VOX:

Are you the sort of person who enjoys imagining the dark thought of a new, potentially deadly disease spreading across the planet like wildfire, infecting cities, then regions, then continents, then planets? Does this wholly imaginary scenario play into a macabre desire to explore what a worst-case scenario might look like? Do you also like telling your friends what to do?

When Pandemic begins, four different diseases — represented by different colored cubes — have sprung up around the globe, and you and your friends play employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). If you can develop vaccines for all four, you win. If any number of other scenarios happen, you lose. (Seriously, there are so many ways to lose this game. It’s mean.)

What makes Pandemic so good — and so enervating — is the way it quietly encourages you and your fellow players to do just a touch of roleplaying, as you gather around the table and quietly implore each other to do this thing or that thing, because it’s the only way to save the world.

It might seem a bit morbid to play this game right now but it’s actually a lot of fun and wonderfully cooperative. You can’t win unless you all work together.