App Review: Plague Inc.

Ever just wanted to kill everyone? I mean, everyone. Completely wipe out the entire human race so that Earth is nothing but a wasteland – void of any life whatsoever. I’m talking I Am Legend-sorta destruction here. Now what if I told you I could make this a reality? What if I could transform all of your demented desires and dreams into something real? Before you call ASIO or the Federal Police, let me explain.

I’m talking of course about Plague Inc., probably the best thing to happen to Android ever (I’m just kidding Josh (Not really)). My love for it shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of you that follow me on Twitter, with my tweets in the last few days:

If you haven’t already please try Plague Inc via.bryce.se/u8g3p (iPhone available too)

— Bryce Adams (@bryceadams) October 27, 2012

PAX-12

— Bryce Adams (@bryceadams) October 29, 2012

The aim of the game is quite simple: Wipe out the entire human race by creating your very own disease and evolving it through Transmission, Symptom and Ability power-ups, that you purchase with DNA points (you get to name it, too!). And how do you earn said DNA points? By infecting new countries/regions with your disease and crumbling humanity.

The game is really quite difficult though. After powering through the first ‘Easy’ level, most users end up stuck on the first ‘Normal’ level. Ending over 6.5 billion lives has never been this difficult. The game works off real world data so the populations and environments are all accurate and have to be accounted for when playing the game. Certain Transmission upgrades work better in different climates. Different Abilities serve different purposes depending on the country you’re trying to infect. A combination of symptoms can lead to a faster cure or a quicker death. This ain’t a joke folks.

As I just mentioned, your biggest enemy in the game is science. ALl the evil doctors and researches in the world eventually team up to fight your disease and find the cure. Live Aid concerts start popping up all over the place. Bono is in Africa trying to save the kids (and inadvertently infecting them with the disease). Nobody cares about the dolphins anymore. Earth spirals into complete and utter chaos (with Instagram providing a live feed of the event through filtered zombie photos, of course).

I don’t have anything bad to say about Plague. For us Android users it’s even free (with an optional $1 in-app purchase that provides some additional features)! The app has received a lot of negative feedback directed at it’s many bugs, which is to be expected as Miniclip ported the game from iOS to Android, but these bugs seem to be clearing up and with almost 1 million installs on Android to complement it’s 4.5 star rating, I doubt I need to convince you any more to download it immediately.