INFECTION: Humanity's Last Gasp

James Franklin—Patient Zero—collapses after stepping off a plane from the Congo at JFK International Airport. He is rushed to Forest Hills Hospital where he is placed in an isolation ward. It is quickly discovered he has Morbusian, a constantly mutating virus that is resistant to all known antibiotics. The survival of humanity itself is at stake!  

In INFECTION: Humanity's Last Gasp, by designer John Gibson, you are the director of the Department of Plague Control (DPC) field office in New York City. You make the decisions about what parts of the virus to study, which personnel to hire and what equipment to purchase. You’ll soon discover you are working with an eccentric group of scientists who don’t always work well together—and one very resourceful lab rat named Marvin. As the casualties increase, so does the stress and mistakes made, as you try to complete your vaccine before time runs out for all of mankind! 

This strategy game uses simple mechanics in a multitude of combinations to create engaging, deep gameplay as you try to eliminate an evolving virus that could spell the end of the human race. While random events from the Status Report cards might throw a wrench in your plans (or occasionally help you out), you’ll use the Lab Personnel and Equipment cards you’ve hired to piece together randomly generated Proteins into the different parts of a Vaccine, all while managing dwindling Funding resources as the Death Toll Track climbs; each time that your Containment roll fails you come one step closer to losing this battle, so make sure that you push everyone to their limits before the INFECTION reaches critical levels.

 
You can purchase INFECTION directly here on the VPG website.

Proofs for INFECTION: Humanity’s Last Gasp

So I’m in the home stretch to get my first boardgame published. Last week I signed my contract with Victory Point Games and right now we are in the stage proof reading the rules, game board and components before they go to the printers. The target date is May 16th. I’m keeping my fingers crossed!

Here is an image of the game board:

 

The game board has 2 sides for 2 levels of difficulty: Bacterial (Easy) and Viral (Hard). Players should initially start with the Bacterial side, then switch to the Viral side when they feel they have the hang of Infection. Both sides have the same basic layout. The left part of the board contains the Virus Area, the Incubator, the Death Toll Track, and the Funding Track. The right part of the board contains the Vaccine area.

Game Pieces

The game's pieces are used to create and mutate the Virus, create the Antibodies to defeat the Virus and track the status of the Death Toll Track and Funding Track.

Molecules

These are the basic building blocks of the Virus. They come in three, four and five protein configurations.

Proteins

These are the basic building blocks of the vaccine. There are 5 different Proteins that can be used to create the Antibodies. There are 16 Protein pieces and in the corner of each piece it tells you how many there are of that piece out of the total; the number of each piece is also listed below each Protein.

Death Marker

This is a marker placed on the Death Toll Track to indicate game progression.

Special Event Tokens

There are 12 Special Event Tokens: 6 with positive effects and 6 with negative effects. These will be mixed in amongst the Molecule tokens.

Personnel Power Tokens

 

These are tokens that are placed on Personnel cards and can be spent to use their power.

Cards

There are three different types of cards used in the game: Status Report Cards, Lab Equipment Cards and Personnel Cards.

Status Report Cards

 

Lab Equipment Cards

 

 

Lab Personnel Cards

 

The Rules book is looking good. It has enough images and examples that I think anyone who enjoys playing challenging solitaire boardgames will pick it up easily and be playing it shortly.

Anyhoo, that’s all I have to report for now.

Cheers,
John “That Cowboy Guy” Gibson
www.ThatCowboyGuyGames.com