Quick app review: Plague Inc. brings global pandemic gameplay to Android
Plague Inc. is a game that has been available on iOS for a while now, but it just recently made its debut on Android. At first, I didn’t think that the game would be very interesting, but I decided to go ahead and give it a try on my Nexus 7. If you want to get anything done this weekend, then I suggest that you don’t do the same.
In Plague, you play as a disease, which might seem a bit odd at first. You start out as a humble bacterium (although you can unlock different types such as virus and parasite later), with the goal of destroying humanity. When you begin the game, you can pick a country to infect first. From there, you wait for the ailment to spread, and collect DNA points. The disease can spread on land, or through boats and airplanes. To speed up the process, you can use the DNA points to mutate the disease and make it better at infecting people.
There are quite a number of options for mutation, placed into three categories: transmission, symptoms, and abilities. Transmission mutations aid the disease in spreading, symptom mutations make the disease more deadly, and abilities allow the disease to resist drugs and different climates. Each of the categories has something of a tech tree, where upgrading certain aspects unlocks others. Just the three categories provide plenty of complication for the game, and quite a bit of strategy is required. In fact, news stories pop up at random, allowing you to tailor your approach to the defensive measures of the world.
You win the game by killing the entire human population, and lose if a cure is found or the last carrier dies. Despite being a bit morbid, the game is actually quite fun, especially for people who enjoy strategy. It sometimes moves a bit slowly, and won’t be for everyone, but those who enjoy this type of game will find Plague Inc. incredibly addicting and fun. It can be downloaded for free from Google Play, and easily updated to the full version with a $0.99 in app purchase.
Download: Google Play