screenshot TheMoniker plays Plague Inc. Evolved

[TheMoniker]

Menu Music

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a very, very unexpected LP:

Plague Inc. Evolved!

I shall do the introduction via questions.

So... what the heck IS this game, exactly?

Basically, at its very core it is a realistic plague simulator, that doubles as a game. And a very fun and interesting game, at that. We use a plague to infect the earth and everyone in it, killing them all. Yes, that's right, our end goal is the death of every single human on earth! Nothing less will do. We don't directly control our plague, however (at least for the normal plagues). We can only buy upgrades and then watch as our plague destroys everything. It sounds like it might be boring, but it actually manages to force us to use a lot of strategy, and there are different plague types to mix things up. We'll see more about how it works once we actually get started.

Also, there's a lot of cool interfaces to stare at. So there's that, too.

Where did you hear about this game?

I got it on my phone, played it and loved it, and then I saw the Steam version for PC on sale. Then I thought, hey, I could make a screenshot LP!

That's basically how all my romhack screenshot LPs get started.

Where can I get this game?

As I said earlier, it's on Steam for anyone who wants it. It's still in early access, but judging from what I played on the phone it's definitely worth a go.

Can a screenshot LP of this game work?

I don't know! We're certainly going to find out, aren't we?

Also, looking at the screenshot above, you'll see that it's a big screenshot. A VERY big screenshot. Due to being on a PC and meant to be played in fullscreen, there is a LOT of information that the game needs to convey to us. Yeah, the screenshots are maybe too big, but if they were any smaller you wouldn't be able to see anything! I'll try to mess with the resolutions and screenshot size and see what works. Make sure to tell me if there's any problems!

Also, I'm going to be going for informative with this LP. Since we're doing screenshots, I feel that's best. As for the information in question, well, there is a LOT of ground to cover, so I'll tell you as we go along.

THE BEGINNING:

The main menu! For now, we'll stick to singleplayer.

I tried Steam screenshots. It didn't work out. So, I'm using my regular computer's screenshots, and you'll be able to see all Steam notifications in the corner, and the corresponding glitches. Just ignore them.

Anyways, looks like we have a lot of stuff here that wasn't on the phone version... we'll just do the main game first.

Our very first plague: Bacteria! There are 10 main plagues total. It says 20% because one at the very bottom of the list is unlocked. Trust me, it's not one we want to do first.

So, I was testing different resolutions to see what would work best here. I thought this one was better when I tried because it made the text bigger for you guys, but now that I'm posting the screenshots here I see that it's worse. I'll change it back to the nice smooth resolution at the start later.

EDIT: Gah, and now looking at it a third time it's better again! Why do these screenshots have to be so inconsistent? Tell me what works for you guys, and if you want to see an image bigger just click on it to open it in a new tab.

These are Genes. There are 5 categories of genes, each with their own general function and 5 genes each. As we go through the game, we'll unlock more. They basically function as "plague customization", allowing you to specialize your plague. We don't have any unlocked yet, so we'll have to go without them for now. I'll explain what each gene does as we unlock them.

Our three game difficulties, Casual, Normal, and Brutal. Each difficulty:

*Decreases the rate at which you infect people

*Increases the actions the world takes against you

*Increases the speed at which the world tries to cure you.

Each difficulty forces you to create, refine, and eventually perfect a strategy to survive. This game does require skill and practice. Luckily, I have phone practice, so we will be playing Brutal. I can do this, I'm sure.

(Just ignore the cheats thing for now. We can't do anything with it. Yet.)

There's also Mega Brutal, but that difficulty is INSANE. I am NOT doing it. Not without unlocking some genes first, at least.

Ah! Now, this is the fun part, and one that requires audience participation! One of the best parts of this game is naming the plague you will use to destroy the world. Remember, we are a Bacteria! PAX-12 is the default name, and it's horribly boring. So, I want suggestions from you guys!

Say in the comments what we should name our first plague, or subsequent plagues. I'll use any good name suggestions!

Edited November 30, 2015 by TheMoniker

[Tragonight]

Plague Name: deez nutz

Lol, it's not meant to be taken seriously, but do whatever you want, it's your LP.

I watched my friend play this game on his phone before. Hint: Target Morocco.

