across oceans.

The game boils down to a race between you and the cure. While developing lethal symptoms early will net you more DNA points to spend, if you develop symptoms that are too scary too quickly the civilized countries of the world will band together and find a cure before everyone is infected. If you’re not lethal enough you’ll run out of DNA to spend on upgrades and will lose the long-term race. The goal is to sneak in the door of every country and steadily make people sicker, popping out the big guns like necrosis and seizures when it’s too late.

The small touches in the game make the difference. Researching insomnia and comas will actually slow down cure research. Spending points in boils that burst will also how quickly your disease spreads. You’ll earn goofy hidden achievements like “The Walking Dead” when you combine insomnia and anemia. Pepper in a few random events and you have a game that somehow manages to feel real while mostly being a static world map.

Plague Inc.: Playable and Terrifying

The game itself is easy to play and immediately engaging. The touch screen controls are perfect for a game that doesn’t have anything more complex than a world map and a tech tree. Each game of Plague Inc. will take about 15 minutes, either you’ll know you’ll lose by then or you’ll spend minutes 16 through 20 watching the world descend into delicious chaos.

The flavor of Plague Inc. is its greatest asset. If this was a game of, say, providing energy to cities or trying to seed the idea of world peace among the world’s population, I would have put it down long ago. But loading up a new game, naming my plague something funny (my first win was “Dookblood”), and watching the world burn is just terrible fun. I will be loading this game up again and again, and the awful train-wreck flavor is a big part of that. Watching the world map go from bustling and colorful to desolate and red is satisfying. I’ll allow you to judge me however you wish, but I implore you to give it a try.

Plague Inc. is an easy recommendation for anyone that enjoys bite-size strategy games. And it’s only $1. A dollar. It will offer you endless bathroom entertainment for less than the price of a 20oz Coke. Go catch it (eh?) immediately from the Google Play or iTunes.