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Going Viral
Back in 2017, designers Gil d'Orey and Antonio Sousa Lara could never have known that we would live through one of the world’s most deadly viruses. So, when Viral was released, I can imagine it had a very different reaction. With cute cartoony artwork and simple game entry this was clearly aimed at the mass market.
The basic theme of Viral sees you play as a unique virus travelling around the human body trying to gain dominance. As you build up your defences and attack other pesky pathogens you get points for infecting zones of organs. Of course, the body will try and heal itself, but your job is to make that as difficult as possible! It is hard to imagine first playing this game without the knowledge we have now, but that being said, what is the game like and will it survive the pandemic?
One Flu Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
To begin the game, you select a virus which, despite its unique colour and design, is the same as everyone else. You all start with a stack of eight virus tokens, a deck of zone cards and a deck of starting mutations. Each round, out of a total of six, has six steps. You begin with selecting a zone card and a mutation card. Each mutation card has a selection of actions such as move or attack, all fairly self-explanatory.
This first step is straight forward. You go to the zone shown on your card and complete the actions from your mutation. Each player does this twice before moving onto step 2. Here you will score depending on which zones you dominate. However, as well as VP you will push up your token on the research track. This track shows how much scientists are learning about you and if you ever reach the top of that track, a cure is found, and you have to remove all of your viruses off the board.
Step 3, an event, some good some bad. Step 4 introduces crisis tokens to any organ that has a specific number of viruses. First VPs are awarded to the virus with the most tokens before the crisis removes the lot. This is a great mechanism to stop you from simply mounting up in one zone for ongoing points. Step 5 releases absorbed viruses, a mutation action you have on your turn to absorb someone else’s token, and step 6 rearranges the play order. Once all 6 steps are complete, you move onto round 2 and continue until the end of round 6. Most VP wins!
Hit Me With Your Best Shot
The strongest element of the game is the artwork. The illustrations by Mihajlo Dimitrievski are colourful and whimsical and the event cards are really striking. On the table, everything certainly looks eye-catching. The main problem I have is at lower player counts (2-3) the board really is too big to offer any kind of real tense area control. At 2 players, the game is pretty unplayable. Even with the addition of a dummy player, the simplistic AI doesn’t offer enough to create any kind of competition.
However when playing at the upper player count of 4-5, the area control becomes much more satisfying. The game tries to add replayability by having a deck of event cards bigger than needed but the events themselves are so basic in their rewards and punishments, I can’t say that they make much of a difference to the overall game. There is also a marketplace of mutation cards to add more powerful action selection.
The main issue here is in the whole game each player will only ever get to choose a maximum of four extra cards. This really doesn’t give enough deck building opportunity to make satisfying choices.
Left (With A) Cold
There is plenty to like in Viral, but I am not sure if it knows who it is for. On its surface it is mass market, entry level introduction to area control. But, it wants to be a little more complicated than that and taken a bit more seriously. The age recommendation is 12+ however, is probably a few years off.
For most of the game younger plays will have no problem but there are elements that might be a little too complicated. If you are new to area control, then Viral would be a great family weight introduction but will the lack of deckbuilding opportunities, it may not have the longest of incubation periods.
