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Pandemic (link) is a cooperative system game designed by Matt Leacock. I played the game analog with one other player. It is listed as suitable for ages 8 and up, and given its educational component I would assume that its target audience is individuals with some interest in public health who enjoy playing complex, strategy-focused group and cooperative games.
Screenshot from online: Game introduction/overview
We played for an hour and 15 minutes, including setting up the board and reading through the rules, and used 6 Epidemic cards. You play as a disease control team working during a pandemic with an outbreak of four deadly diseases. You are communally tasked with traveling the world to cure each disease and minimize the spread of outbreaks. You win (as a team) when all diseases have been cured.
Picture: Role descriptions, a component of the thematic adherence of gameplay
Pandemic is an analog table-top cooperative game. It has a strong emphasis on its pandemic theme, and most of the game dynamics are centered around this topic. The cooperative genre creates an emergent game environment based around a relatively simple set of rules which are elevated by the use of chance in shuffling decks in explicit ways (increasing the odds of certain cards being shuffled back in, etc.). The thematic components make the game immersive and add a level of urgency to the game mechanics. This also matches the cooperative nature of the game, which is thematically appropriate and allows players to buy into the themed system.
Screenshot from online: The placement of Epidemic cards throughout the deck
I particularly enjoyed the unique use of chance within the gameplay. The game depends on compounding the severity of outbreaks within cities that have been impacted in prior rounds. In order to do this, epidemics are shuffled into individual sections that are stacked into one deck. Then, each time an epidemic occurs the city cards that have been played up until that point are reshuffled and placed on the top of the deck, increasing the likelihood of them getting drawn again. I appreciated the use of statistics in these chance factors. I also enjoyed the strong adherence to a real-life theme present throughout and the balanced emphasis on productive discussion between players.
Picture: Commonly Overlooked Rules section
Finally, not a system-related note, but the inclusion of a “Commonly Overlooked Rules” section in the rules was super useful as a first-time player!
The main values present in Pandemic center around its cooperative setup: teamwork, collective problem-solving, etc., all emphasizing working together in the face of global crisis. The main loops occur in the Actions phases, when players attempt to contain disease outbreaks, and during the infection phase, when diseases spread and players are required to adapt to compounding challenges.
These loops manifest in players attempting to cure diseases, share knowledge by dispersing cards, building research stations, and other actions. The outbreak mechanics and epidemic cards add escalating pressure, increasing the odds of failure and reinforcing the game’s sense of urgency.
The game represents a formal system that models the spread and containment of diseases on a global scale. It uses abstract mechanics like disease cubes, card decks, and the chain reaction of outbreaks to model systemic interactions that occur in real life epidemiology, and cooperative strategies (like resource sharing and travel) to model the real-life cooperation seen in policy responses to pandemics.
