Infectious fun

April 13, 2007 7:46 AM

Destroy the world, one sneeze at a time. Friday flash fun.
posted by Malor (27 comments total)

Not exactly a world-class, groundbreaking game, but I had fun with it.
posted by Malor at 7:47 AM on April 13, 2007

The player involvement of this game rivals Progress Quest.
posted by tylermoody at 7:56 AM on April 13, 2007

Interesting - it's apparantly important to balance between lethality and visibility. A country closed its borders, so I couldn't win! Nyeh!
posted by muddgirl at 8:05 AM on April 13, 2007

I don't get it. I kept my virus very invisible so it could get to the airport but all it was doing was killing my dudes. So I just clicked on everything and suddenly airports around the world got sick. Wha?
posted by DU at 8:09 AM on April 13, 2007

1) Too complex
2) Didn't involve monkeys or footballs.
posted by humblepigeon at 8:10 AM on April 13, 2007

I coated footballs with my virus and all the monkeys died... then the mefites.

I may be confusing things though thanks to a real world virus.
posted by itsjustanalias at 8:21 AM on April 13, 2007

I also don't get the UI. What does a check mark for "incubation period" mean? That it has one? That it increases? Decreases? Is the virus still transmissible during that period?

Great idea. Terrible implementation.
posted by DU at 8:22 AM on April 13, 2007

I think the incubation period, the higher it is, probably lowers the visibility of the virus. And like muddgirl said, if your visibility gets too high, countries will close their borders so the virus can't spread anymore.

I don't understand the airports thing either. I never got any other region sick, even with airborne and waterborne checked, and clicking on the airports and water sources seemed to do nothing.

Great idea. Terrible implementation.

DU ftw.
posted by Brak at 8:34 AM on April 13, 2007

Actually, I did manage to win once. You can uncheck things to bring the visibility/lethality down while checking things to put the transmissibility up (basically uncheck the left column, check the middle column). after you have infections in all countries, crank the lethality up and just keep hitting Go.
posted by DU at 8:36 AM on April 13, 2007

I'm not even sure if I'm really playing this game.
posted by EatTheWeek at 9:09 AM on April 13, 2007

There's a Pandemic 2 out there that is slightly better as a game.
posted by grytpype at 9:09 AM on April 13, 2007

I really wish the points screen would update between turns. I was sitting there for like 15 days wondering why my points still weren't increasing!
posted by antifuse at 9:15 AM on April 13, 2007

Um. How do I get points? I've killed a bunch of people. Being a pandemic is hard.
posted by unknowncommand at 9:30 AM on April 13, 2007

You have to switch back and forth between the map and the points screen to see if your points have updated.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:05 AM on April 13, 2007

Just won it... Things of note:

- You don't get your first points until 50 people are dead.

- The toughest area to get infected is Western Europe, since there are no airports in there in the game. You have to cross over from Central Europe.

- Uncheck items to lower the visibility to decrease chances of borders being closed.

- You can actually make the virus non-lethal if you uncheck enough. Make sure you have points left to become lethal again (at least 4 for coughing).
posted by evilangela at 10:44 AM on April 13, 2007 [1 favorite]

I forgot Poland.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2007

I can't quite figure out what makes for a higher score. It doesn't seem to be purely a deaths within a certain amount of time but perhaps they're weighted by sooner is better.
posted by phearlez at 11:01 AM on April 13, 2007

6500. Lower the lethality to 0, and pray Europe gets infected (I was unable to get visibility to 0). First thing I did was deactivate vomiting (should be affordable after ~100 are dead), then ramp down the lethality until only sneezing is left. Hopefully, you will have a few extra points, because you'll want to give it an incubation period and survivability outside the host (if your only method of transmission is sneezing). Then go for airborne, then waterborne, and bodily fluids. To optimize the waterborne infectiousness, give it resistance to moisture next. By then you should be infecting at a rate that points are no longer a problem. Once you have a foothold in every region, ramp up the lethality.

Oh, looks like you can get visibility to 0 if you set it to be only autoimmune. Except the events in the game are triggered by the death toll, which is the real "visibility". Poor implementation.
posted by Eideteker at 11:20 AM on April 13, 2007

I kept clicking on the map but never saw anything happen. No visual feedback that anything is going on. Beats the hell out of me how this thing works. Am I just supposed to watch the numbers gradually change? And then adjust the virus. And then wait for better numbers?
Potentially great idea.
Bad, bad design.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:43 PM on April 13, 2007

There's a Pandemic 2 out there that is slightly better as a game.

Here. Anyone got any tips for this one?
posted by juv3nal at 12:49 PM on April 13, 2007

this game was obviously designed by someone in western europe. they're bulletproof.
[having way too much fun at this game]
posted by Busithoth at 2:46 PM on April 13, 2007

Yay, I finally won! How, you ask? Simple: I kept failing until it randomly assigned me West Europe. It takes a while for the virus to break out, but once it does the world is yours.
posted by muddgirl at 3:00 PM on April 13, 2007

Think like a real virus (or like you would if you were a sentient virus intent on killing the world). Start by getting everyone infected, and then kill all the carriers. If you kill your hosts quickly, that slows down the spread. Baaad.

In game terms, start by ramping up all of the transmission factors as quickly as possible. Ignore lethality; lethality just makes the humans notice you faster. Once you have footholds around the world, things become rapidly easier. By day 50, you'll be swimming in points, even without doing anything to increase lethality. At your leisure, mutate into something truly deadly (possibly waiting until someone in each region is infected) and go to town.
posted by grimmelm at 4:15 PM on April 13, 2007

For pandemic2: I figured something out...or at least I think I did. Could be just a fluke, but it seems like chance of success for infecting an airport depends on # of infected guys in the region you're infecting. So when the guys in a region start dying off it gets tougher to infect their airport. Greenland escaped me 2 games in a row this way because I was wasting all my points on unsuccessful attempts to infect airports.
posted by juv3nal at 4:50 PM on April 13, 2007

Killing the entire world has never been so much fun.

I turned down lethality to zero once I had enough points, turned infectivity up as much as possible until the entire world was a carrier and then just added "organ failure" and BOOM! 50% of human population dead.

Add "necrosis" after that and it is the end of days for mankind.

Genius.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 8:18 PM on April 13, 2007

Holy carp, that other Pandemic game is a lot harder. How can you tell if you're powerful enough to infect things? It seems to be dumb luck and a lot of clicking.

And fucking Greenland keeps developing immunity.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 9:00 PM on April 13, 2007

It's pretty easy to beat Pandemic 1 now. Once I had every country infected, I just cranked up all the lethality. Boom. Pandemic 2 is damn hard. Countries kept getting de-infected.
posted by antifuse at 3:52 AM on April 16, 2007