[Kaede Ryusaki]

Name it GhebFE

If this is anything like the mobile version, start in either of the two port only countries, I think Greenland and Madacascar are the two. If you don't start with those or get them quickly they'll just close their ports and screw the run.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Kaede Ryusaki

[X-Naut]

dank memes (or just memes)

Alternatively, Procrastination. Let the human race literally rot under the weight of their own lethargy!

[Clarinets]

I recommend naming it 'doesn't exist'. That should create some interesting dialogue and I would know, because I've played the game before.

I never thought about doing a screenshot playthrough of this though, so this should be interesting.

[TheMoniker]

Plague Name: deez nutz

Lol, it's not meant to be taken seriously, but do whatever you want, it's your LP.

I watched my friend play this game on his phone before. Hint: Target Morocco.

Interesting name suggestion, but I want to do something more clever... cleverer? Hmm... and you're right, Morocco along with basically all of Africa is one of the hardest countries to get.

Name it GhebFE

If this is anything like the mobile version, start in either of the two port only countries, I think Greenland and Madacascar are the two. If you don't start with those or get them quickly they'll just close their ports and screw the run.

GhebFE.

It would be an insult to decency NOT to do it.

Actually, on Brutal difficulty, Greenland and Madagascar aren't good places to start in. It might cause trouble later down the line, but we'll be starting somewhere else.

dank memes (or just memes)

Alternatively, Procrastination. Let the human race literally rot under the weight of their own lethargy!

Procrastination! That's another good one! I'm sure we'll be burning through plenty of plague names before all is said and done, so I'll that next!

I recommend naming it 'doesn't exist'. That should create some interesting dialogue and I would know, because I've played the game before.

I never thought about doing a screenshot playthrough of this though, so this should be interesting.

Yes, you're right. This should be interesting. I think "doesn't exist" should be saved for a specific plague type later on down the line...

Time for Moniker to attempt to explain game mechanics in...

Plague Inc. Episode 1: The GhebFE Plague!

I mean, really. Would anything ELSE be able to classify as a world-destroying plague?

Here we go! This is what we'll be greeted with every single time we start a new game.

The very first strategical thing we need to do is choose where we begin. We could choose any country in the world...

But first, take a minute to look at our beautiful World Map. About 54 countries total. Each one with its own attributes. Hot, cold, rich, poor... their population has even been tailored to real-life values.

And before we're done, many will no longer exist.

China. China is where we start. An airport and seaport, not super rich, not hot or cold, and tons of people. On Brutal/Mega Brutal, you pretty much have to start in China or India (or somewhere near there) if you want to win.

Background Music

(Note: Most of the music in this game is just ambience, but it always serves as a good backdrop to... what you're doing.)

And we are OFF! Right away, we're going to start racking up disease points(DNA, that little meter with a "2" on it in the corner) to buy upgrades. Nobody knows we exist right now, but that will change, oh, that will change...

This is our disease menu. Most of the stuff you see here doesn't matter that much. Note, however, the three bars at the bottom: Infectivity, Severity, and Lethality. Here is what they do:

Infectivity is how fast you infect people.

Severity is how crippling your disease is, and controls how fast people will notice you, how much people will want to try to cure you, and generally, having lots of it makes the world hate you. However, having more of it makes you get more DNA points to buy more upgrades, so it's not ALL bad.

Lethality is how fast your disease kills you. Right now we have none, but later we'll want plenty. Also, everything I said about severity (the world noticing and hating you) applies to this too.

Now, there are three menues with which we can buy upgrades. The first one we'll be looking at is the Symptoms menu. These are what your disease does to people. Now, with Bacteria, going aggressive with your symptoms earlier on is a good strategy, so we'll start by...

Having GhebFE make people nauseous! It slightly increases our infectivity and severity. The other diseases are Coughing, Rash, Anemia, Cysts, and Insomnia. All of those slightly increase infectivity and severity too (not much difference between them, aside from the things they unlock), but they're really cheap. The exception is Insomnia, which slows down cure researchers a bit and gives us just severity.

Next up: The world menu! You can see the big pie graph in the center there, showing how many people are healthy, infected, and dead. It looks okay right now... Over to the left a bit we have the world map, which shows which countries we've infected and which we haven't. Below that, we have some more specific graphs. All that cure stuff on the right... well, that doesn't apply right now. I'll explain it soon.

Now... we wait. Thankfully, we can speed the game up by up to 3x(2x on a phone) which is nice because this game can be a bit slow sometimes. Doesn't keep you waiting forever, luckily.

