Parasites Unleashed
Parasites Unleashed is the second card game from Zygote Games, a publisher dedicated to designing games that possess a scientific theme, that are informative, and that are educational. The publisher’s first game, Bone Wars: The Game of Ruthless Palaeontology, certainly fit that criteria, and so does Parasites Unleashed. Compare the two games though, and you will find that Parasites Unleashed is a brighter, breezier affair. It is also a whole lot yuckier, as one might expect from a game with an extremely biological subject. Parasites Unleashed is a card game about the kind of vermin that likes to infest its host, do the nasty, and then jump to a new host. Designed for two to four players aged eight and up, Parasites Unleashed can be played in about twenty minutes, the aim being to create a complete Life Cycle – represented by a line of cards in the right order – for your parasite. The other aim, of course, is for you to learn a fact or two about some bugs while you play the game.
Not having an eight year old available, I tried the game out with a fifteen year old instead (my daughter Alex), my partner Louise (whose age I am not at liberty to reveal), and myself (age 41). Alex and I also played it with Dave (age 44), who happens to be a school science teacher. It being a short game we played it with a view to adding it to the stack of little games we play before moving on to something larger and more substantial. Parasites Unleashed proved to be a success with all four of us. Its Dominoes-like game play might be undemanding, but it fit the game’s scientific theme very nicely, just as that theme never failed to inform. Lastly the high yuck factor of the information on the cards nearly always made us go, “Ooo icky!”
Parasites Unleashed comes as 55 full color cards – four HATCH! and four MATE! cards, 36 Host cards, and 11 Special cards. All of these cards follow the same horizontal format: an illustration of the parasite in action (done in a cartoon style) with a band of text beneath the illustration, all set on a background divided into one or two blocks of solid colour, one at either end. There are only four background colors, but each one represents a different environment – green for the great outdoors, brown for the host’s digestive tract, yellow for the inside of an insect, and red for the inside of a host’s tissues (such as its blood, brain, muscles, or skin). Where a Host card’s background is split into two colors, the one on the left represents the previous environment in a parasite’s Life Cycle, while the one on the right, the new environment. What a Host card actually represents is the opportunity for a parasite to move, whether on to the next Host or the next environment. HATCH! and MATE! cards have a single color background, representing the perfect environment for either action.
The last card type is the Special card, which has a purple background. These let a player attack another player’s Life Cycle, defend his own life cycle, or somehow break the rules of the game. For example, “Meds” forces another player to discard a Host card from the end of his Life Cycle; “Suppress Immune System” can be used to prevent another player from playing a Special card on you or another player adding a Host card to your Life Cycle; and “You Live Only To Serve Me,” which is played instead of a Host card to connect two Host cards whatever their colors.
Parasites Unleashed is all about building a Life Cycle, created by laying HATCH!, MATE!, and Host cards in a horizontal line. This can be done in any order, but the cards must be the right way up and the colors of connected cards must match. A complete Life Cycle must include both a HATCH! and a MATE! card – these cannot be adjacent to each other, there must be a Host card between them, and there must be a Host card at either end of the Life Cycle. Lastly, the free and unconnected ends of the Life Cycle must be of the same color.
Everyone starts the game with a HATCH! and a MATE! each, both placed face up on the table in front of them. Each player also receives three cards. On his turn, a player refreshes his hand up to four cards, plays two cards, and discards as many cards as he wants. Host cards can be played onto anyone’s Life Cycle, even that of a rival, the aim being to make a rival’s Life Cycle more difficult to complete. No matter which Life Cycle, the colors of the two connecting Host cards must match. Special cards can be played instead of Host cards or out of turn to stop a Special card being played on you.
The game ends when someone completes his Life Cycle (and so wins the game) or when the deck is exhausted. If this happens and no one has a complete Life Cycle, the player with the longest Life Cycle wins.
To be fair, Parasites Unleashed is a simple game. It is very Dominoes-like, though with colors rather than numbers. This is not a bad comparison though, because it provides something familiar as the basis for its game play, particularly for the younger end of its intended audience. Designers Diane A. Kelly and James L. Cambias have taken that basis and built upon it a strong scientific theme. This is evident in two ways – first in the core idea of the Life Cycle and how involved and complex it can be, and then in the idea that parasites do some really weird things in order to get from one stage of a Life Cycle to the next. The latter more effectively because each and every Host and Special card describes a different weird fact accompanied by an appropriate illustration. Further scientific information is given in the little rulebook, over half of which is devoted to a discussion of parasite life along with a handy pronunciation guide.
So what did we think? Canvassing my fellow players, Dave, whom you will recall is a science teacher, said, “It’s colorful and easy to play. It gets across the idea very clearly that parasites have a life cycle requiring different hosts. They won’t remember the names of the organisms, but the thing kids will remember most is the icky, yucky and downright gross things that real world parasites do in order to survive. It’ll possibly drive more than a few [players] potentially very neurotic… Bad enough some kids are absolutely paranoid about germs.” Louise described the game as “Disgusting, but educational.” My daughter, Alex liked the lack of complexity and the speed of play, and enjoyed the disgusting facts because they were funny. As for me, I would describe Parasites Unleashed as light and accessible (certainly more so than Bone Wars: The Game of Ruthless Palaeontology), which eases the learning process. Lastly, there is Parasites Unleashed’s “yuck” factor. Whichever way you look at it, this is high, but I suspect that it will appeal more than it will appall.