In what might be the most distasteful game announcement since Hatred, Polish studio Jujubee has revealed an upcoming title, COVID: The Outbreak: [prebreak]1[/prebreak]

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COVID: The Outbreak is a real-time strategy game in which you play the role of a global organization that has to deal with a global pandemic. Issue decrees, manage resources, develop projects, and construct buildings. A race for the vaccine begins!

In addition to crisis management, the game provides the players with information on how to behave in the event of an epidemic, what actions to take, and how to protect themselves and their loved ones in the most effective way. The game is based on the data published by WHO and on the information acquired from experts and consultants.

“Here at Jujubee we are passionate about educating our audience while they are having a good time playing our games. Currently, there is a plethora of misinformation circulating the topic of the coronavirus, so we hope our strategy game will serve as a source of entertainment and education for our players.” - says Pawel Nitta, Head of Marketing & PR.

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GAME FEATURES

Pandemic Management - advise the world what needs to be done in order to survive the dreadful disease; manage funds, staff, medicine, and research priorities.

Issue Emergency Decrees - declare national emergency and close borders, enforce obligatory vaccination, close schools and airports. Do whatever it takes to stop the coronavirus.

Research New Projects - developing new ways to fight off the disease is a sound strategy. Remember to be cautious as your enemy may mutate, rendering your newly acquired ability completely useless.

Unpredictable Events - how you handle the ongoing fake news, mass stockpiling of supplies, or people ignoring the incoming threat will go a long way towards deciding whether you will prevail against the disease, or succumb to it.

Construct Vital Buildings - build hospitals, emergency tents, research institutions, checkpoints, police stations, and a whole lot more. Every building you enact may become the decisive factor in stopping the outbreak.

Games Beyond™ - educate yourself on how a coronavirus operates, what can you do if you become infected, and why quarantines are issued. Understand why a pandemic is a threat to humanity.



COVID: The Outbreak release May 19th on Steam.

 

[ombus]

Just dont make a battle royal about virus or whatever...

 

[Deleted User]

what in the name of christ this is horrible!

 

[DinohScene]

Yay, another game which will fall into obscurity in a year.

 

[Deleted User]

So when are we getting a movie as well?

 

[duwen]

So when are we getting a movie as well?

Well... this is already out...

 

[Bladexdsl]

and i wasn't kidding about the simulator!

 

[AmandaRose]

I was thinking about pirating this game but I'm concerned about getting a nasty virus.

(Sorry for the lame attempt at humour but I could not resist lol)

 

[Ev1l0rd]

So a plague inc clone that mostly just exists to garner shock value attention.

Count me out. Hatred was just as boring, and I don't think this will be any different. When a developer has to sell the game to you on shock value alone, they already failed.

 

[eyeliner]

I'll get for free, whenever. And never play it. Like most games in my library.

 

[campbell0505]

It was a matter of time.

 

[Solid One]

Hey, is this game really a bad joke? Just read the game synopsis in this post, and at least in this game you play as people trying to find a way out of the covid-19 outbreak. You don't play as a virus whose objective is kill everyone.

Assuming that, in this game, you can deal with stuff such these:

- Creating advertising propaganda to reinforce people to stay at home;
- Manage hospitals in order to reduce covid-19 victims as far as possible;
- Invest funds to laboratories, in order to stimulate scientists to find a cure for the disease, or at least ways of remedy its symptoms;

...then it's more like an educative game than other thing else. People can learn a lot about how to deal with future outbreaks with this simulator.

I know everything is so fresh, and people are sensitive to this situation. But it's not as if this game is as bad taste as others such as Carmageddon or Hatred.

 

[Nobody_Important4u]

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

 

[FAST6191]

I don't particularly see this as distasteful, nor would I see a more in depth might as well be DLC/expansion to plague inc or those games where you have a more active role in spreading things as that either. Would be interesting as well if you get to balance it with other effects (trip things into famine instead, crashed economies and all that).

Either way ripped from current events is a fairly standard setting for fiction.

 

[Sapphire01]

Disappointed but not suprised.

 

[GbaNober]

is it capable of infecting my pc?

 

[pcwizard7]

how will this compare to "Plague Inc"?

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can you play as china and admit they created this virus in a lab?

yea should play as china and in game decide what information to tell everyone

 

[Pandaxclone2]

While I don't mind the attempt to make an educational lesson out of this for our (and possibly future) generations, the fact that it's just straight up calling it what it is without any attempt to even thinly veil it, while the pandemic is still ongoing no less, suggests to me that the devs are deliberately playing up for shock value and lack tact.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Another shock and awe game. Just like Detroit human. This piece of shit can rot in whatever game Store picks it up.

 

[64bitmodels]

LMFAO PLEASE TELL ME THIS IS A JOKE
THIS IS AMAZING LMAO

 

[teamlocust]

What an original game name? Covid?!!!!