Parents' Guide to

Immune Attack

By Christopher Healy, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 12+

Educational adventure makes biology thrilling.

Game Windows 2009
Immune Attack Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this game.

  • Immune Attack Game: Screenshot #1
  • Immune Attack Game: Screenshot #2

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What’s It About?

IMMUNE ATTACK is a free educational PC game created by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), meant to teach players about the working of the human immune system while entertaining them in the process. The game's story centers around an immune-impaired patient who will die as the result of a bacterial infection unless his while blood cells are "trained" to deal with the invading bacteria. A team of scientists injects a nanobot into the patient's bloodstream, which the player steers around, tracking down invading cells, marking them, and making sure they're properly targeted by the white blood cells.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

The amount of scienctific knowledge passed on in Immune Attack can seem daunting to adults: You need to transform a monocyte into a macrophage, mark C3a chemical trails, target pseudomonas, releases CXCL8 signals to summon a neutrophil, and so on. It sounds like the kind of overly-technical gibberish that would immediately turn kids off. But that's only because we are adults. Kids love overly-technical sounding gibberish. If we heard kids talking about adding Bulbasaur to their Pokédex and evolving a Charmander into a Charizard, we might think the same thing, but that's just Pokémon. By turning this biology lesson into the kind of game that kids will enjoy -- the "landscape" and environments are beautifully alien and the story is played out with much suspense -- young players will happily absorb the accompanying data. While it's true that the controls can be a bit difficult to use at times, you can't complain too much, as the game is indeed free.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the value of educational video games. How much can children really learn from playing a game? Can a game like this one, in which the science is boldly front and center, be enjoyed as simple entertainment? Or will it be impossible for kids to look at it as anything other than a school assignment in sheep's clothing?

Game Details

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