Special thanks to Morkbrand of the Steam community for making a guide on how he was able to unlock the Film Fanatic achievement. Click here for Morkbrand's guide. It might also be worth noting that his guide was made for Plague Inc.: Evolved.
This guide is based on what Morkbrand did, I have made no significant changes on how he did things, but I'll put on some input on how events transpired during my game following his methods.
As I've already mentioned, I unlocked this achievement not knowing exactly how I was able to do so. But based on Morkbrand's brand guide, I think this achievement wants you to finish the game even with healthy people still around. You will be able to finish a game even with close to million people still healthy, and I think that this is what the Film Fanatic achievement wants.
MOVIE SPOILERS AHEAD:(Skip this paragraph if you haven't watched the movie yet)
Based on the Film the Simian Flu was based from, If the achievement is indeed based on the movie, you will need to start in the USA and finish the game with the apes causing rampage and showing dominance over the remaining human populace. The movie's ending could explain why you're able to successfully complete a game even with a million people still healthy, this is why I believe this is the exact scenario the achievement wants.
Enough about explanations and theories, let's get on with the guide:
First off, Start a Simian Flu game in Casual Difficulty, it will make the game much more manageable and less tedious to move around apes and destroy Gen-Sys Labs.
This is the most recommended gene setup:
- ATP Boost
- Teracyte
- Ion Surge
- Together Strong
- Extremophile
Start your Simian Flu in the USA. Could be any other country, but the film started in the USA, so might as well be safe.
The main idea behind this strategy is the use of several colonies to generate DNA which we'll use to evolve and devolve. We'll be devolving a lot of symptoms. A LOT.
At this stage of the game: Devolve anything that mutates except Neuro-enhancement 1 & 2. Why? Because neuro-enhancements, even if they're a symptom, have no effect on detection whatsoever. They just make humans a bit more smarter than usual, which means faster cure speed--comes in handy later on.
Evolve the following in this order:
- Simian Neuro-genesis
- Ape Colonies
- Social Cohesion
- Cognitive Shift
- Education
- Organized Travel
- Logistics
- Seafaring
- Horseback Riding
Having the Simian Travel genes helps make things a little bit faster since we're going to move a lot of apes around.
Switch to Ape view to see which countries have intelligent apes. From Mexico, move apes to:
- Caribbean
- Greenland
- Iceland
- UK
- Madagascar
- New Zealand
- New Guinea
- Philippines
- Japan
If Mexico runs out of apes, just wait awhile, they're going to appear again. We're moving apes from Mexico because the path the apes goes through will also be able to infect other countries' intelligent ape count.
After moving some monkeys around the world, it's now time to establish some colonies. Put one up on these countries:
- West Africa
- Central Africa
- East Africa
- Sudan
- India
- China
- Indonesia
All of these countries have high ape counts and we'll want as many intelligent apes as possible.
After erecting all colonies--heh, erecting-- move onto evolving the following abilities:
- Drug Resistance 1
- Genetic Hardening 1 & 2
- Genetic Re-Shuffle 1 & 2
- Hardened Re-Shuffle
These abilities will slow down the cure, but will also act like a floodgate. You'll see why later.
At this point in the game, you might want to wait until there are no healthy apes left. You can check this by going into the World tab while on ape view and making sure that the Blue heart icon has 0 next to it--moving apes to countries with 0 intelligent apes makes this faster. Or you could also choose to proceed to the next part, it's your call.
TIP: If at some point while establishing colonies, Gen-Sys labs start appearing, simply evolve Ape Rampage and destroy them. This happens sometimes.
Now that every ape is now intelligent, we'll now proceed on making every single human-being sick.
Remember to keep devolving symptoms, except Neuro-enhancement 1 & 2
Evolve the following transmissions:
- Water 1 & 2
- Air 1 & 2
- Extreme Bioaerosol
Makes infection faster. It'll be a long game, why not make it a little bit quicker right? Evolving other transmissions will only make mutations appear faster--you do not want that to happen. Fomites don't cause mutations but the above transmissions are enough to make infection fast.
Now, evolve these abilities:
- Primal Awareness
- War Paint
- Covert Expertise
- Ape Rampage - If you haven't done so yet.
- Primal Hunt
- Weapon Creation
Having these abilities will also help you unlock some Ape combos like Red Ape Redemption, Assassin, and a few other stuff.
Continue by evolving these Ape Abilities:
- Ape Migration
- Scouts
- Pathfinders
These abilities will make nearby countries' apes migrate into your colonies, doing this will make destroying Gen-Sys labs and evading drones much more easier because your apes are concentrated into colonies. In case you don't know yet, Drones and Labs only appear on countries with apes.
Wait until the whole world is completely infected, a pop-up appears once that happens. You can also switch out of Ape-View now.
At this point, you can stop devolving symptoms.It's now time to evolve Neuro-enhancement 3--also 1 and 2 since you need those to evolve it.
Mutations will start happening one after the other and your plague will now start killing people, but you don't want the lethality to be too high. Having one or two lethal symptoms is enough to kill at a decent rate while we wait for the cure progression to get to at least 70%. Total Brain Death should be devolve if your cure progression is still below 50%, in my opinion.
Remember to destroy labs and evade drones. Devolve lethal symptoms if you think you're killing too fast.
**This is the part of the guide where I change a bit from Morkbrand's guide since you can't really properly save a game in the mobile version of Plague Inc.
Once the cure progression has reached 70%, it's now time to kill fast and mercilessly. Evolve Total Brain Death, and every lethal symptom you desire. You have tons of DNA, go crazy, but not too crazy, we're aiming for a certain number of people to still be alive.
Keep a very close eye on your infected count--if you're still on Ape View, switch out now. The moment your infected count goes below 5.5 million or 4 million(4m is safer, I think), immediately devolve the following:
- Every single symptom except Neuro-enhancements and Total Brain Death
- Genetic Hardening 1 & 2
- Hardenened Re-Shuffle
- Genetic Re-Shuffle 1 & 2
If you waited until your cure progression is at least at 70%, the cure progression should shoot up to 100% instantly after doing this.
To make things a little safer, after doing this, pause your game and use rampage on every single colony you have. Doing this will kill some humans making the healthy people count lower. You could do this twice, I think before the cure ends the game.
If done successfully, this pop-up will appear instead of the usual "Your Disease eradicates humanity".
As you can see from the screenshot above, I still have a spec of healthy people still alive but still ended up winning the game. There's no achievement pop-up because I already had the achievement while testing this.
Here's another screenshot of the death-infected-healthy stats of this game.
As you can see, there are still close to a million people still healthy and the cure at a hundred percent.
As closing, I think the film fanatic achievement wants you to either have:
As closing, I think the film fanatic achievement wants you to either have:
- A healthy human count of less than 2 million or 1 million. Or maybe 99% of the population dead before winning.
- More intelligent apes than healthy humans. This is actually possible to do, instead of waiting for 4~5 million people left before devolving, try to get as close as possible to below 600k, because in total, there are 600 thousand plus apes in the world.
As I've stated in the beginning of this guide, there are no pop-ups that appear that tells if you're on the right path or not, which makes this achievement truly hard to get.
If this guide has been too confusing or, simply put, has not worked for you, try out MorkBrand's guide. Anyway, Thanks for reading this guide, hope it somehow helped and as always, Happy Spicy Gaming!
