Lab’s labours lost? – Infection: Humanity’s Last Gasp review

If you want to save the world in your games then you are certainly not short of choices, the only really issue being the nature of the threat you are trying to stave off. Zombies, aggressive forces, hackers, aliens, it is all there, while those who would like to save humanity from the onset of some terrible, rampaging virus (where would you get that idea from?) are also overwhelmed with delights. For a start there is the whole Pandemic family, from the original to Iberia to ancient Rome to The Cure and many other stops besides, the original design spawning a series of spin-offs just as Ticket To Ride sprouts maps or, er, a virus spreads.

Pandemic is, of course, the daddy of them all, not just the most widely played disease-eradicator on the gaming planet but also many people’s first experience of cooperative gaming, pitching its players against the design itself. There are even competitive and traitor variants of Pandemic if you look hard enough, but at its heart it remains a solid and long-lived cooperative experience. I really should get around to writing a review of it at some point.

There are other games out there that deal with the same topic, and Infection: Humanity’s Last Gasp is a solo design from Victory Point Games which more or less covers the same territory as Pandemic but with only a single player, except that, while the subject matter looks similar, the game is fundamentally different. More fool me for not working that out sooner, for I held off this game for the longest time, reckoning that I did not need another Pandem-ish on my shelf, when in fact Infection treads its own path. It actually reminds me of another cooperative game entirely, but more of that anon.

According to the information on BoardGameGeek, Infection is thus far the only published design by John Gibson, and it is a pretty decent opening gambit, one of those games that makes you keen to know what is coming next rather than why they bothered. Sitting in the roster of a niche publisher, one that used to provide its editions in ziplock bags and which still provides bespoke napkins to wipe some of the soot off the laser-cut components, perhaps Infection has not received the exposure it deserves, something unlikely to change in the immediate future given that Victory Point appear to be no more. So it is a fine time for me to write this review given that a copy of Infection has fallen into my life and, if it is any good, you ought to go hunting soon.

The non-ziplock versions of Infection comes in a small box, the bright red cardboard sleeved in an illustrated outer wrapper in the VPG way, and with the motto The Gameplay’s the Thing printed boldly on there, in the manner of a David publisher versus the Goliath who would swallow them up and then lay off all their staff. It also says, quietly but firmly, that you should not judge the game merely by its components but instead by the way in which the design plays out, so those gamers who rejoice in Gargantua pledge Kickstarters with thousands of plastic pieces should look away now and instead wait for their shipments to arrive before finding Facebook groups overloaded with unplayed copies for sale. For quiet and discerning soloists, though, carry on.

Last gasp? Check. Skulls? Check. impending doom? Check!

What you get in the bold box is a set of cards, some tokens, a double-sided paper fold-out mat together with a slot-together cardboard representation of the same and, in this version, a six-sided die, though the earlier editions required you to provide your own. The mat represents the molecule on the left and the proteins and antibodies on the right, as well as having areas to track funding, death rates, financial reserves, all cheery stuff. You decide to play on the easier or more difficult level, set up the molecule, lay out some proteins and a couple of decks of cards and then spend an hour or so trying to save the world.

The rules are well-written and clear, though a player aid might not have gone amiss as there can be some back and forthing to work out what a particular symbol means, and the outline of the game on the back page is rudimentary, missing out some of the finer details, but overall the game flows easily and well once you have made it through that faltering first turn. The choices swiftly become second nature, allowing the player to concentrate on the game itself rather than administation and rule checking.

On each turn a status report card is turned over which perhaps causes the molecule to mutate, your scientists to argue with each other and a country to close its borders. Other events happen, of course, and while the good pretty much balances with the bad it is hard not to get a few turns into the game and fear what might happen at the beginning of each round. After this the player can buy proteins (no more than two per turn), recruit or use scientists and equipment, and, if they have an antibody, attack the elements of the molecule. These elements need to be open to attack, but if you target them on the turn in which you discover the antibody then you also get some extra funding.

Because these choices can be made in any order Infection swiftly becomes a game of balancing what the player desires to do against the incoming cash, and although you will usually get a little income at the end of each round this is not enough to keep you going unless you make some serious progress on researching the virus, a neat little touch that makes the theme of the game spring to life rather than letting it all become some abstract token-pusher.

