Epidemic

Just like the head of Resident Evil’s Umbrella Corporation, I unleashed a virus upon the world (though, it involved sneezing rather than zombiefication). Then I went to a meeting, came back later than expected, and discovered that I’d killed 3,372,380,050 people.

Epidemic, while ostensibly just a cheap looking clone of browser series Pandemic (also available on iOS), is a devilishly dark experience.

Your sole role is to build a disease that can spread quickly across the globe then add new features to make it powerful enough to quickly wipe out the 4 billion inhabitants of this virtual earth.

It’s also a briefly addictive strategy title that’s just missing a little polish, depth, and intelligence.

Contagion

The main Arcade mode of Epidemic presents you with a bustling map of the world, filled with planes and boats jetting from continent to continent.

Everything is tap menu-controlled and, while functional, the presentation is rather lacklustre and bland. Pandemic’s doom-laden soundtrack is absent, emphasising the cheapness of the production.

You get to pick the name of your disease (my first was called The Coalition) and then spend Disease Dollars adding symptoms that spread the infection (‘Nausea’ seemed rather fitting).

As the sickness spreads across the globe - either through water, air or animals - the dollars start rolling in and you can augment your disease with upgradeable abilities to survive cold, heat, and humidity, or add deadlier new symptoms.

With medical names straight out of the House screenwriters’ handbook, you need to weigh up the pros and cons of each one before splicing it in. Some, for example, are nearly always fatal, but dramatically increase the disease’s visibility.

Once the authorities get wind of what’s going on, they’ll start closing borders and working on a vaccine. So flying under the radar to infect as many people before going in for the kill is the best tactic.

With three difficulty levels to master, there’s a lot of strategic devastation to be plotted with Epidemic - even if there's little variety between games due to the limited disease variables.

A beta version of a Real Time incarnation is also included for variety, with events occurring even when you’re not playing, but it’s painfully slow to earn enough dollars to even cause a slight sneezing fit.

It may lack the slightly excessive complexity of Pandemic on iOS, and the presentation is rough around the edges, but Epidemic is still a healthy Android antidote to the usual dry strategy fare.