Hmm? Ah, our first event, the festival of love! This happens randomly, and its likeliness was increased by evolving "Nausea". Remember when it said "chance of infection by kissing"? Yeah...

Now, see how we have 8 infected now. And immediately after that...

32 people! If this had happened later on, our gains would have been even greater.

We have some DNA points, which I spend on Cysts and Abscesses, a newly unlocked disease which is a slightly more effective version of cysts.

Ah, the DNA bubbles. There are 2 types: The RED bubbles, which appear every time we infect a new country, and the ORANGE bubbles, which appear... I honestly have no idea.

Regardless, popping them gives DNA, so we do that!

I wait a bit, and get some more DNA. Now, let's study Transmissions! Unlike symptoms, transmissions slightly increase general infectivity, but also help infectivity with a specific type of transmission or country:

Water helps with ship transmission(see those ships and planes on the map? Yeah, those can carry our disease to brand new exotic locales!).

Air helps with plane transmission.

Avian helps with land transmission.

Rodent helps with urban environments.

Livestock helps with rural environments.

Mosquitoes helps with hot environments.

Blood helps with poor environments.

We're going to start with Avian, one of the best ones. Gotta transmit by land!

Another event? No, this doesn't matter. It's just hilarious. Let me talk for a minute. The news in this game is quite possibly the most unbiased news in all history, reporting fairly all disease-related things. It's not biased to either disease or human! And it keeps running no matter what, too.

We can get a general news ticker in the top-left of the screen. Right now it says silly things. Later on, it'll cut that out and start reporting on the actions countries take against the disease. Feel free to read it and catch tidbits!

Also! Something interesting. You know those transmissions I looked at earlier? All non-air-and-water transmissions raise our disease's chance of having a mutation, which is where the disease randomly evolves a symptom without DNA points for us! Why do I mention this now?

Yeah. GhebFE wanted to give people Tumours. IT IS LITERALLY GIVING PEOPLE CANCER TUMOURS.

This gives our disease an itty bit of Lethality, which is normally something we'd want to avoid right now, but I think maybe I'll keep it. No point in wasting it, right?

GhebFE will officially start killing people from here on out.

Ah, here we go! At about 45,000 people infected, we officially spread to a new country! We'll want to spread to literally every country.

Fast-forwarding through a bit of nothing:

Things are going well! We've infected several more countries, including one on the left side of the map, and nobody's even noticed us!

Let's follow this up with air and water, to help with getting new countries!

Alright, next, let's head to our abilities menu. Ignore the medicine-looking thing for right now, the two important things here are heat and cold resistance. Obviously, our disease's spread will be slowed down by a LOT in very hot or cold countries. Hot and cold resistance is quite expensive, but it really helps with that... however, we're a Bacteria. Each plague has its own "special thing" here in the abilities section, and Bacteria has the ability to resist all climates just by getting Bacterial shell.

So, we're just going to ignore hot and cold resistance and get this instead! We'll probably be fine...

GhebFE has infected millions and is only gaining more momentum. It's particularly easy when the world hasn't even noticed you yet.

Look at how many countries we're getting! And it's just going to keep going this way, as long as nobody notices us!

Moo wah hah hah!

Hmm? At 31 million, it appears we've infected a richer country! Since the people there have access to good medicine, they get infected slower. However, we can stop this...

...With Drug Resistance! Drug Resistance helps us move faster in wealthy countries.

100 million people infected, about 50,000 dead, and we're still unnoticed! This is actually kind of lucky, considering Tumours decided to evolve early.

Crap. GHEBFE HAS BEEN FOUND! The world will now start taking action against us! We need to be prepared... hmm...

Also, notice the map is filling up with red. Red dots mean disease. China is becoming a cesspit of GhebFE...

With the noticing of our disease, we just straight to First Death afterwards. This is where the world REALLY starts to not like us. We were supposed to wait longer for that, but GhebFE just HAD to give Tumours...

The cure! The world's main means of stopping us...

Honestly, it probably should have happened earlier. See those glass bottles in the bottom-right? That shows the country's capacity to cure, and how much work its actually doing. Right now, it's only a little, but that will change.

Alright, we can't lie complacent anymore. We have to start fighting the world much more actively if we want to win!

Let me tell you how the cure works. Basically, if it hits 100%, you're doomed. You want to destroy the world before that happens, but destroying the world faster causes cure research to happen faster... however, there is a way to slow it down! I'll show you soon.

