If you are not familiar with the game of GO, it’s basically a board game in which the objective would be to encircle the enemy’s pieces. Now imagine if we were to bring the concept one level up, with only certain types of pieces can capture other types of pieces. That’s essentially how Birnam Wood Games‘ latest iOS title, Pathogen, works. The game is based on the concept of a virus spreading through a human body.
Players place pieces, otherwise known as cells on the board with three types available, A, B and C. The A-cells can be used to evolve the player’s other A-cells (by placing them on top of each other) into B-cells, whereas the B-cells will evolve other B-cells to C-Cells. All these cells will function to take over the opponent’s cells which are of lower cell types. To secure a player’s position C-Cells are used to evolve the player’s C-Cells into Wall Cells.
The B and C cells have multiple-turn cool-down periods to prevent players from placing them on the board all the time, so players will need to strategize on when to place them. The Wall Cells are invaluable as they are the only cells invulnerable to the Virus which can be deployed by either player. The Virus destroy any non-Wall Cells in its path. The player who controls the most of the game board wins at the end of each level, just like GO. Speaking of winning, I really like how the developers have done up the reporting page, plenty of stats…yummy.
Pathogen features very nice, TRON-like visuals and a pretty decent soundtrack. The game features a number of branching levels for Single Player mode and both local and online multiplayer support. There’s also an Editor for players to create their own levels. For such a full-featured, pretty-looking, brain-cracking casual game that DOESN’T have in-app purchases, Pathogen is plenty awesome. This game gets a 5 out of 5 from us at Nineoverten.com.
The game is available at a price tag of USD 2.99 over on the iOS App Store. Check it out over here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pathogen/id600038811?ls=1&mt=8. A review code was provided to Nineoverten.com for the purpose of this review.
