In the summer of 2021, as the world was still reeling from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I imagine that the team at Z-Man Games was rather desperate for a rebranding. The company’s hit game, titled Pandemic, had long been a welcoming entrypoint into the joy of modern board games. But the whole “millions of people dying and the budding culture war where we risked our own neighbor’s lives to prove a political point” thing was really gettin’ folks down on the term “pandemic.” Something had to be done. So, why not licensing?

Variations on the theme, like Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu........

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