Another event! This time, it's a climate change one. The world is getting more humid.

Best to take advantage with the next level of air and water! As you can see, that unlocked...

Extreme Bioaerosol, which lets us infect TONS of ships and planes! You can only get it with Air AND Water 2. And yes, there are other "super" transmissions for the other transmission types too. I'll show them off later.

Ah, okay. In addition to working on the cure, the other way the world can try to stop us is by shutting down land borders, ports, and airports, to prevent the disease from spreading to other countries.

Let me say this right now: If a country on land closes their border, there's a small chance the disease will make it through from a different country. If a disease is on an island, and they close their border before you get there? Game over. We WILL be losing games to this.

Woohoo! We are SO infectious.

More and more countries and people are being infected! With all these red bubbles, we are ROLLING in DNA points right now. Also, looking at the top of the map, we've infected Greenland! This is a very good thing, because Greenland is one of the hardest countries in the entire game to infect. All thanks to bioaerosol!

With our new DNA points, we decide to slow down the cure. Genetic hardening slows all future cure research. I but both levels.

But if we're going to be on the receiving

end of more research, we might as well deserve it...

GhebFE now makes people vomit, have insomnia, be paranoid, have hyper sensitivty, and finally get Diarrhoea to top it all off. Your move, world!

...Ah. Smart world. So, this event is basically guaranteed to happen, and once it does, if the world WASN'T working hard on a cure before, they will be now.

At this point, though, they should have more than just the watch list as reason to work on a cure.

The global cure effort, lead by France! Which country leads it is totally random and doesn't matter that much.

Alongside all the DNA bubbles, cure bubbles will now start appearing. If you fail to click on them and "shatter the bottles", then the cure gains a bit more progress. Bottle bubbles or no, it's still going to get progress, that just speeds it up.

More people need to die! I get Seizures(more severity and lethality), paralysis(severity and lethality, slightly slows down cure research), all to get this next very important symptom...

Internal Haemorrhaging!? That's not what I wanted! Give me something else!

Well, that symptom gives us more infectivity, severity, and lethality.

So, this can become a problem if you get very lethal very early on. Having everyone with the disease die so no new people can be infected is one of the ways the game can be lost, so you don't want to get too lethal! I think we'll be fine here, though.

GhebFE has killed more than the Black Death! It's THAT BAD!

Drug Resistance 2 and bacterial shell 3 will help us!

And then, GhebFE makes people go Insane. Yes, it's true! Insanity is one of the most powerful symptoms, affecting a lot of events, making the disease harder to cure, and contributing to a country's decline.

The whole world wants to cure GhebFE! This was going to happen no matter what, but I was hoping to destroy a bit more before this... Once you see this, there's no reason to hold back on symptoms anymore.

We have at least 1 infected person in every single country. Great! Except for those last few countries in Africa holding out... those are ALWAYS difficult to infect.

That's our last "more than x" notification. GhebFE has broken all records!

Oh, wow. They are going SUPER fast on that cure! We have to kill more! Faster!

Immediately after, we get some great news!

So, due to the negative effect the disease is having on daily life, the country is losing its capacity to cure! As we destroy more countries, they'll have less and less ability to cure us. That's why death can be a good thing! The broken bottles represent how much the capacity has been reduced.

Also, look at the upper-right list. That shows what the country has done to try and stop us. It can be kind of crazy, reading through those...

I was wrong. THIS is our last disease notification. GhebFE shall slay all.

As you can see by looking on the map, we're still having trouble in Africa, so let's make the mosquitoes help!

They're still going so fast! We don't have enough time! WE HAVEN'T KILLED ENOUGH PEOPLE!

NOW GhebFE goes for the weaker symptoms!?

These will help slow down the cure! Each Genetic Reshuffle lowers the cure progress by a small amount(usually 5-10%). There are 3, but they get progressively more expensive, so don't use them too early. Like I did here.

As you can probably guess, this is because we evolved the "Paranoia" symptom. They're researching less than they normally would.

Oh, hey! This is a "chain event". This one might not go through since it happened so late, but basically, these can become a Chekhov's gun of sorts.

And here's another one! It ONLY starts if you have Drug Resistance 2, and usually another event will pop up saying "Vice President replaced the President"... UNLESS you have Insanity, in which case, all sorts of crazy stuff can happen, like the USA nuking people. This run, sadly, nothing came of it.

