Pandemic II

Pandemic II

Ev-ry bo-dy wants to rule the world. Or so the song goes. But if you've ever wondered what it's like to play the role of petulant biologist seeking to eradicate the whole of humanity, we humbly suggest you put down the Erlenmeyer flasks and pick up Pandemic II instead.

Pandemic II is an exercise in biological warfare. You'll guide a disease from lowly annoyance to global disaster, spreading sickness across a continental tour worthy of the history books.

Will your megaplague be a prodigious virus, a well-balanced bacterium, or a stealthy parasite? Each form has unique strengths and weaknesses that will alter your approach. As the game progresses, you'll accrue evolution points to spend on traits to custom engineer your disease: granting various elemental resistances, finding new vectors, and affecting the symptoms your infected will display (everything from fever to hemorrhaging).

Your ultimate goal is to infect all of the humans on Earth, causing their gasping, ignoble death in the process. But be wary, for if your organism gains too much visibility, the world's medical community will band together to stop your spread. Despite the macabre theme, the game is presented solely through menu screens and a world map. The thrill of seeing nations enter a red frenzy is entirely worth it, though. Just watch out for those germaphobe jerks in Madagascar.

If you've got a highly infectious specimen you'd like to expose Act Casual to, send along a sample and description via our very own hermetically sealed Contact Form.

Comments

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

No, no, people can die from Tier I and II stuff. Lots and lots of people. :)

Huh. None of my games had a single person die until Tier IV, whether it was viral or bacterial. I have not yet done parasitic.

I agree with the Tier I and II stuff. Vomiting, Coughing and Pulmonary Edema = tons of dead folks.

I'm having a blast with this, to the point that i'd increasingly like to see it made into a full title, maybe a $25 budget game on Steam or something that allows you to play as either the virus or the doctors trying to cure it, and expands the time scale a little bit to allow for more realistic, Black Plague-like horror.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Chumpy_McChump wrote:

No, no, people can die from Tier I and II stuff. Lots and lots of people. :)

Huh. None of my games had a single person die until Tier IV, whether it was viral or bacterial. I have not yet done parasitic.

I think the trick to using the tier I and II stuff is by making sure you pick the symptoms that can be associated with death and they generally have to work together. Vomiting, Poopy problems, and those that dehydrate work wonders. You're basically building the flu. My first virus finished its work in about 51 days and killed everyone except Madagascar and freaking Cuba with nothing but Tier I and II symptoms, albiet, I had a lot of those chosen.

You're just all sick bastards!

I'll be joining you soon!

This is the first time that I've been playing a title BEFORE it was featured in this article. yay me!

I tend to get too the killing too soon and don't get everyone.

I know it's probably a balancing issue to make the game not that easy to beat, but the AI in the first seemed more realistic. In the sequel, countries start flipping out over the disease even if it doesn't do anything harmful. How would they even know people are sick if you turn off all the symptoms?

White blood cell count!

I had a very good tactic for this game, though I executed it too well and failed. Basically I played a parasite, sold my symptoms right away, then upped all of my transmissions as soon as I could. Suddenly I had a completely invisible virus that does nothing but spreads. After a couple hours of multitasking with another game, I upped most of my resistances "just incase" and then left for work. When I got home about 9 hours later I finished off my resistances, and checked out my infections. Due to being a parasite I'd only infected maybe 70% of the world by this point, even parts of Madagascar. Not a damn thing had closed down on me, all my avenues were open. I decided now was the time to act, I would just start the killing now and I'd infect everyone eventually. So I slammed on every single symptom I could. People were sweating, coughing, vomiting, etc. The problem was, when you give everyone's body a sudden shock of 20 major symptoms, they all die, immediately, with no chance of further spreading. The people had no idea what had happened, but in the matter of 5 seconds or so, 70% of the world's population died, and with them, my disease. R.I.P.

Successfully destroyed the planet. Plus I did it with the Zombie disease. Necrosis, Cysts, Ataxia, Dementia and Insanity. I was finally able to add Vomiting but that was at the end so it was just zombies vomiting on each other...which is still pretty cool. Score of 74350.

Not sure on the tier 1+2 combination's working very well to kill people. I had sneezing, coughing, fever, sweating, fatigue, diarrhea and nausea with 0 dead and 4billion+ infected (everyone but China, Australia and Japan). It took vomiting to put it over the edge and get people dying.

My last disease, Buzzicoccus, was given the Head Popper trait. Sounded like Super-Encephalitis.

There are a few key things that key off the AI, resistances past 2, more than 2 symptoms and infected water facilities.
If you keep resistances at 2, go airborne and another of your choice, you can infect easily.
After that, decide how to kill people. Easiest way I've found is by dehydration. Once you've spread infect water facilities, then hit up sweating, vomiting, diarrhea, kidney failure etc.

buzzvang wrote:

My last disease, Buzzicoccus, was given the Head Popper trait. Sounded like Super-Encephalitis.

nice I cant seem to get any traits besides what you start with and the one if you mutate and survive the vaccine.

