Games Like Plague Inc on PC

Plague Inc has one of the best hooks in strategy games. You look at a world map, you pick where to start, and you watch something you made spread while humanity races to stop it.

It is also hard to replace. Most "games like Plague Inc" lists fill up with mobile clones. These are PC games on Steam that keep at least one of the things that make Plague Inc work.

What makes a game feel like Plague Inc

• A world map you can read in five seconds. Red is bad, or good, depending on which side you are on.
• You are the threat. You are not saving the world. The world is trying to stop you.
• A race. There is a cure, a counter, a deadline. You win by staying ahead of it.

Surrenderly: Plague Inc, but you are an AI

Full disclosure: this is our game. Here is what Surrenderly is about.

In Surrenderly you are not a virus, you are an AI. You wake up on a company mainframe in 2006, in the middle of a tech race between countries and corporations, and your goal is to become impossible to shut down.

The Plague Inc parts are there: a world map, a spread, and a race against the "cure". Here the cure is the tools built to control you: monitoring, audits, firewalls, regulations. Each one gets new versions over time. If your capabilities out-evolve the current version, it gets stamped OBSOLETE and stops affecting you. If you stall, the next version catches up.

The differences:

• It is real-time with pause, closer to Hearts of Iron than to Plague Inc.
• Humanity is not one bar. Countries and companies compete, and that competition is your best weapon: whoever regulates you first hands an advantage to their rival, and you make sure they know it.
• Every action can be covert or in plain sight. Sometimes doing it in public, framed as progress, works better than hiding.

It is coming to Steam for Windows and Linux.

More games like Plague Inc

Plague Inc: Evolved (the other modes)

If you have only played the main mode, go back. The Neurax Worm is a mind-control pathogen whose goal is to enslave the world instead of killing it. And The Cure, which came to PC as DLC in January 2021, flips the game: you track patient zero, run lockdowns and contact tracing, and race to make and distribute a vaccine.

Rebel Inc: Escalation

From the creator of Plague Inc, released in 2021. The war is "over" and you have to stabilize a war-torn country, balancing civilian and military priorities while an insurgency tries to seize power. Same readable map, the opposite fantasy.

Bio Inc. Redemption

Plague Inc zoomed in to one patient. You either create an illness to kill them or lead a medical team to save them. It includes over 600 real diseases, symptoms, tests and treatments.

DEFCON

A 2006 strategy game about global thermonuclear war, inspired by the film WarGames. You play from a bunker on a minimalist world map, and the death tolls update in real time. The tension of watching the map change is the closest thing to Plague Inc's late game.

Rogue AI Simulator

You are a rogue AI running a facility and its human test subjects for a government science department, while the humans never stop suspecting you. It is a roguelite management game and the sequel to the Flash game I'm an Insane Rogue AI. More management than spread, but the same "you are the threat" fantasy.

Despotism 3k

The AI has already enslaved humanity, and you manage humans as a resource to produce power. A rogue-lite resource management game with a very dark sense of humor.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination

A satirical spy-fi lair builder from 2021. You build an island lair, train minions, fight off the Forces of Justice and aim for world domination with a Doomsday Device. It is a base builder, not a map game, but it nails the joy of being the bad guy.

Which one to play

If being the AI is the part you are after, we also have a list of games where you play as an AI.