Pathogen: A Text-Based Disease Simulator/Game

By Sandip S Panesar

Introduction

As I am a physician by background, another reason why I wanted to create a health-based, object-oriented program is that I hope it will serve me as a very rough template of how I may approach similar situations in my future professional work in medical data science. What emerged was a simplistic simulation of a pathogen as it interacts with a human host. The user plays the role of the pathogen, and can choose between either a virus or bacteria. The goal of the pathogen (player) is to kill the host by invading certain organs, defeating the immune defenses and then replicating within the organ.

User Instructions

1. From the command line, enter the folder which the Pathogen.py file is contained, and run using Python 3. The entire program is contained within the .py file without requiring any external modules.
2. The player can choose between two classes to play between - a virus or bacteria.
3. Read the intro text, press enter to scroll.
4. The pathogen initially enters the host’s bloodstream (“vasculature”). The vasculature acts as a central corridor or map that the pathogen can use to travel between the organs. The user will be presented with a menu of actions - 1. Invade an organ, 2. Quit or 3. Get health stats. This menu is unique to the vasculature.
5. If “invade an organ is selected” the user will be presented with a list of possible organs to invade.
6. Once in the organ, you are presented with a series of options. The player must select to battle before being able to replicate. Once the immune defenses are defeated, the player can replicate within the organ and damage its health. If the organ’s health is damaged, the overall body health score is also reduced.
7. You can damage an organ to 0%, but not below this.
8. Once the overall body health is <60%, the host dies and the player wins.
9. From an organ, you can invade an adjacent organ without having to re-enter the bloodstream, but only a single adjacent organ. To travel to a distant organ, you must use the bloodstream.
10. There is a health stats option to view health stats of the user, individual organs and overall body health.