Life Or Death
Want to be a doctor but intimidated by medical school? Bio Inc. Redemption: Plague vs. Doctor Simulator by DryGin Studios lets you try your hand at saving lives. Run tests, diagnose your patient, and treat them until they reach full recovery. Of course, if saving people isn’t your thing, you can also play as the diseases themselves with the aim of killing your patient. Whichever path you choose, Bio Inc. Redemption offers a mostly engaging gaming experience.
Each time you open the app, you’ll need to choose between the life path and the death path. Objectives are straightforward; on the life path your goal is to save your patient, while the death path’s objective is to kill your victim. At the beginning of each round, you can choose whether your patient is biologically male or female. This doesn’t make much of a difference in gameplay other than unlocking gender-specific diseases, but is a nice aesthetic option.
A Slow Start
Bio Inc Redemption starts off a bit slow. To run tests, treat the patient, or take any other action, you’ll need Bio points. To get Bio points, you’ll need to collect the bacteria—if you are in the death campaign—or blood cells in the life campaign—that appear randomly in the patient’s body. The trouble starting out is you spend a bit of time waiting for enough Bio points to appear to actually do something. Once the ball gets rolling, it’s a fun simulator, but the first few minutes of each quest feel monotonous.
However, the game soon becomes thoroughly engaging. Whether you’re working to save a life or end it, the game’s A.I. will be working against you, so move fast. While on the life path, players will access the patient’s symptoms and run tests for various diseases. In death mode, you’ll inflict as many diseases as possible on your victim. Diseases are split up into circulatory, respiratory, digestive, nervous, muscular, renal, skeletal, and immune systems as well as male or female. Winning requires strategy. New symptoms will emerge as you progress, and you’ll need to access symptoms and determine which tests to run. Bio Inc. Redemption gets pretty intense as you try to cure or kill the patient in time.
The Death Path
In death mode, some diseases require other diseases or risk factors to be unlocked before they can be afflicted on a victim. For example, you’ll need to give your victim a stroke before you can unlock epileptic seizures. To speed up your victim’s deterioration, you can spend bio points on risk factors. Risk factors are lifestyle choices that negatively impact the victim’s health. For example, unlocking the smoker risk factor boosts circulatory and respiratory diseases. Unlocking the nymphomania risk factor causes the victim to have unprotected sex randomly. When this happens, you’ll get to spin the wheel of STDs. Honestly, I never thought I’d be rooting for someone to catch an STD.
Periodically, while in death mode, your victim will visit the doctor. Under recovery, you can unlock abilities that hinder the recovery process. Unlocking the Nosocomephobia ability gives your victim a fear of doctors, making them less likely to seek treatment, while unlocking generic treatments reduces the effectiveness of treatments by ten percent. To kill your victim, you’ll need to crash at least four of their body’s systems. When a system is close to crashing, the victim will be rushed to the E.R. where doctors will work around the clock to save them.
The Life Path
If you’d rather save lives than take them, you’ll prefer the life path. To win, you’ll need to get your patient to 100 percent recovery. To do so, you’ll need to access their symptoms and strategically run diagnostic tests. For example, mood swings are a symptom of major depression, Alzheimer’s, insomnia, and chronic fatigue. However, of the four, only major depression lists back pain as a symptom. Therefore, if your patient is suffering from back pain and mood swings, you’ll want to rule out depression first. You can unlock lifestyles to increase the health of your patient. For instance, unlocking yoga under the lifestyles tab boosts the patient’s nervous and muscular system by roughly one percent every seven days—the exact figure depends on the patient’s risk factors and equipped bonuses. While it may sound like a meager bonus, that small boost can make the difference between a patient’s recovery and their demise.
In Bio Inc Redemption, you can unlock abilities that improve treatments under the intensive care tab. For example, unlocking better lifestyles increases the efficiency of all lifestyle abilities you unlock while fast treatments reduce all treatment delays by twenty percent. The intensive care tab also lists abilities for each of the body’s eight systems that improve the system’s health by twenty percent. For example, the Bone graft ability restores twenty percent of health to the skeletal system. These abilities can only be unlocked if the system in question is below twenty percent functionality. However, if a system is crashing, using one of these beauties may buy you enough time to treat your patient.
In-App Purchases
I did run into a few glitches, such as when my biologically male patient developed menstrual irregularities, but nothing game-breaking. The game does use an energy system, with each round costing 6 to 24 energy depending on the difficulty you choose. However, I never actually ran out of energy. The game does offer in-app purchases ranging in price from 2.49 all the way up to 99.99. Luckily, you don’t need to spend money to enjoy the game, so unless you really want to have some extra bio coins on hand, there’s no need to make a purchase.
Bio Inc. Redemption is a fun simulation game. Though it starts out slow, you’ll soon find your eyes glued to the screen as you collect Bio points and treat or afflict your patient. The ability to play both as a doctor and the diseases themselves is a novel idea that adds to the game’s replayability. While Bio Inc Redemption does glitch on occasion, overall, it’s an engaging experience. Unlike your death mode victims, Bio Inc Redemption keeps your heart pumping as you race to cure or kill.
Is It Hardcore?
Yes.
Bio Inc. Redemption is an engaging simulator. Players must think strategically as they diagnose and treat their patients.