Pandemic: For Android

Pandemic is, by far, one of my favorite board games ever as far as co-ops are concerned. I really, really love that game. Enough so that I’ve played it six hours straight, and the only thing that made me stop was the fact that I had to go to bed for work the next day. It’s a pretty awesome game (and okay, maybe I’m obsessed…)

So, when it was finally released on android devices (and not just the Apple store), I immediately snatched it up. If I recall correctly it’s about $6 for the base game, and an additional $1 for the expansion. Yes, the expansion is DEFINITELY worth the extra $1 in my opinion!

If you aren’t already aware, Pandemic is a game where it’s your crackpot team of CDC employees versus four super viruses that have broken out and are threatening to destroy the world. There are many ways to die, but only one way to win: cure all the diseases. If you’re just playing the base game you’ll be working with four pawns, but with the expansion you get five. Each pawn will have a different role (either randomly assigned or selected, your choice), and each role dictates the abilities they can take within their typical actions.

I’d like to say that because I play this game a lot, and almost every day at lunch, that I’m really good at it with a high win rate. …I’m not. Okay, I’ll be a little less humble and say I am actually good at the game, however it’s challenging enough that winning the game is hard. I’d say I only win about 25% of the time, and that’s okay with me. Since I love strategy games, which this definitely is, I have fun whether I win or lose so long as I feel I played the best that I could. Sometimes there’s literally nothing you could have done to win, luck just isn’t on your side. Other times, you breeze through and feel like a god.

Gameplay is fine, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a fun game, and it translated pretty well to the mobile games department for a solo player.

I’m not so keen about the way everything is displayed though. There’s a lot going on with the game, and the fact that I cannot constantly see who holds what cards can be frustrating. However, I’m only playing this on the phone, and if I were using a tablet this might be alleviated.

It’d also be nice if it gave you a turn-order, so you could better plan your movements around the board. Turn-order is random and so you never know who is going first. At least that’s been my experience. There might be a way to tell turn-order, and if someone knows it I’d love to know too.

I am very happy that in the expansion they gave the undo button to us. I cannot tell you how many times I screwed up my whole plan because I was trying to move the screen, or click on something else and ended up not doing what I intended… The undo button solves this issue, and it has literally saved my entire game before.

A statistics screen would also be nice, to see your win-loss ratio. This one has nothing to do with the game itself, I’m just curious.

I do like the fact that it’s very simplified though, so that it’s not something you need a huge long tutorial for to figure out where everything is. Simple mechanics work best, and since this is a game where you need to think about your strategy it’s a really good thing that you don’t also have to think about how to make it work.

Overall I’d give this a 4.75/5 rating. It’s a great game and lots of fun, but there’s definitely some room for minor improvements to make it even better. I’d also love to see them add more expansions to the game play.