PANDEMIC HOT ZONE: NORTH AMERICA (2020)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
2-4	20 mins	Matt Leacock	Z-Man Games

Most board gamers know/own/have played PANDEMIC, and 14 years on from it’s release it still remains a great way of getting non-gamers into the hobby as well as teaching the fundamentals of co-op.

Despite all its variations (floods, Romans, The Old Ones) these games boil down to working together and stopping a threat.

And now we have the Hot Zone versions. A smaller take on the original, with players fighting off the virus outbreak in North America (with Europe now available separately).

While the Hot Zone games don’t change much, they offer a snack sized version of PANDEMIC, allowing the game to be set up, taught, played, and then packed away in half an hour.

Whether this is useful because you don’t have that much time on a lunch time game session with work colleagues, or you want the coop hit as a palette cleanser between bigger games, it doesn’t out stay its welcome, yet still gives you that well earned teamwork victory.

While I wouldn’t play the other versions lower than three, I won’t play the Hot Zone versions higher than two. I think because of the small number of cards and quick play time, it actually works better as a 2-player only version of the system. Having four players means each person doesn’t get that many turns and so maybe won’t feel like they’ve done much.

You could also use this to teach the one friend who has yet to play the system, without throwing them into a full game and feeling like a spectator.

Overall, PANDEMIC HOT ZONE: NORTH AMERICA doesn’t reinvent the wheel. And it doesn’t need to. It still gives a different variation on the original by compacting things down a little.