Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is a treat for lovers of the living dead

As a lover of all things zombie, I’ve been itching to get my hands on Quarantine Zone: The Last Check. Sure, Dawn of the Dead is amazing but what about the other survivors, the ones who still have a pulse but aren’t so lucky as to hole up in a shopping mall? That’s where this mash-up of Dawn of the Dead, Papers, Please and Contraband Police comes in.

Or, rather, that’s where you come in, since your infection-detection skills are at the heart of Quarantine Zone: The Last Check. There’s a little base-building and the odd turret-manning section where you repel the dead (please, developers, stop assuming players have a scroll wheel) but spotting would-be zombies is the meat of the game.

Survivors file in and you examine them, physically or with a range of instruments, to determine whether they’re clear, infected or somewhere in the middle. Clear survivors get a place to stay, the infected get a bullet in the head, horrifying as that reality is, and those you’re unsure about are assigned to quarantine.

The first few rounds of examinations are not super fun, mainly because they’re essentially a tutorial. But once Quarantine Zone throws in gizmos like temperature monitors, scanners that let you search for concealed bits and contraband checks, that’s when the fun really starts.

Aside from the occasional, comically obvious infected, such as the above individual who literally has a zombie bite on his forehead, you’ll have to put the work in to figure out who’s infected. Skip any one procedure and you could be dooming the other survivors.

Aside from the fact you’re paid on results, you need a specific number of survivors each time there’s a pick-up. If four of those survivors are zombie chow, and you can’t replace them, your survivors will remove you from command, and it’s game over.

And, while you can upgrade your facilities, you’re still forced to make snap judgements every now and then. What do you do when the person in front of you could be infected but quarantine is full? Do you send them for a lead injection, or let them through and live with the risk? .

Quarantining survivors is a particularly harrowing element of the game, mainly because someone has decided they should be quarantined together. Maybe you get individual chambers later in the game, but it’s a real shocker wandering into the quarantine tent and discovering two ex-survivors chowing down on the others.

Developer Brigada Games absolutely knows its audience. If you’re not a zombie afficionado, Quarantine Zone likely won’t appeal to you. But if you revere George Romero you’ll be right at home, whether you’re indulging in day-to-day inspections, yanking out organs in the laboratory or struggling to keep the generator running.

Where Quarantine Zone does stumble, compared to Papers, Please and George Romero’s ouvré, is that it fails to make you feel for the survivors, unless you actually watch them being devoured in front of you. Some survivors will tell you about how their family is already safe, which works in Papers Please because, at worst, you’re risking your job.

But in Quarantine Zone, letting a single infected through could result in the deaths of the other survivors. It’s not a case of weighing up the stakes, the stakes are immediately obvious, there’s no umm-ing and ah-ing. It literally is life or death, and there’s no wiggle room.

While I’ve yet to see the game through to its conclusion, I’m hooked enough that you’ll have to tear me away from my post. Throw in a selection of side quests (including spotting special survivors), plus an endless mode, and Quarantine Zone will put a grin on the face of any fan of the living dead.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is out now on Steam, priced at £16.99 with a 10% launch discount bringing it down to £15.29.