Every country but Morocco infected. Almost a fourth of the world dead. But they're too close to that cure...

WE NEED TO KILL MORE!

The Icure went through! Now, let me show you how to stop it:

Make GhebFE get people sweaty and...

Nope! Sorry, silly Apple! See, you maybe should have made those more durable. If you don't get Sweating, it gives a bit of cure progress. I think. Never seen it make it before.

However, this game is basically over.

The cure is complete, and the world will deploy it EVERYWHERE.

It doesn't take long for all of our hard work to be undone! We've failed! We only killed 40% of the Earth's population! That's PATHETIC! I can do better than that!

*sigh*...

Man, I feel bad for saying I was good at the start now. Clearly I'm not, if I can't even win with Bacteria.

Here's our final score, and replay. Next time, though... NEXT TIME! I SHALL KILL THE ENTIRE EARTH! THE CURE WON'T STOP ME! MOO WAH HAH HAH!

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

atleast Gheb FE is truly dead forever

[Clarinets]

Yes, you're right. This should be interesting. I think "doesn't exist" should be saved for a specific plague type later on down the line...

[spoiler=Plague Type Spoilers in here]

Do you mean Bio-Weapon (or whatever the one that kills quickly is called)?

So 40% of the world died because of how bad GhebFE was while the remaining 60% worked through the pain until GhebFE was dead.

Seems legitimate

[Upside-DownFish]

I remember playing this game a ton on mobile back when it first came out. My general strategy was basically to just

1. Start in greenland

2. Infect literally everybody before mutating any symptoms

3. At that point I'd have 100+ DNA points and I'd go straight to total organ failure

4. Everyone shits out their intestines, and die

Great fun, might pick up the steam version to relive some old memories.

[Darrman]

*Moniker leaves his house in China*

*Spreads GhebFE everywhere and kills 40% of the world*

Why did we monitor him again?

[MrNight48]

Name: "Nothing"

why?

for infinite trolling. Doctor asks "what do you got man? you look super sick."

unfortunate bastard: " I got nothing doc, save me from nothing with the best meds you have"

Doctor: "get out of here you emo drug addict"

bastard: "silently screams"

[X-Naut]

atleast Gheb FE is truly dead forever

But nothing on the internet dies!

It's like smallpox and polio: there are a few isolated pockets of survivors, mostly in captivity. Should the wrong hands rediscover it, we could have another epidemic on our hands...

[Midori Mage]

Gheb FE is gone for now, but it will come back again... If you don't switch to another name at least.

And I have some names, how about Laziness or Scrubs?

[RandomSwordmaster]

My general Plague Inc. strategy is to just go for infectivity early on, and try to stay off the radar as much as possible. Then, when I have either infected the entire world, or the world gets on to me, gun for Total Organ Failure, and any other lethal symptoms I can find. By that point, my rate of killing will be too fast for the world to keep up.

[Clarinets]

Name: "Nothing"

why?

for infinite trolling. Doctor asks "what do you got man? you look super sick."

unfortunate bastard: " I got nothing doc, save me from nothing with the best meds you have"

Doctor: "get out of here you emo drug addict"

bastard: "silently screams"

This is hilarious.

I once played a game of Plague Inc. (on Normal mode) where I only got Infectivity and not Severity or Lethality until the entire population of Earth was infected, and then I used the 96 points I was stockpiling to buy a bunch of Lethality and kill everything.

It was great.

[Kaede Ryusaki]

This is hilarious.

I once played a game of Plague Inc. (on Normal mode) where I only got Infectivity and not Severity or Lethality until the entire population of Earth was infected, and then I used the 96 points I was stockpiling to buy a bunch of Lethality and kill everything.

It was great.

I'm a coward, so I do that every time. It's actually a really good method!

[TheMoniker]

[spoiler=Plague Type Spoilers in here]

Do you mean Bio-Weapon (or whatever the one that kills quickly is called)?

So 40% of the world died because of how bad GhebFE was while the remaining 60% worked through the pain until GhebFE was dead.

Seems legitimate

(I mean Parasite)

Don't forget the 8% or so of the world that avoided GhebFE entirely!

