Plague Inc: Evolved

Genre: Simulation

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Plague Inc. is a Simulation-style game originally released on mobile platforms in 2012, having players play through a global pandemic situation, with the premise that they are taking the role of the disease, with the goal of spreading and ultimately destroying humanity. Certainly this makes for one of the more extreme examples of a game that lets players “play as the bad guy”.

The game received a remake titled Plague Inc: Evolved, with patient zero of this release being a PC version in 2014, then breaking out on Xbox One in 2015, then spreading to PlayStation 4 in 2016, and finally infecting Nintendo Switch in 2019. This release of the game features improved visuals, more detailed analytics, all of the previously-released paid expansions, as well as access to custom expansions created by fans in Steam Workshop.

Between the developer-created and fan-made expansions, players have access to a wealth of scenarios including real-world outbreaks like the black plague, fantasy diseases based on zombies and vampires, sci-fi epidemics like nanites and brain-controlling parasites, more abstract “diseases” like Trumpism and fake news, and even silly scenarios like trying to create a board game so successful its popularity “infects” everyone on the planet. In 2020, when the world suffered a very real pandemic, this game added a free expansion, The Cure, that flipped the tables and allowed players to fight against the disease. Suffice it to say, Plague Inc: Evolved is not hurting for content.

The gameplay here is fairly accessible and relatively simple, though the various expansions and scenarios add their own complications. However, the main game simply has you selecting a type of disease (bacteria, virus, fungal infection, etc.), selecting a nation of origin, and from that point on, mostly what you’ll be doing is passively controlling the disease’s growth and spread by popping bubbles on the map screen representing the disease’s progress and then using the resources gained from that to mutate your disease. These mutations affect how infectious and easy-to-spread your disease is, how transmissible and deadly its symptoms are, how resilient the disease is, and how resistant it is to attempts to treat and cure it.

Players must carefully decide when and how to upgrade their disease to make for the greatest effect, reacting to situations as they develop in the world, such as making your disease more transmissible via boats to get to island nations like Iceland and Madagascar that don’t have airports, or responding to new attempts to use medication to halt the disease’s spread by making the disease more resistant to drugs.

Other scenarios, such as the vampire scenario named above, add new complications to this formula, such as characters you must move around to interact with the world map more directly. Then there’s The Cure, which has players using many of the same mechanics in an entirely different context, to track down the disease’s whereabouts, contain it, treat it, and cure it, all while being mindful of the international resistance to your policies. These sorts of scenarios can be a bit confusing, and it may not always be immediately clear the best way to approach them compared to the more standard disease scenarios, but it helps that players can cut their teeth on the game’s more basic campaigns before tackling these game modes.

Overall, the gameplay here strikes a good balance of being accessible while providing a good variety of options, as well as giving players more advanced campaigns to tackle if the earlier game modes seem a bit simple. I will say that it does feel like there is some degree of trial and error in determining the best way to tackle each new scenario, though one could argue that discovering the ins and outs of these scenarios is a part of the fun.

Being a game borne of mobile devices, it’s fitting that Plague Inc: Evolved has good touchscreen controls on Nintendo Switch, though the traditional gamepad controls here work well too, with your cursor “snapping” to points of interest in an intuitive way. Really, the biggest issue I have with playing this game in handheld mode is that the text is at times inexplicably too small to be read, which strikes me as odd given that the mobile devices that first hosted this game had even smaller screens and never had this issue. In addition, when discussing issues specific to the Nintendo Switch, I have to express disappointment at the lack of the multiplayer mode present in other versions of the game (despite that this game will repeatedly try to connect to networks if you’re not online).

Other than the text size issues, the presentation here is quite good, with the game’s detailed 2D world map topped off by some nice 3D effects like swirling weather patterns along with simple 3D planes and boats showing potential avenues for disease to spread. In menus, this version of the game gives players a good look at a 3D representation of the virus, which is a nice touch. This is all backed by appropriately ominous music, complete with occasional creepy sound effects.

I will note that while the news headlines that flash at the top of the screen still contain some funny bits (such as a headline announcing that Texas has banned guns), the humor seems to have been toned down since the original release of the game. I suppose this is understandable, given that some may not take kindly to such a lighthearted tone for this topic matter given what the world has been through over the last 3 years.

Overall, Plague Inc: Evolved is a fantastic game that’s even more poignant than when it was first released, and contains a wealth of content that the game has received over the years. While there are elements of this game that may not appeal to everyone, the core gameplay here is still excellent, and the Nintendo Switch version of the game is mostly a solid port. If you’re looking for a unique Strategy game on Nintendo Switch, this game is well worth playing.

tl;dr – Plague Inc: Evolved is a Simulation-style game where players control the development of a disease with the goal of promoting its spread across the world and the ultimate annihilation of the human race… or, alternately, they can control the fight against the disease. This release contains updated visuals and a wealth of content, with the core gameplay still being both accessible and fun while still providing players with plenty of options. Fans of Strategy games looking for something fairly unique should definitely give this game a look.

Grade: B+

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