After months of speculation, publisher Z-Man Games has finally come clean about what players and armchair survivalists can expect from the second season of Pandemic Legacy. Due later this fall, Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 will leap forward 71 years to drop players in a dystopian future that’s been ravaged by disease. So even if your group managed to win the game’s first season, it wasn’t enough to save humanity.
Pandemic Legacy’s second season is an entirely stand-alone experience, meaning players shouldn’t feel like they have to play the first game before they jump into Pandemic Legacy: Season 2. That said, the first season is so good that players who haven’t yet experienced it are encouraged to absolutely get a group together to try to save the planet…even if we now know that effort was all in vain.
As before, Season 2 challenges between 2 and 4 players to help save the world, this time in a bleak future where mankind has taken shelter amidst a network made up of the last few remaining cities. These cities are supplied by islands known as “havens” that float on the ocean isolated from the mainland. Players will disembark from their island homes to help bring supplies to the mainland in hopes of keeping what’s left of the world from being destroyed. This means that much of the travel in Season 2 will be made by sea, as there is no more air travel in the ruined future of Pandemic Legacy.
One of the most interesting changes made in this new game from Season 1 is that the map itself will slowly be revealed over time. In many ways, this is reminiscent of SeaFall, co-designer Rob Daviau’s recent legacy-style adventure in an age of pirates where different islands were discovered and placed on the board over the course of several plays. Another change from the first game’s formula is the disease itself has already been proven unstoppable, and so players are instead charged with bringing supplies to help what remains of humankind to survive in the face of disaster. Players transport supply cubes to locations in order to stave off the spread of disease, but there’s almost certainly never enough cubes to go around.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 will again take place over 12 months, and players will be able to start pulling the world back from the brink this fall.
Here’s hoping we’re all ready.