Plague Inc. - iPhone Strategy game [Universal]

[AJT]

Doctors: There is no plague.
Hosts: Well then we are rioting!
I would have thought people would think my disease was a normal cough.

[Kayg0000]

Originally Posted by abbad0n

Any chance you can convert to a text file for easier viewing on other platforms?

Jpeg and Text versions. The site has quite small limits on text and document sizes.

[GSJ1977]

Just reinstalled this game. Last time I played it was at version 1.2 I think. I like it much better now. Previously there was a rather straightforward path to victory (almost a shortcut) that worked for nearly all the disease types, but that seems to have been fixed and the game seems much more organic now. The various plague types feel more different from each other as well, now that the game is forcing me to play properly. I've just finished beating all the plague types on Brutal and it was more challenging than before. Fungus is still the hardest though! I beat Neurax Worm on my first attempt (Brutal difficulty again) which was unexpected. I guess I got lucky?

Anyway, I've increased my star rating to 4/5 and I bought a couple IAPs as a way to say thanks to the developer for the updates. However I noticed something odd... I only have a few genes unlocked. The game says they all unlock through play, but I've beaten everything on Brutal and only half of them are unlocked (and some of those I unlocked with the aforementioned IAPs). So what do I have to do to unlock the rest?

[Kayg0000]

Originally Posted by GSJ1977

. However I noticed something odd... I only have a few genes unlocked. The game says they all unlock through play, but I've beaten everything on Brutal and only half of them are unlocked (and some of those I unlocked with the aforementioned IAPs). So what do I have to do to unlock the rest?

You get one (random) gene for each game you win, any virus type, any difficulty. There are 25 genes in total so you have to play and win 25 games. The one you get is random from from you have left to get, so you always get new one, until you have them all.

The feature where save games persisted and could be reloaded after a win was disabled to prevent people saving a game near the end, wining, getting a gene, reloading, repeat for all 25. You have to play 25 full games.

[GSJ1977]

Originally Posted by Kayg0000

You get one (random) gene for each game you win, any virus type, any difficulty. There are 25 genes in total so you have to play and win 25 games. The one you get is random from from you have left to get, so you always get new one, until you have them all.

The feature where save games persisted and could be reloaded after a win was disabled to prevent people saving a game near the end, wining, getting a gene, reloading, repeat for all 25. You have to play 25 full games.

Okay cool, thanks!

[sophisticated.gamer.]

Anyone knows how to get president ill and get him replaced quickly? I'm impatient so I used unlimited DNA, evolved every transmission and drug 1,2
Heat and cold to max. Got the world, do swine flu, nothing happens. Did I do anything wrong?

[Ndemic Creations]

Originally Posted by destruya

Hell, make the asteroid a new disease type - "Extraterrestrial Pathogen." Instead of picking the area where it starts, the asteroid/meteorite (assume it's small enough that it wouldn't start WW3 accidentally but large enough that people would investigate) would fall "somewhere" and the curious would be the first to become infected.

You will be pleased to know that this is already very high up my 'cool list'!

Originally Posted by kellyjgoines

So my wife and I really love this game; we play it all the time, we just have a few questions.

3. Will there be a 'Save and Continue" button in a future update? That would really come in handy.

4. Will we ever be allowed to name our pathogens with more than 9 characters?

Save & continue - no plans at the moment. Why do you want it?
Longer names - I want to do this in the future but will need some changes to text handling as there are a lot of events etc which need to factor in length

Originally Posted by kellyjgoines

I played a quick game on casual and got one. I was like cool, so I can get them from this difficulty as well...

I wanted to make sure people got something from every victory

Originally Posted by Kayg0000

25 quick "insane bolt" achievement games after installing the update and i have all 25 GCMs

Wow - maybe I need to make it harder :P

Originally Posted by Kayg0000

Jpeg and Text versions. The site has quite small limits on text and document sizes.

Nice work!

Originally Posted by GSJ1977

Just reinstalled this game. Last time I played it was at version 1.2 I think. I like it much better now. Previously there was a rather straightforward path to victory (almost a shortcut) that worked for nearly all the disease types, but that seems to have been fixed and the game seems much more organic now. The various plague types feel more different from each other as well, now that the game is forcing me to play properly. I've just finished beating all the plague types on Brutal and it was more challenging than before. Fungus is still the hardest though! I beat Neurax Worm on my first attempt (Brutal difficulty again) which was unexpected. I guess I got lucky?

Anyway, I've increased my star rating to 4/5 and I bought a couple IAPs as a way to say thanks to the developer for the updates. However I noticed something odd... I only have a few genes unlocked. The game says they all unlock through play, but I've beaten everything on Brutal and only half of them are unlocked (and some of those I unlocked with the aforementioned IAPs). So what do I have to do to unlock the rest?

I'm glad you are enjoying it. What do I need to add to get the full 5 stars?

[sophisticated.gamer.]

Don't worry I got it to nuke Russia. How do u post pictures?

[GSJ1977]

Originally Posted by Ndemic Creations

I'm glad you are enjoying it. What do I need to add to get the full 5 stars?

Oh that's just the wannabe game critic in me. But I won't turn down an opportunity to indulge it!

Seems you made a conscious decision to hide most of the game rules/mechanics from the player. While I agree that keeping some things hidden is good, I think you hid too much. It's not a problem to me anymore, but I remember when I first started playing... figuring things out was ALL trial and error. The help is minimal. Take DNA points for example. Most of them just appear with no explanation of how you got them. It turns out that you get a limited trickle of free DNA points at the start, which is fine except that the game never tells you this, which meant I couldn't understand why I got a few dozen DNA points for infecting my first country and then a fraction of that for the second. The help says that Severity gives you more DNA but not how/when you get that DNA, and the aforementioned trickle made it very difficult to work out why I was getting less DNA points in the middle of the game despite my Severity being higher than it was at the start of the game. The help says to imagine the plague is real, but the DNA points are pure gameplay mechanics and nothing to do with reality. They should be explained better IMO.

Another design choice I don't like is the popping of bubbles. It's tedious and doesn't add to the challenge. If a lot of bubbles appeared at once I used to pause the game to pop them all. How is that fun or challenging? The new gene makes the problem go away, mostly, but of course it has to be unlocked at random or purchased with IAP and even then you still have to pop cure bubbles. I'd rather just focus on the strategy, but maybe that's just me.

There are other minor issues. The news feed doesn't go back very far, so older news items are lost before long, and there's no way to have it filter out stuff you aren't interested in. It's a bit of a problem when, for example, you're trying to remember which symptom it was that scientists increased their understanding of at the start of the game. Also the graphs and tables could be presented better. But those things are nitpicks really.

It's a good game IMO. 4 stars from me is a good score. You should see what I give the rest of the crap on the App Store.

[Kayg0000]

Originally Posted by sophisticated.gamer.

Don't worry I got it to nuke Russia. How do u post pictures?

I'm not sure how to or if you can direct from iPad/iPhone etc. I end up syncing to my PC and using "manage attachments" whilst posting via web browser on PC. Manage attachment appears below the area for text in your post