Thankfully you can upgrade your facilities with members of staff and interns, though there can be personality conflicts, and you can also buy equipment to help you on your way. From game to game these will give you permanent or one-off abilities, and a considered use of these is obligatory if the player is to have any chance of sneaking a win. Meanwhile you will be harvesting proteins to create antibodies, balancing the rareness of a particular protein with the complexity of the antibody in some exquisitely painful high-wire act that is literally subject to the luck of the draw, so if you have equipment that allows you to manipulate these odds in your favour you will be using it often.

The source of all the trouble.

There are so many variables in a game of Infection that it is nearly impossible to plan out a clear strategy in advance. Five cards are removed at random from the laboratory deck pre-game, for example, special event tokens vary substantially, while the size of the event deck ensures that only a small proportion of the cards is seen in any game. While upgrading a single piece of equipment will allow you to use it in the game for an automatic success (rather than having to let the dice gods dictate the outcome) there turns out to be no guarantee that the upgrade that you seek will be in the deck at all. Likewise, while an intern might work with a certain member of staff, that member of staff might not turn up to work for the whole game.

This means that each challenge feels different and that the player needs to adapt on the fly, doing their best with what is available while prepared for very little of real value to appear that will mesh with their hastily assembled plans. It is simultaneously frustrating and thrilling, and once you get to the stage when you are cursing your pre-game shuffle for leaving Marvin the Rat out of the deck then you know that the game has got its hooks into you.

Ah, Marvin the Rat. Mention him to anybody who has played Infection and a wistful look will cross their face, their eyes will mist over and they will tell you about the time that the plucky little fellow sacrificed himself to save the day at the very last moment. Marvin has more imaginary monuments built to him than any other fictional rat (probably) because Infection manages to do a wonderful thing with its cards which means that it is not just an abstract solo game of pushing tokens around a board. Infection tells stories.

Infection not only tells these stories – Italy closes its borders too late; the molecule mutates; Marvin (there he is again) gets out of his cage – but tells them with a deft dash of humour and wit as well. Somehow the characters are there even though they are just a single card, the events seem real, and the molecule board itself – well, it sounds odd, but I really feel that I am looking at the virus through a microscope. It is just the way that the board is laid out, but it seeps into your imagination and presumably is designed to do so.

Infection is also a great challenge, gripping and fun throughout. Money is punishingly tight, allowed actions are few, and success can be ripped from your grasp by the roll of a die. In short, of all the games out there it is not any of the Pandemic series that spring to mind when I play this game. Instead it reminds me most of Freedom: The Underground Railroad, similarly punishing, similarly gripping, also nerve-shredding. Freedom and Infection share that feeling of pushing desperately hard against the ongoing tide with ever-decreasing resources, and for this little solo game to trigger such strong associations with one of the outstanding coops of the modern age is high praise indeed. Of course, Freedom is as much about education as it is about play, but that is not to diminish Infection, even if it is more about the puzzle, and if you ever do find it too easy then there are plenty of variants included in the rules to keep you busy.

Not all superheroes wear capes.

Again, more fool me for having stayed away from Infection for so long, thinking that it might be like the Pandemic series, because, really, it is definitely its own beast, a delightfully clean and clear design. Every time I set it up to play I am surprised at how different one game can feel from the last, and while the die roll can kill you off very quickly indeed, with only the lightest dusting of mitigation allowed by the game, somehow it feels thematic, because while once upon a time we all liked to think that we were, you know, so able to deal with a worldwide viral outbreak, if there’s one lesson we should take from 2020 it is…well, we are spoiled for choice for lessons this year, really, but at least we know that this kind of thing can spiral out of control just as a die roll can hasten the end of a game. Somehow it feels just right, but be aware that whereas the dice gods can hate you in other games, here they can actively loathe you.

The end of this review comes with a caveat, which is that if you feel that this game is for you then you should hunt a copy down now – today, even – before they all disappear from the wild, because Infection is a tight and involving game with puzzly elements, a strong sense of theme and a dash of fun as well, so those who own this tend to want to keep it. Yes, the components are those of a smaller company and really cannot compete with the latest offerings from the behemoths of the industry, but if you prize quality and individuality more than chrome and shiny then Infection could well keep you happy for many plays. I avoided this game for a long time and now wish that I had played it years ago, and that translates to a strong recommendation for this fine design. Now go and save the world.