I remember playing this game a ton on mobile back when it first came out. My general strategy was basically to just

1. Start in greenland

2. Infect literally everybody before mutating any symptoms

3. At that point I'd have 100+ DNA points and I'd go straight to total organ failure

4. Everyone shits out their intestines, and die

Great fun, might pick up the steam version to relive some old memories.

I THOUGHT that wasn't a good strategy, but... well, we'll see.

Also, the Steam version has custom scenarios, and I can't wait to try some of the player-created ones! That's a ways down the line, though.

Name: "Nothing"

why?

for infinite trolling. Doctor asks "what do you got man? you look super sick."

unfortunate bastard: " I got nothing doc, save me from nothing with the best meds you have"

Doctor: "get out of here you emo drug addict"

bastard: "silently screams"

This is even better than "doesn't exist". Will use.

But nothing on the internet dies!

It's like smallpox and polio: there are a few isolated pockets of survivors, mostly in captivity. Should the wrong hands rediscover it, we could have another epidemic on our hands...

Apparently, I was not the right hands.

Plague Inc. Episode 2: If only the World had acted sooner!

So, I'm not going to lie to you guys. I failed a BUNCH off-screen, and I'm not going to show it because watching me fail over and over would be boring. A lot of you said to lay low and then become super-dangerous later on, and the reason I kept failing was because I WASN'T taking your advice. So, let's see what happens when I do!

This time, we're going to try starting in India, because it also has a port and airport, a massive population, and it's really poor so we should spread a little faster.

Notice the "used to hot temperatures". If you start in a country with a specific environment type, you'll gain a slight boost in those temperatures.

So, let's start infecting people! First, air and water 1.

Next, all three levels of Bacterial resilience.

Hey! Don't do that!

So, if the game mutates a symptom we don't want, we can devolve it and get 2 DNA points back. Trying to devolve another one gives us 1 DNA point. Then nothing. Then it costs 1 DNA point...

You don't want to mutate too much, basically. The same goes for transmissions and abilities(though they're separate from each other, so devolving a symptom won't affect ability devolving, for example), though typically you're only going to want to devolve symptoms.

Air and Water 2 next!

It's been about 4 months in-game, and we're making excellent progress. Nobody has discovered procrastination.

Hey, stop that! I devolve it again...

(Notice the DNA points building up...)

Huh? Oh, an event. Basically, if we evolve Fever now, they'll be able to exploit it later and add some cure progress. This can happen with most mid-level symptoms, and all we have to do is not evolve Fever.

Shortly afterwards, we get another event which is pretty bad for us, since cold countries are some of the hardest countries to infect in the game. The game basically uses "global warming" as an excuse for every climate change event, even in ones like these where it makes no sense.

Waiting even longer, we have every single country BUT Greenland infected, and STILL nobody has noticed Procrastination. I honestly didn't even know this sort of playstyle was possible or viable on brutal difficulty. I KNOW it doesn't work on Mega-brutal, where you'll always be found no matter what, but... well, this really doesn't say good things about the world's disease-detecting abilities.

I decide to let it keep Anemia this time. Still, nobody detects us. This is honestly kind of weird.

We did infect Greenland but its going SUPER SLOW, so I max out cold resistance, and get Drug Resistance and Genetic Hardening.

SO SLOW

(A bit more waiting later...)

Yes! Finally! This message is one of the most coveted in the game, because your chance of winning is immensely improved once you get.

Now, the world shall be PUNISHED for its lazy ways.

Before I even do anything the disease mutates again. Can't hurt, right?

Straight to Total Organ Failure we go! Total Organ Failure gives TONS of Severity and Lethality-the most in the game, in fact(at least for regular diseases). Now, the ultimate destruction shall begin.

I also get Skin Lesions, an infectivity-giving symptom, in hopes of being able to get Necrosis, another powerful symptom later. Looking back, I should have just gone for Coma.

And now, we wait.

Oh, it's totally minor, it ONLY makes people crap out their intestines. Curing it can probably wait...

No, probably not the beginning of something terrible, it can wait...

Shutting the land borders is all we need to do, the disease probably isn't even in the country...

Maybe we could do a LITTLE cure research...

Okay, FINE, maybe we'll focus a little...

(If you look at the dates, this all happened rapidfire in the span of about 20 days after the disease was discovered. When you're discovered on Brutal, the world acts FAST.)

Man, are we killing people fast enough? The key to stopping the cure is to start destroying countries faster than they progress on the cure, but we haven't killed enough yet...

