New Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 details tease big changes for this year’s sequel

Details of Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, this year’s hotly-anticipated follow-up to what many currently consider the greatest game of all time, have been slowly dripping out over the past few months, as fans desperate to learn more lap up each tiny titbit of information like gerbils huddling around a water bottle.

First, we had the reveal of the box(es) at last year’s Essen, which showed off the new map style for the game and hinted at the scratch-and-reveal gameplay that would be making its easy into the globetrotting adventure, as well as the new addition of docks and extra travel routes.

There was also the suggestion that Season 2 takes place several decades after the original Pandemic Legacy, a fact that has now been confirmed by a new update to Z-Man’s website for the game, which states clearly that Season 2 is set 71 years after the conclusion of Season 1 – which itself was set over the course of 12 months.

There are also hints at the new state of the world following the outbreak of the plague (it looks like the game assumes players lost in Season 1), with the reveal that humans have been living on floating ‘havens’ for three generations, while trying to help those left stranded in cities on the mainland.

The lead-in to the game appears to be the disappearance of humanity’s leaders, throwing the havens into jeopardy and forcing a small group of survivors – the players – to head out in search of supplies to defend from the diseases.

New images of the game’s components reveal a little bit more, showing off a gorgeous manual with ‘Instructions for a better life on the havens’, rationed event cards, what appears to be archived story beats on cards, newly-redesigned epidemic and city cards, event cards that offer multiple choices to player and new character sheets with space for upgrade stickers, personal information such as their home and, most curiously, a blank space for ‘place of death’.

There’s no confirmed release date for Pandemic Legacy: Season 2, but it’s currently scheduled to launch sometime this autumn – so an Essen release in October looks likely.