Quarantine Zone: The Last Check – Byte Size Review

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, is the gamification of a military checkpoint after a zombie outbreak. Think the FEDRA military checkpoints in the opening hours of The Last of Us, with the gameplay loop of Papers Please.

Quarantine Zone had me dropped into a high fenced checkpoint in the middle of some American city in the grip of a Zombie Apocalypse. After a quick brief from the commander, I was given a thermometer and a symptoms guide, and put to work. I waived queuing survivors forward looking for symptoms, evaluating eye colour, blemishes, injuries and bite marks. To decide if they are “ok” to be let through or quarantined, or need to be “liquidated” by guards in a neighbouring yard.

The “Bang” heard after sending an infected survivor off to be liquidated is a tad confronting…

It’s grim as a video game setting, to put it mildly. Especially when these desperate souls start to plead their case as you check them over. But, I soon parked my humanity and got into the swing of this “production line”. Sending people to safety or the grave within moments of laying eyes on them. As the cases become more complex, so too do the tools and assessment equipment I had available. Xray machines, respiration/heart rate gauges and other scanners, used to fully assess a person and match them to an ever increasing symptoms chart.

The mix of simple and complex presentations kept me on my toes, there was always a sneaky wee bite mark or internal issue that caught me out. The added pressure is that with the limited spots in quarantine, decisions have to be made! The assessment and drafting of patients is the main game, but in between shifts on the line, I had to manage base funding, order resources, check on quarantine developments and pilot a drone which mows down the odd Horde that is storming the gates.

All great fun and breaks up the Monday to Friday of checking for zombies.

The first few hours of Quarantine Zone: The Last Check was solid fun. Learning the ropes, making good assessments, finding the hidden clues. It is a fun wee indie title. But this is a job simulator. And a grim one at that. Eventually the job part of it became bit of a grind for me, however if you dug games like Papers Please or other work sims, this is an absolute must but for you.