For this Read and Play, I played an cooperative analog systems game — Pandemic. This mass market game was created by Matt Leacock and designed to be a family/casual game for players above age 8. In Pandemic, you and up to three other teammates adopt the role of a disease-fighting team that are tasked with saving humanity from four deadly diseases. The goal of the game is to discover cures for all four diseases before: 8 outbreaks occur, a disease spreads too much, or your team runs out of time. I played this as a 2-player game for a little over an hour at the hardest difficulty — I’m pleased to say we won.
Pandemic is a pandemic simulation game, thereby roughly modeling how viruses spread across the globe through land, air, and sea transportation networks. One specific example of how the simulation genre impacts the game is through the overflow spreading mechanic — when too many virus cells have built up on a single location, the virus overflows and an outbreak occurs, spreading one virus cell to each of its neighboring/connected cities. This mechanic models how, when a critical mass is reached, viruses have outbreaks and then are much more likely to spread to nearby areas due to travel.
Image: Outbreak counter in Pandemic. 8 outbreaks ends the game. Photo of an outbreak on the right.
After playing Pandemic, I was pleased by how cohesive all of the design, mechanism, and gameplay felt. From the outbreak mechanic to how they thematically describe loss conditions (not enough disease cubes are left when needed = a disease spreads too much), everything immersed players in the narrative – even when a strong narrative didn’t really exist. As discussed in our Precision of Emotions reading, mechanics should unify the core theme and emotions of the game. From the infection rate (which stalls at 2 for a while before quickly jumping up to 3 and 4) to the slowly ramping outbreak counter, Pandemic skillfully wields its mechanics to create a slow pressure cooker of stress that eventually surprises you all at once. Suffice it to say, the creators made a lot with a little and I hope that our systems game for P3 can also do the same.
Image: Rule book explaining loss conditions.
Similarly, I was particularly enthralled by the success of the game’s aesthetics. During play, I was nervous, anxious, and felt a deep sense of need for strategic planning and order — all emotions I sense would be present if I was truly orchestrating a plan to deal with a rapidly spreading pandemic (albeit the emotions I experienced in the game were indubitably much more tempered than the real deal). The way their aesthetics succeeded in eliciting these emotions is something I would also love to transfer to my own games.
Image: The Epidemic cards and their rules/loops.
Pandemic embodies the values of collaboration, teamwork, and communication. Only by working together, utilizing your role’s special abilities, and communicating what city cards you have in your hand are you able to adequately fight off the viruses and find cures for all of them. The most obvious loops that exist in the game are the Epidemics. When pulled, these cards cause a mass outbreak of a virus in a city, then force the players to reshuffle the already infected cities back into the top of the infection deck — thereby forcing the players to pull from an ever-growing pile of infected cities and risking virus outbreaks. The more you let viruses build up, the faster the players lose control and the virus spreads. This loop perfectly captures the system of viruses in the real world — a fragile dynamic that must be kept in check. Similarly, another loop that is present is the traveling and trading loop — players are forced to travel to meet each other in specific cities to trade city cards that allow them to cure the viruses. Since teamwork is a heavily embedded value in this game, players are repeatedly tasked to do this, as it is literally impossible to beat the game without engaging with this game loop. Overall, I would say Pandemic succeeded in modeling a basic formal system of virus spread and disaster response.