Virus
Adds a bonus to infectivity, makes disease more vulnerable to environment conditions and increases disease evolution.
Bacteria
Adds a bonus to drug resistance.
Parasite
Makes the disease less visible and more resistant to environment conditions.
Catching
Gives your disease rodent, insect, airborne or waterborne transmissions.
Durable
Increases your diseases natural resistance to cold, heat, moisture or drugs.
Bloody Vomit
Increases your diseases lethality and infectivity.
Bloodletter
Increases your diseases lethality and infectivity.
Decomposer
Increases your diseases lethality and infectivity.
Ablaze
Greatly increases your diseases lethality.
Biohazard
Increases your diseases lethality.
Famous
Greatly increases your diseases visibility.
Cured
Results in your disease no longer being able to infect people.
Isolated
Reduces your diseases infectivity.
Expected
Vaccines are quicker to engineer than normal.
Apocalyptic
Increases your diseases visibility.
Mutator
Vaccines are more difficult to engineer than normal.
Stealthy
Reduces your diseases visibility.
Harmless
Reduces your diseases lethality.
Immune
Your disease is immune to all possible vaccines.
Head Popper
Increases your diseases lethality and infectivity.

List of all of the traits.

I killed everyone with Whooping Diarrhea.

boogle wrote:

There are a few key things that key off the AI, resistances past 2, more than 2 symptoms and infected water facilities.
If you keep resistances at 2, go airborne and another of your choice, you can infect easily.
After that, decide how to kill people. Easiest way I've found is by dehydration. Once you've spread infect water facilities, then hit up sweating, vomiting, diarrhea, kidney failure etc.

It's still a roll of the dice, though, especially when it comes to Madagascar. At some point when the disease starts cropping up in multiple countries and when the infection rate hits a certain point in the country of origin, the AI starts shutting off certain access points to countries. Since Madagascar has only one way in or out, you're screwed if they decide to close the ports.

I had a parasite that made it into Madagascar, but failed to get into Canada, Peru, Argentina, and New Zealand. Plus they made a cure.

I'm going to start a parasite game and just leave it collecting evolution points over night and see what kind of spread I have come morning.

I haven't played the realistic version yet. In that one, do mutations start locally and spread, or do they still occur simultaneously everywhere the disease is?

complexmath wrote:

I haven't played the realistic version yet. In that one, do mutations start locally and spread, or do they still occur simultaneously everywhere the disease is?

Simultaneously.

Hmm, I find it amusing that I have all the world except 2 countries completely infected and those other places are still trying to prevent the spread of the infection internally. Seriously Canada/US/Mexico *everyone* is infected , might as well let the kids go to school.

Nosferatu wrote:

Hmm, I find it amusing that I have all the world except 2 countries completely infected and those other places are still trying to prevent the spread of the infection internally. Seriously Canada/US/Mexico *everyone* is infected , might as well let the kids go to school.

Yes, they also will continue shutting things down (or keep them shut down) once they develop and deploy a successful vaccine.

I managed to kill everyone (score 40k) with a parasite after a couple of false starts. One sure way to victory is go as slowly as you can: turn off all the symptoms and keep your infection rates just low enough that the disease is spreading instead of receeding. This lets you build up a reasonable stockpile of points (which you get just for time elapsed) before everyone panics.

As soon as your infection has landed in every continent and island - damn you Madagascar, with your no-airports and single port! - start turning up infection rates, with the most innocuous symptoms. Once they start on the vaccine, turn on every infection mode you can - that will shut down the hospitals and slow them down. Then, once you're clearly on the road to 100% infection, turn on all the lethal stuff you can.

Madagascar is the biggest hurdle - it was the last thing to get infected in my game.

What I can't figure out is how to increase your score. Is it time elapsed? In that case, your best bet is to go virus, go as contagious as possible, and hope to get lucky on Madagascar and the other isolated areas.

Nathaniel wrote:

I managed to kill everyone (score 40k) with a parasite after a couple of false starts. One sure way to victory is go as slowly as you can: turn off all the symptoms and keep your infection rates just low enough that the disease is spreading instead of receeding. This lets you build up a reasonable stockpile of points (which you get just for time elapsed) before everyone panics.

As soon as your infection has landed in every continent and island - damn you Madagascar, with your no-airports and single port! - start turning up infection rates, with the most innocuous symptoms. Once they start on the vaccine, turn on every infection mode you can - that will shut down the hospitals and slow them down. Then, once you're clearly on the road to 100% infection, turn on all the lethal stuff you can.

Madagascar is the biggest hurdle - it was the last thing to get infected in my game.

What I can't figure out is how to increase your score. Is it time elapsed? In that case, your best bet is to go virus, go as contagious as possible, and hope to get lucky on Madagascar and the other isolated areas.

I used a bacteria and infected everyone (was lucky with Madagascar... they shut their port down as my ship was coming in) and the final tally on the score was 62k. I think score is calculated by time, just not sure what the other factors are.

I have given up on the game, it's broken and I have no more patience left.

I would honestly love to play a version where you play as the humans trying to stop the plague.

Nathaniel wrote:

What I can't figure out is how to increase your score. Is it time elapsed? In that case, your best bet is to go virus, go as contagious as possible, and hope to get lucky on Madagascar and the other isolated areas.

I think the score is probably a function of how many people you kill and how quickly you kill them. Since an aggressive disease is more likely to be discovered and therefore not succeed, I think it's more likely that fast killers score higher than slow ones. I don't know how long your session was when you scored 40k, but I played a 10 minute game and scored around 173k by killing the entire world but for Madagascar.

Double post.

Hmm I left it running overnight, and I was completely amused to wake up to the entire world in a panic because my "super parasite" had infected 716 people in Argentina, with no casualties over the course of 2 years... But those 500 points were awesome, I cranked it all the way up, and bought every attribute there was.

http://fukung.net/v/16818/4074895fae...

EDIT: I think it's Pandemic II, anyway. :p

The sh*ts ended human life as we know it. Everyone had The sh*ts.