Bio Inc.: Redemption - Choosing Life

Written by

Katie Memmott

Published

11th Dec 2020 14:43

From the creators of Plague Inc. comes Bio Inc.: Redemption. DryGin Studios’ medical simulator series boasts more than 17 million players, and the latest instalment is available with exclusive content on iOS and Android, that players can’t access on Steam.

Bio Inc.: Redemption gives you the opportunity to become a tireless healer focussed on saving lives or a sinister scientist who infects their patients with deadly diseases.

Having played (and thoroughly enjoyed) Plague Inc., where I released my deadly virus upon the world (too soon?), I was excited to take the opposite road and heal the globe instead.

As the game title suggests, I wanted redemption for my evil actions, and chose the role of the tireless healer, instead of the sinister scientist, for this playthrough.

Putting life in your hands

Playing on iOS, the UI was honestly beautiful and the music was haunting yet clinical. The game urges you upon first opening to “Choose Life” or “Choose Death”, and also has Daily Objectives to complete, along with a frankly intrusive Chat option that I can’t seem to turn off.

As Trainspotting always taught me to do – I chose Life, and embarked upon the tutorial, where I would learn the basic skills needed to heal my ailing patients.

I quickly learned that the left-hand menu was for diagnosing the area of the problem, and upon doing a few of those (where you press on the affected area of the body and zap the proteins blood cells), I earned enough Bio Points to be taken to the Bio Map.

The Bio Map is a place to identify symptoms, run diagnostic tests such as Stethoscope Exam, and based on the diagnoses, spend Bio Points on treatments such as antibiotics courses.

Here you can use the rewards from completing daily objectives to upgrade your gameplay, including skills such as “Fewer Symptoms”, where diseases randomly produce 25% fewer symptoms, narrowing potential diseases as a result.

The Doctor will see you now

After the Life Tutorial, I began Med School, and an internship. I was surprised at the customisable nature of this very first game mode – I could name my patient, choose the difficulty, and assign their gender. I gave mine a really original name - Gina Recon.

As with any mobile game of this nature, it works on an Energy system, where you spend lightning bolts of energy on playing, and when you run out – you guessed it – you have to wait real-life minutes for more to regenerate. One Energy point regenerates every five minutes, or – you can watch ads, or buy them, naturally.

There is a lot going on with Gina Recon – the poor lass is in a terrible condition. The game needs you to press down on cells on certain parts of the body to gain Bio Points, and as the patient deteriorates, it really becomes life or death, and the anxiety starts.

Spoiler alert – I couldn’t keep up with the insane amount going on, and Gina died.

Death isn't the end

I decided to try again on an easier difficulty, and this time, I saved Jane Doe (although the game still used male pronouns throughout…)

The mode where you have to identify 10 diseases before the patient dies is much nicer, although the fact I didn’t have to choose the treatments was a bit annoying and confusing after the initial game mode.

I’m not the biggest fan of mobile games (apart from Candy Crush Saga, of course), but I must say, Bio Inc.: Redemption really got me hooked. I wasn’t sure if I actually wanted the patient to live, or I wanted coins – either way, pretty fun.

An ambitious foray into life and death after a successful virus-spreading predecessor, that almost flatlined far too early in its promising life, in part due to its ambition, and is saved only by an addictive urgency factor.