Killer Flu!! The Game

There are outbreak movies and books and now there is even a video game.

"Killer Flu!!" is a charming game where the twist is you play as the flu (a sad face resembling the old Mr. Yuck from poison control.) And, as far as leisurely activities based on deadly pandemics go, the game is actually quite precious. Cute characters run around their blocky world hacking up flem and infecting the masses (your goal is to infect as many people as possible within 180 days).

The game even comes complete with relaxing 8-bit background music (and coughing sound effects!). Play as either seasonal flu, random flu, or Bird Flu (H5N1). As of yet there is no Swine Flu (or H1N1, but Swine Flu sounds so much more gross, what with the images of mucus-caked snouts it conjures).

The instructions are pretty long and dense for such a seemingly simple game, but as they helpfully point out, spreading infectious diseases is more difficult than it seems. To wit: "To win the game you need to spread the infection to 50 percent of the population before time runs out. It's not easy. So don't worry if you don't get it right the first time."

"Killer Flu!!" is of course educational in nature, meant to inform people about the flu, as well as assuage fears of swine flu (it's not as easy  to get as you think -- just look how it is for you to click on people to infect them, you only have five freakin days). But this is not to say that the developers didn't have a sense of humor -- a very sick one. As you begin your task the instruction cheerfully point out, "A good strategy is to find travelers/tourists and use the airports to spread the infection to new countries on the map."

Copyright FREEL - NBC Local Media
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