Here at Jujubee, we’ve always thought that games should address current and serious topics. In the case of our historical-documentary game KURSK we touched on the subject of the Russian submarine tragedy and to what end an arms race could lead to, in Deep Diving Simulator we focused on issues relat...
Here at Jujubee, we’ve always thought that games should address current and serious topics. In the case of our historical-documentary game KURSK we touched on the subject of the Russian submarine tragedy and to what end an arms race could lead to, in Deep Diving Simulator we focused on issues related to the ecology and protection of our underwater world, and Realpolitiks tackles the problem of terrorism and migrations. In COVID: The Outbreak we allow the players to face the most current and touching topic of all - a pandemic of a dangerous virus.
As the leader of the Global Health Organization (GHO) your task is to contain the spread of a coronavirus and save humanity before it is too late.
In addition to crisis management, the game provides the players with information on how to behave in the event of an epidemic, what actions to take, and how to protect themselves and their loved ones in the most effective way. The game is based on the data published by WHO and on the information acquired from experts and consultants.
Through your actions, you will be able to see how difficult it is to manage during a crisis, what impact various decisions can have on an effective fight against a global epidemic, which can be caused by listening to charlatans or the lack of appropriate medical equipment.
The virus will adapt to your actions by means of mutation so you must predict and take into account its transmission abilities, time of incubation, drug resistance, and a whole lot more. Decide whether a country should close its borders and quarantine citizens to reduce the number of new infections, or construct new hospitals and emergency tents to speed up the recovery of the already infected. Choose wisely.
FEATURES:
Pandemic Management - advise the world what needs to be done in order to survive the dreadful disease; manage funds, staff, medicine, and research priorities.
Issue Emergency Decrees - declare national emergency and close borders, enforce obligatory vaccination, close schools and airports. Do whatever it takes to stop the coronavirus.
Research New Projects - developing new ways to fight off the disease is a sound strategy. Remember to be cautious as your enemy may mutate, rendering your newly acquired ability completely useless.
Unpredictable Events - how you handle the ongoing fake news, mass stockpiling of supplies, or people ignoring the incoming threat will go a long way towards deciding whether you will prevail against the disease, or succumb to it.
Construct Vital Buildings - build hospitals, emergency tents, research institutions, checkpoints, police stations, and a whole lot more. Every building you enact may become the decisive factor in stopping the outbreak.
Games Beyond™ - educate yourself on how a coronavirus operates, what can you do if you become infected, and why quarantines are issued. Understand why a pandemic is a threat to humanity.
Maybe first play the game, then comment? I played it and i found it very good game, with educational message and even fun.
For all who thinks that COVID: The Outbreak and fighting virus is bad. What is bad? Fighting virus? You liked with pleasure play Call of Duty, Battlefield, This War of Mine, killin Nazi in Wolfenstein and many many other games themed about World Wars where died millions of people, games about killing eachother and it was all good, fine and great. Playing even as virus and killin people in Plague Inc what was sold in millions of copies was also good for you?
This is real hypocrisy of our world
Thanks to the hypocrite reviews of people who never played it I got it. That, and because it looks a bit like Defcon meets Plague Inc.
After playing it: It feels like some very abstract Global Health Organization management of actions, where you can hardly guess what action or research actually has some influence. From that point it could be an old Paradox Entertainment title which are hard to get and play. If that if your playing style get it. If you expect reverse Plague inc: A bit. If you expect Defcon: No.
For me this game is not my style.
Honestly, I normally don’t review games, but I feel that this game has an unwarrantedly low rating. It makes me wonder if people wouldn’t have such “rectal discomfort” over this game if it was called “Avian Flu – My Chicken has a Cold.”
Pros:
1. It’s educational. The gameplay is very educational, and some of the choices you make help dispel some of the ignorance floating around about the disease, (and in reading the news and some of the game reviews there is PLENTY of ignorance to go around).
2. They are donating 20% of the funds to charity. Come on ppl, If this was a cash grab game would they donate any funds to anything but themselves? Anything else defies logic.
3. The game is playable. I remember a long time ago (before patches) when you could buy a game and not worry if it was playable or not. Those days are long gone.
4. The price is not bad. Considering a lot of games launch at $60+ it’s not bad at all. I’ve spent more money on games that I couldn’t play because it was broken.
5. If you like management style games, the game is fun. As the disease spreads and infects more and more countries, it becomes challenging to manage all those infected countries to try to keep the death toll down.
Cons:
1. The game is easy. I beat the game first time through. Yeah towards the end game it started getting hairy, but once I got down to a day in between vaccine tests, the game was over.
2. There isn’t much replay value. Once you play it and beat it, you can maybe try a different approach, but I honestly didn’t find myself wanting to play another round.
3. There is a lot to the game I didn’t use. I didn’t use the Specialist unit hardly at all and I maybe only unlocked 1 or 2 different buildings. I didn’t really have much time to unlock much of the Tech Tree either.
TLDR:
It’s a cheap game, it’s pretty fun, it’s educational, and I believe it is worth the money since 20% goes to charity. IMO the fun to price (fun/price) ratio is definitely > 1.0.
Aside from the controversial donation scheme of this game and the topic of this game in general, this game is so broken. I mean, even with a top-class Samsung nVME SSD, this game still takes a very long time to load, and there are frequent crashes.
I think for a game requiring at minimum hardware from circa 2013, there is a ton of optimization that could have been done. But again, the same can be said about the whole situation the game is based on.
I find it absolutely dumb that so many people are rating a game that they don't own. The point is so true that gamers so love their FPS games where they basically murder people outright, but somehow this is off limits. Get over it.
As for this game, it is not perfect, but it is a fun management game. I can get pretty complex, and the people are pretty picky. My son and I are playing and we ran into some problems where we were trying to force travel closed and the people protested and so we opened up the things they wanted and 34 million people died. Oops. But yeah, it is an interesting balancing act and probably is a bit closer to real life than we care to think. It makes you think, which I think is a good thing in a game and has quite a bit of challenge, but not unreasonable challenge. So overall I say would say my experience is a 4 out of 5. Good game, but not to the outstanding level.
