Plague Inc.: Everything you need to know!

Plague Inc. is a super challenging and fun board/simulation game developed by Ndemic Creations. The game has an incredibly simple goal but multiple different useful strategies you can employ to achieve victory, meaning you'll have to use some critical thinking skills to prevent the world from curing your disease.

If you look around the web, you'll see that Plague Inc. is often listed as one of the top board games for the iPad, so if you're curious about all the fuss, I'll tell you everything you need to know!

The objective

Plague Inc. has a very simple objective: kill all humans on planet Earth. You'll accomplish this by creating a disease — you even get to name it — and setting it loose in the country of your choice.

Of course, it's not as simple as that, humans are resilient and will fight for survival, which means you'll need to upgrade your plague to speed up the rate of infection, increase the severity of disease, and make the virus or bacteria more lethal.

If the world manages to cure your plague before it has killed everyone on the planet, you will lose the game.

DNA points

DNA points are your main weapon against humans and you can earn them in three ways.

  • You'll earn DNA points automatically as the game progresses as your disease infects more people.
  • Each time your disease spreads to a new country, you'll get more DNA points.
  • Every time you help prevent cure research from spreading you'll earn more DNA points.

Spending DNA points

As the game progresses, you'll need to upgrade your disease so it can spread to more people and become lethal; you do this by spending DNA points.

You can spend DNA points to upgrade your disease in three different categories:

  • Transmission: These give your disease the ability to transfer from person to person in different ways causing your plague to become more infectious.
  • Symptoms: Upgrading your plague's symptoms will increase the severity of the disease, making it more lethal.
  • Abilities: Give your disease special attributes that help the disease spread in different climates or even reduce the speed of cure research.

News

As the disease spreads, you'll notice the headlines around the world will give you crucial updates about where cure research is being funded, which countries have closed their borders, and which countries have fallen into chaos.

You can keep an eye on all the world news in the news feed, and it will be crucial in helping you spread your disease accordingly.

Plague type

When you start a new game, you will be asked to select which type of plague you want to play the game with. You'll only start off with bacteria unlocked but can unlock different types of plagues by beating the game on Normal or Brutal difficulty.

You can also pay real money to unlock them via an in-app purchase.

Country information

You can tap on any country in the world and be offered a plethora of useful information about your plague in that specific country.

You'll need to keep an eye on each country as the game progresses and your plague spreads to know how to best upgrade your disease.

On this screen, you'll find a list of preventive measures that country is taking, like whether or not their borders, airports, or seaports are closed; how much money they have donated to medical research, and a running tally of how many healthy, infected, and dead people are in that country.

Anything else you want to know?

Let me know in the comments below!

Luke Filipowicz
Staff Writer

Luke Filipowicz has been a writer at iMore, covering Apple for nearly a decade now. He writes a lot about Apple Watch and iPad but covers the iPhone and Mac as well. He often describes himself as an "Apple user on a budget" and firmly believes that great technology can be affordable if you know where to look. Luke also heads up the iMore Show — a weekly podcast focusing on Apple news, rumors, and products but likes to have some fun along the way. 


Luke knows he spends more time on Twitter than he probably should, so feel free to follow him or give him a shout on social media @LukeFilipowicz.