The Virulence Protocol

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Average Rating:

Everyone is on edge aboard the CSS Jonas Salk, a spaceship tasked with astrobiology research to acquire alien life forms and substances to be used in pharmaceuticals on Earth. But the most recent mission has brought some troubling developments. Weird bruises have appeared on the crew’s bodies and, well, two already killed each other in a (Spoiler - click to show) cannibalistic outrage. By the way, you are the captain. Soon, that will mean little.

Gameplay
This is one of those gameplay stories where an infectious agent appears in a closed off area filled with people (ex. spaceship smack in the middle of deep space). The game begins by an inner airlock door where you and two crew members are observing the carnage through the airlock window- no, the SmartGlass* airlock window. You do not have many choices beyond calling for a meeting of all surviving crew. *Corporate (fictional) product placement! Hey, it’s a reoccurring theme in this game.

Gameplay is linear with some flexibility. A notable choice is when deciding to what to grab from your locker. It will be important for resolving (or maybe I should say “resolving” since teamwork has pretty much gone out the window) crew tensions during the meeting.

You hold up the crew manual. Everyone falls silent at the sight of this mystic totem.
(Surely this will work)

The crew rushes you from all sides.
(Tip: (Spoiler - click to show) Pick the gun instead.)

Later, choices boil down to two or three options at a time with fight or flight decision making. Do I try to reason with this crew member who is (Spoiler - click to show) eating his friend, or do I run for it?

A clever design feature for these choices were timed pages that kick in if the player takes too long to respond. The outcome is not favorable. It’s not obvious which ones are timed, and they last for about ten seconds, a reasonable length. Indecisive? This will catch you off-guard, contributing to the chaotic ambience in the gameplay. The message: Stop dawdling while the infection eats through your crew.

Story
There is gore in this story. Not exactly One Eye Open (a personal favorite of mine) gore, but still gore. The gist is that the expedition’s recent target was a planet inhabited by primate-like alien creatures that were deemed perfect for science. The only catch is that the creatures (Spoiler - click to show) were all torn up and mangled. The crew assumed it was a territorial dispute, not some highly infectious pathogen that causes life forms to turn on each other. Needless to say, everyone gets infected, or at least exposed to the infection.

This is where moral decisions come into play: Are you going to return to Earth and risk infecting the planet with, essentially, a (Spoiler - click to show) zombie-like disease? Or are you going to land on a nearby planet and use its resources to address the problem first? Neither are ideal, but the crew 110% wants to return to Earth and deal with it there whereas the protagonist seems inclined to take a cautious route. Sadly, (Spoiler - click to show) the crew is willing to kill to get their way.

There are multiple endings, some of which go on longer that you anticipate which was a nice surprise. You will find some unexpected outcomes that encourage multiple playthroughs.

Characters
The weaker part of The Virulence Protocol is, oddly enough, the characters. I don’t mean their change into (Spoiler - click to show) cannibalistic rebels. Instead, their motivations for contradicting the player’s orders seem inconsistent. If anything, only the protagonist has their head on straight, even though they too show signs of the infection.

Everyone wants to go back to Earth to be home again (predominantly for medical care), but there is a segment where their demeanors change to embrace the corporate themes underlying the game. The whole mission is backed by corporations seeking to harvest resources for commodities. This is subtly conveyed through descriptive writing. But its brief manifestation among the crew was awkward.

For a brief moment all the NPCs care about is profit and making money, not whether their infection is going to spread in their bodies and kill them. At the start of the game some characters have distinct personas. It makes sense that they would all succumb to (Spoiler - click to show) zombie-like symptoms from the infection, but I feel like the game dissolves the NPCs’ individual identities for a single scene.

“The only thing we got to protect is our pay day! The gig is to find some alien plant or monkey with mojo that can be turned into medicine with serious worth!”

Next thing you know, it’s all about biolabs and seeing Earth again. There could have been a smoother transition here.

Visuals
Game uses a default Twine appearance that many players will recognize. Black screen, easy to read white text, blue links that turn purple when you click on them. The game will occasionally throw around different text colours paired with blinking or delayed text effects. A few spelling/dialog formatting issues but otherwise this game feels like a finished piece.

Final thoughts
It’s not the best plague-on-a-spaceship game I’ve played but it was certainly intriguing enough to play for several rounds. While characters were meekly implemented, it has its strengths. The horror element was especially well done because it takes an already precarious situation and slowly unfolds it to reveal a horrendous truth about the botched mission: The crew has discovered an infection that turns people into aggressive (Spoiler - click to show) sort-of zombies.

It’s a story where humanity found more than what it bargained for, and The Virulence Protocol conveys that idea with great enthusiasm.

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