Pandemic
It's from 2008, when you were 2.
- Maker
- Z-Man Games
- Type
- Board game (cooperative)
- Debuted
- 2008
- Note
- You play AGAINST the game, together
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About
As of 2026, it's 18 years old.
Pandemic spread across game tables in 2008 and helped popularize the cooperative board game — instead of competing, all players work together as a disease-fighting team racing to cure four global outbreaks before they spiral out of control. You win together or, far more often, lose together as the infection rate climbs.
Its tense, shared decision-making (and the looming dread of an 'outbreak chain') made it a landmark, though it also birthed the phenomenon of the 'alpha gamer' who tries to play everyone else's turn for them. Playing it took on a slightly different flavor after 2020, understandably.
Cooperative, tense, and landmark, Pandemic is the game that pitted the whole table against the board and proved losing together can be just as fun as winning.
