How about a game that puts you in the role of designing a deadly virus, bacteria or parasite to kill the world’s population ? The game starts harmlessly enough by selecting a name and if you want to be a virus, bacteria or parasite in order to exterminate the population of the world.

Each type has distinctive traits like their speed of evolution (virus best, parasite worst) and how they are affected by the environment. There are also two game modes, one fast mode and one realistic mode that takes longer to play and offers additional options.

The Take 9 virus began to appear and spread in South Africa mainly through the help of Rodents who transmitted the disease that caused fever in infected humans. The virus appeared somewhat heat resistant as well.

Slowly afterward Insects and Airborne animals began to transmit the disease as well. New symptoms began to appear after five days namely fatigue and nausea and the average infections a day rate climbed to a all new high of 50.

Three days later waterborne creatures became another source of transmission for the disease which began to spread to 95 people per day. It became more resistant to cold and moisture and heat resistance was increased even further.

The average infection rate increased to 208 on day 11 of the outbreak and remained still pretty much unrecognized throughout the country and rest of the world. First infected with symptoms of Ataxia began to emerge on day 12 which saw a huge jump of almost 1000% in the average infection rate per day.

More than 66000 people were infected with the Take9 virus after twelve days after its outbreak. The disease spread to North Africa on the same day. Hemorrhaging became the fifth symptom of the Take9 virus which now infected 441000 people a day only 13 days after it’s initial outbreak.

The disease spread to the Middle East on day 14 and the first death caused by the virus was confirmed in South Africa. It began to accelerate on day 15. The disease spread to China, India, East Europe and Indonesia on that day and more than 290 million people were infected by it.

The governments of earth decided to research a vaccine for the Take9 virus on day 16 which would approximately be finished in 24 days. The virus managed to meanwhile spread to Canada, West Europe and Brazil.

First reports of victims with symptoms of hypotonia and blindness came from South Africa and the death toll reached a new high with 833000.

That’s one typical scenario of a quick game of Pandemic 2. Sounds disturbing, don’t you think ?

Gemcraft is an interesting Tower Defense Game that adds a new game element to the genre. The player places gems in towers that are placed along a road that is used by the opponents. The task is similar to that of all Tower Defense Games: Prevent the enemies from reaching the end of the road.

So far so good. The new element is that it is possible to combine gems to create (more) powerful gems that hurt the enemy more. Gems come in different colors and pure gems, those that consist of only one color are generally more powerful than those that are made of mixed colors.

The mixed colored gems on the other hand inherit some of the powers of each gem color which makes them unique as well. Creating new gems and uniting gems costs mana which is earned by defeating enemies and over time as well.

The game is made up of several levels and the player character can earn levels. The player is awarded with four skill points each level which can be used to increase the maximum mana or generate more money for killed enemies.

Gemcraft is an interesting variant of the Tower Defense genre, one that’s definitely fun to play for a while.

Nano War, discovered at IndieGames, is an interesting strategy game that puts the player in control of red cells which are fighting for dominance against green cells in an organism. Each cell produces a certain amount of units each turn depending on its size which also defines the amount of units that can be kept in a cell at a time before production stops.

Units can be send to friendly, neutral or enemy cells to either defend or conquer those cells. Neutral cells do not grow until they are conquered by either the green or red faction. Combat is a simple reduction of numbers, the fraction with the most numbers wins the battle and a tie leaves no unit on the battlefield.

Green or red cells can become neutral cells again if the amount of units of a cell is reduced to zero which is normally the case when attacker and defender mount the same amount of units.

Nano War is not a really difficulty game and experienced players should be able to conquer all twelve levels without problem. The game obviously rewards aggressive players who conquer many cells because those start producing units right away which increase the strength of that faction.

Remember Dungeon Keeper ? I was fascinated by that game and think it was one of the better games by Peter Molyneux and his company Bullfrog long before he decided to make shitty games that promised much but could not live up to those promises.

Dungeon Defender reminds me of that game because you do take the role of a dungeon overlord defending your home against invading raid parties. You’re not doing that alone of course and can build creature dwellings like Manticore or Vampire Lairs which patrol a certain area around their lairs and attack enemy raid parties automatically.

Add to that a fine selection of the deadliest traps and support buildings and you pretty much got a game that plays like Dungeon Keeper 2D. The avatar, or overlord, can be selected from three villains including an Evil Wizard, a Death Knight and a Chaos Ranger each with their own feats and special buildings.

The characters gain levels while fighting enemies which make them more powerful. Sometimes items of different quality are dropped by the enemies which can be equipped. Wow players will love to go hunting for legendary items and even artifacts.

Most of the space of each map is filled by solid stone which can be removed by your imp (sorry Peon) workforce to make space for additional buildings. They can also be used to gather ore veins to add money to your war efforts.

One nice aspect of the game is the skill tree. The player can select skills from time to time that make this creatures or himself more powerful or improve the traps that can be build.

The game without doubt has some shortcomings namely the music that sounds very repetitive; As is the gameplay because frankly not much is excitingly new is happening after the first few maps that introduce the various creature buildings and possibilities.