Maybe a bit late, WHO. Considering about half a billion people are dead and all.

Agh, we are NOT killing people fast enough!

See, the thing is, when you only have a few symptoms like this, countries break down really slow. Our symptoms right now are basically "people dropping dead on the street", instead of "people bleeding everywhere, vomiting everywhere, pooping everywhere, insane, and dropping dead on the street".

See, 35% of the world is dead and we've BARELY started destroying cure capacity.

Not going faaast enough...

17 days until completion!? That's like 10 seconds! There's no way we're going to win like this!

Central Europe is the first to fall into anarchy, the point where a country COMPLETELY loses its capacity to work on a cure.

6 days left. We're not going to win unless we do something...

Now, look at my DNA bar in the last few images. Killing people gives us plenty of points, so...

We buy all three levels of Genetic Reshuffle!

This reduces the cure from 95%...

...to about 60%.

Since all the countries are now being destroyed at an acceptable rate, we have bought ourselves more than enough time.

This doesn't change much, but hey, it happened.

All we have to do is sit tight and wait for victory.

Basically, once you reach the point where for every single day that passes, the cure ETA stays the same or gets farther away, then the cure is no longer a threat.

Hey, our first symptom combo! A few symptoms will make combos like this happen sometimes. I'll try to show them all off, but this one is one of the more interesting ones, since Skin Lesions and Haemophilia are NOT lethal on their own, meaning your disease can gain lethality without actually having lethal symptoms.

And that's a wrap! We've won! This message doesn't appear until almost everyone is dead, everyone is infected, and the cure is a non-issue-basically, when victory is assured.

Of course Greenland survived until the end.

They have 50 people left, and they're STILL putting out research.

Waiting a bit longer, they're still giving out research even when EVERYONE IS DEAD. This game is typically pretty realistic, but when it's not, the accomplishments the world makes can sometimes be downright impressive.

We've done it! Bacteria VICTORY!

Our next plague is a Virus, and we've also unlocked our first gene, Darwinist! The gene slightly increases our plague's chance of mutation.

So, what should we name our Virus?

I'm always open to naming suggestions, and to give you ideas, here is a general, not-TOO-spoilery list of the different plagues we will be doing:

1: Bacteria(well, read the update to see the status on that one)

2: Virus

3: Fungus

4: Mind-control

5: Parasite

6: Prion

7: Definitely not zombies or anything

8: Nano-virus

9: Bio-weapon

10: Dawn of the Apes!

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

the greenland thing reminds me of this one person's playtho of the older version where everyone in greenland was dead but the hospitals were still open and producing cure points, which was the main reason why the dude lost.

[X-Naut]

The research is not being continued by humans, but has been adopted by highly intelligent monkeys, who through their placement in zoos are set to establish a new world (monkey) order! It's rational for them to want to continue the research when the plague wiped out their distant cousins.

Then again, Procrastination succeeded in its ultimate goal, so another genocide can wait awhile. They'll get to it eventually...

[Tamanoir]

The research is not being continued by humans, but has been adopted by highly intelligent monkeys, who through their placement in zoos are set to establish a new world (monkey) order! It's rational for them to want to continue the research when the plague wiped out their distant cousins.

Then again, Procrastination succeeded in its ultimate goal, so another genocide can wait awhile. They'll get to it eventually...

In Greenland, I think it's most likely highly intelligent seals and polar bears.

...This commentary was wierdly racist, wasn't it ?

I imagine Procrastinaton working by making people let themselves die (same things for organ. I imagine the heart thinking : "Well, beating everyday is so boring, if I miss one or two, no big deal, right ?", the brain stop sending the order, because he's to busy watching a dog trying to catch his own tails, and so on...)

Anyway, I think it would makes lot of sense to name a virus with the name of some annoying meme (Rickroll comes to mind, but whatever), since they basically works the same way.

[Fateborn]

Name the virus Anime.

[Tamanoir]

Name the virus Anime.

Hentai would fit better.

[NinjaMonkey]

You just have to name one of them after something in a Resident Evil game, such as "T-Virus" or "Uroborus".

[Upside-DownFish]

Virus name: Toothpaste

"Ma'm, unfortunately your husband died from a severe case of toothpaste"

sounded better in my head, but could create some funny scenarios

Edited December 3, 2015 by Upside-DownFish

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

for some reason i thought the virus's name being CrashGordin94 would be a good idea