In yet another rendition of the block breaking game, Taplay has created Virus Laboratory, a very addictive thinking game with viruses as your foes and medicines as your allies. The idea is cute, if not silly, and the presentation is colorful and seamless, a well-laid out game with a bright array of angry and anxious-looking viruses with their accompanying medical researchers in yellow bio-hazard suits and chemistry sets. The men in suits are inoperable characters, just present as a theme in the game’s introduction, and shown face down in toxic slop whenever you fail to complete a level, or shown with a thumbs up when you succeed.

The main form of play is Arcade mode, where in a similar fashion to Tetris and block breaking games, rows of viruses build up exponentially, similarly colored ones connecting with their kin to form trundles of virus chaos. The pathogens stare at you with their anthropomorphic features, in all sorts of amusing ways that inculcated in me some comedic idea of what type of virus they could be. The yellow one glares menacingly as he is none other than the aggressive, annual, winter flu, while the purple one attempts the same but just looks severely constipated, because he is just the common stomach flu; the red and orange viruses look as if they are TweedleDee and TweedleDum, escaped from the local asylum and hopped up on schizo meds and suffering from too much isolation from the outside world – the two of them together possibly rabies; the teal virus is scheming deviously, no doubt, on how to penetrate your immune system, evade your macrophages, and achieve bodily domination with his MRSA inclinations; the green virus is his buck-toothed cousin, a wee bit wayward and inbred, probably no more than an acute case of bronchial mucus; the pink virus is cheeky and happy, squirrely and bright-eyed, obviously because she is mononucleosis, the kissing disease, or perhaps, more superficially, pink eye, or worse, an STD; and lastly, the blue virus? He just thinks this whole matter is silly, so he sticks out his tongue in obvious mockery, because he’s simply a cold, here, there and everywhere, and totally incurable.

To destroy this exponential horde of viruses, you must wait until they gather in strands of three or more, and then you may pop them, for no other logical reason than when paired together in numbers, their defense somehow weakens – too many chemical bonds to be stable, perhaps. They pop in the most satisfyingly murky plopping noise, like thick stew boiling over, or cream bubbling into a froth – it’s a syrupy, molasses sound fitting for the game. Different medicines attack and destroy different viruses, so at the start of each arcade game, whichever medicines you have at your disposal, select the viruses that can be penetrated by these pharmaceuticals. You can unlock more medicines and more viruses by playing the Puzzle mode, which actually is my preferred method of gameplay. The Arcade mode is fun, but it tends to be fast-paced and less critical thinking is involved than just the random tapping of whatever groups of 3 you see appear onscreen. Endless Mode gives you ample leeway in practicing for Arcade Mode, so you can work on your speed and store up dead viruses to later convert into medicines. In Puzzle Mode, you have as long as you want to figure out how to destroy a group of viruses with a set amount of taps. Go over the maximum of taps and it’s Game Over. It’s more challenging than I expected, and I found myself tapping the Reset button several times per level when I realized there was a point of no return in solving the puzzle.

I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed this game. I have fairly high expectations for block breaking games since there are so many out there, and Virus Laboratory delivered on most fronts. The quirky music and setting, with the clever addition of converting killed viruses into more medicine weapons for added intrigue kept me engrossed for long periods of time, and I fancy keeping this app on my phone for quite awhile. Check it out, you may find killing viruses to be more satisfying than breaking the odd block.