The coronavirus is spreading with increasing speed across the entire world, with over 415,000 people infected and more than 18,500 deaths. Can the situation be even worse? You can find out in a unique game that is currently breaking records worldwide. It's called Plague Inc. and simulates a world pandemic.
In this game, you can become a deadly virus and see if you can infect and possibly kill off the entire world. You start in one particular country, infect the first person, and then watch the contagion spread. By introducing mutations, you develop as a virus and spread the infection to other countries using airplanes, ships, animals, insects, infected people and air.
It's not easy, because just like a real life virus, you have to find the right balance between infectivity and the ability to kill people. If a virus is too aggressive and kills its host too quickly, it can't spread further. And if, on the other hand, it's killing too slowly, it won't be able to "exterminate" humanity before the cure has been found.
It is the physicians who are your adversary in the game - the more people you infect and kill, the greater humanity's efforts to effectively create a vaccine will be. Time is limited and it is up to you which strategy you choose. Are you going to be an inconspicuous virus that quietly infects millions of people and then mutates and strikes? Or are you going to spread and kill quickly, so as to have millions of dead to boast with before mankind even realizes what hit it?
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In the game you decide on mutations of the virus and its ability to spreadSource: Ndemic Creations/Steam
Closing of state borders, hectic search for the cure
The game is a very realistic simulation of how contagions work. It includes pretty much everything that's happening in the world today - air traffic restrictions, travel ban, closing of state borders, panic and desperate search for a cure. It also offers an extensive "tree" of genetic mutations, so while playing, you get to explore how viruses behave, how they spread, what symptoms the infected have, and how the contagion can kill.
Not surprisingly, the game, which was released in 2012, has become popular in recent weeks and is being downloaded by millions of people. They want to know how the world pandemic could evolve. There are even videos on YouTube where people try to play for the coronavirus. And some of them have already totally "exterminated" humanity.
Plague Inc. game from Ndemic Creations is available for mobile and desktop. You can buy it for 99 cents for Apple mobile phones, Android phone users can download it for free (although with some limitations). The PC version, which is the most advanced, costs € 14.99.
