Do It Yourself Pandemic

As a biology major in undergrad, you can imagine my glee when I found a fantastic infectious disease game at Kongregate called Pandemic II (implying that there was a Pandemic I at some point which I missed).

Basically you get to play an infectious disease, with the goal of strategically plotting infection, transmission and death across the entire globe. Chose Virus, Bacteria, or Parasite and do your best to ensure that you take special care to get Madagascar, that pesky island nation has a habit of shutting down its shipyards and ruining your chances of global domination.

Is it wrong when you’re trying to beat your own record for wiping out the whole of humanity? Other than being insanely fun, it’s also an educational look at how disease spreads through a population and across populations over time and the factors affecting the rate, lethality, and duration of infection. Strategists out there will love it, particularly the realistic mode, but you cowboy diseases out there can still get in on the game through a relaxed mode that isn’t quite as intensive.

Two thumbs up.