Really, hope it's gonna sorted soon than ! I'm trying out Operation Eradicate right now, but the tutorial doesn't really help a lot in showing us the way to play the game! Hope that Pandemic is better with that?
The Pandemic tutorial is solid, yes, but it does still feel a bit rushed, and you'll probably still be well served by reading the rulebook and playing a couple of games to familiarise yourself with all the role abilities.
Update posted on FB: AND! We are going to be offering the game in a few more countries today! On the list: Hong Kong, New Zealand and Spain. More still to come, we will give you an official list later today!
Thank you so much for the compliment! I had a very small hand in the development of this game. The majority of it was done by my friend Henry, when we were actively developing games together at Cat in a Box Games. Henry has poured his heart and soul into this game, and even though it's now owned and updated by another company (mostly for legal reasons), the legacy of his amazing attention to detail lives on. I've been waiting for this game to come out for a very long time, and I'm just as happy as you are at the way it turned out. Yup, development started on it a long time ago, in the earlier days of the app store. Download limits back then were pretty small, and the philosophy stuck. Henry is a musical genius, and Victor and I (the tech guys) kept him mostly in check with respect to texture sizes and app packaging concerns. I'm glad that this is a selling point for you, and I'll keep it in mind for future titles! Yeah, online would be cool. It's too bad it's out of our hands, because I know we'd love to put a ton of features in there. Personally, I'd love to see iPhone/iPod support. EXACTLY! I knew there would be people who are with me on this. If Henry had a hold of the code still, I bet he'd be able to whip up an iPhone UI in no time. I'm so excited that this is finally out! And it's chart-topping!! http://topappcharts.com/700793523/app-details-pandemic-the-board-game.php
So when you get down to it this game is really about 4 members of the CDC trying to figure out how to best use their frequent flyer miles with airlines constantly sending them random airline tickets in the mail.
That is absolutely hilarious. I like to think of it as an intricate puzzle game. The pieces you move and actions you take must be so precise, especially in the higher difficulty levels! Otherwise, death.
Okay so a question to extrapolate on what you said above... It seems that, based on the information you've given, there will be no work done going forward? As in that this is Pandemic and that's it? There's no hope for, say, multiplayer or an iPhone version? As it stands, and based on what you've said, scaling this down would not be a problem at a, especially seeing as all other Pandemic/clone games are either designed for the iPhone or universal. Please, tell us who we need to beg to, yell at, whatever. This can't be the end all, be all for this amazing game. I think everyone here would like to see most, if not all, of these things? Right? Petition campaign anyone?
Too true, and I think the idea of the idea of non-descript city named cards are the foundation of so many different possible actions in the game combined with the 7 unique specialties. So, how does this game work with only 1-2 agents (or do you always need a full compliment of 4)?
I actually play Pandemic with the On The Brink expansion once a day since I got them as a puzzle to help with critical thinking. 1-2 agents is hard, I've never even come close to winning with anything under 4. With fewer agents you also have less city cards to help with curing.
Based on his posts, Jakooistra isn't actually part of the current development team for Pandemic; I doubt he'd be able to give you any official details as to what Z-Man plan to do with the game in the future (e.g. digital expansions). Much like Elder Sign, and Pandemic's own little sister Forbidden Island, the game often tends to be easier with fewer characters, because the required resources in these games (clue tokens, monster trophies, city cards, or treasure cards) are not spread out amongst four different players; acquiring a complete set of cure cards here is much easier, even if treating infections is slightly harder. The app even recommends playing your first real game on Introductory difficulty using only two characters.
As Appletini describes above, it's been pretty well established with a lot of statistics that Pandemic is actually somewhat easier with fewer players (roles). 2 players will win more than 3, and 3 more than 4. This has to do with the player deck size and the difficulty of coordinating cures with multiple players having fewer turns each. Yes, the hand limit of seven works a little bit against 2 players, but still, they get twice as many turns each as 4 players. They compensated for this in the On the Brink expansion (which will hopefully be added to this app at some point), by adding more event cards and having the rule be that during setup, you add two event cards per player. So for a 2 player game, there are 4 event cards in the deck, but for a 3 player game there are 6, and 8 for a 4 player game. Not only is the player deck a little bigger, but you get those extra events to help deal with things. I've been used to playing the game with the On the Brink rules and extra event cards, so playing this app has reinforced that for me. Definitely seems easier to win with 2 players than with 4.
Clearly I'm doing something wrong. Playing with two I always get crushed when the virus spreads out. Once the agents aren't traveling together things go downhill pretty quickly. I suppose it's all relative since the outbreaks are based on card draws though. Maybe my experience is on the bad side of the percentages though. I do much better with 4 since I can have a team controlling outbreaks while the others work on trading or mobility.
(Hands threw up) The latter part is very true -- we lost, Singapore wins. Except the weather is too hot on your side. Really don't care for single-player only game for now, even though I read this is a perfect translation to most.
The roles you choose make a difference as well. I like to play with 4 agents. I win most often (physical version, and iPad version) with Medic, Specialist (the one that only needs 4 city cards to cure), dispatcher, and communications (the one that can trade cards in any city). If you haven't tried this combo give it a shot. That group of four has a good synergistic mojo.
Maybe that's it. I only do random roles, random events, and random epidemics. If I pick the roles every time I would be figuring out how to play optimally and that takes all the fun out of it for me.
