Ndemic Creation's 'Plague Inc. Evolved' was one of the hidden unlocks in this month's Humble Monthly. It had been one I was considering buying for a while, due to all the time I spent playing Pandemic II.

For whatever reason I never got around to doing so, but it was the first thing I installed today when I logged on to my PC.

Yes. It is exactly like you thought it might be like. An upgraded Pandemic game, with all the shiny features of a larger budget release, and a day lost to time as I forget how long I played for once it sucked me in.

If you're not familiar with this genre it is best to think of the aim as the opposite to pretty much everything else out there. Ensure no people survive and lose every 'life' you have. All 7 billion of them.

You are a disease. You infect and spread. You kill indiscriminately. Humanity may try to stop you. They may even band together for once for a common goal that is not space aliens or otherworldly demons. But you will make sure they fail, and our little chapter of time becomes a footnote to the planet's history.

To start off with, you are a simple weak organism and infect a patient zero in the country of your choice. There are advantages and disadvantages for most countries depending or not if they have seaports, airports, border crossings, or are just girt by sea.

After a dozen attempts, I found the good old UK the best place to start and rapidly spread.

I end up starting in the UK a lot as it has easy access to the rest of Europe via air and sea. It's also a quick way to get to Greenland via Iceland. Greenland having only a single seaport which will close off if you mutate into a lethal form too early.

There are still ways to get to other countries once ports and borders are closed off, but Greenland always gave me trouble. Madagascar I could at least hit with an extreme case of zoonosis via birds.

And mutations are how you will spread and infect the world. They are split up into three main areas.

• Transmission: How you spread
• Symptoms: What effect you have on the humans
• Abilities: Passive skills based on your disease type.

With Transmission, you can use DNA points accumulated in the main game to change how easily you spread via air and sea, via urban and rural, and rich and poor.

This is largely how you can target other countries as aside from patient zero you have no direct way of interacting with the populace. Clicking on any country or region in the main map area will give you a breakdown on what type of area it is, along with other stats and a little bit of history.

Symptoms deal with your lethality and how infectious you are. The main aim is to keep a balance that you infect more people than you kill, and try to spread to every country before the humans decide to find a cure. If you are lucky, your disease may even mutate into a free symptom. This is only ever a problem if it mutates into something lethal when you are just trying to spread.

Abilities change based on your disease type. Bacteria can harden themselves against climates. Virii can increase mutations to a more rapid pace. Fungus has a few slots to simply spawn in a different country. There's a good amount of variety to each one to encourage replayability.

All of these can be deevolved at any point and you can recover a tiny amount of DNA points. I did find that in the late game when I had a 100% infection that it was worth removing some from transmission and butting points into drug/cure resistance.

How do you get DNA points? Well, this is where the mobile feeling comes from the game. You click on little popups. They appear as bonuses in infected regions, and for entering a new country. They're on screen for a short amount of time and simply have to be clicked on.

This again has a mouse-travel issue seen in other mobile ported titles. There's enough time to do it, but it does feel like it was made for fingers and thumbs. To be honest I only had issues with this on a rapidly mutating disease where you could get a dozen popups at once. Plus, you can always hit pause like a savage and click on everything without worry.

The points accessed via a little counter in the corner take you to your disease page. Or You can also get there via a country info page by selecting the correct tab. All in all, the interface is quite slick and didn't take long to learn how to use, didn't even have to bother with the tutorial.

The only other item to deal with is popups. Amusing little news titbits and status updates in the early and end game sections. These thankfully pause the game, and allow you to select and DNA point on the screen.

All in all, you are mainly going to be watching the world map looking at counters and going between tabs when you see an opportunity to spread. Closing down other items once you learn the game, which should not take long.

And yet...

This works. I started playing when it was light. I decided to stop once it got dark and old. There's something morbidly fascinating in playing a game where the aim is to kill off your entire species.

Oh there is unlocks with every disease completion. New types to play and new modifiers to start with. The game also has had a few free DLC added to it that I would of expected to see for < $5 as a paid semi cosmetic update. Such is the nature of the industry.

Scenario makers. Workshop support. Multiplayer if you like that kind of thing.

There's a lot here to do. And I recommend giving it a go.

Game Acquisition: Humble Monthly (June 2017).
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 3 June 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows 8
Processor: 2.0 GHz Dual Core Processor
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: Integrated Graphics (512MB)
Storage: 500 MB available space

Additional Notes: Unsupported video chipsets: Intel HD Graphics 3000, Intel GMA X3100, Intel GMA 950

Additional Note: Ran without any issues under Win7 64x