Quarantine Zone: The Last Check Review — Papers, Please... with Zombies
I spent a dozen tense hours running the checkpoint, juggling scans, drones and moral choices. Solid management loop, gripping decisions, but some technical rough edges keep it from being flawless.
Quarantine Zone: The Last Check drops you into the thankless job of apocalypse bouncer — equal parts Papers, Please and zombie management sim. If you like making hard calls under pressure while balancing food, power and research, this one scratches that itch; just expect a few rough edges at launch.
You run a critical checkpoint during a spreading outbreak: screen survivors with high-tech tools, spot contraband and symptoms, and decide who goes to the living block, quarantine, or the lab. Between waves you manage camp resources (food, power, medicine), build defenses and pilot armed drones when alarms sound. There’s a clear tension loop: cautious screening protects your camp but starves growth; aggressive testing yields tech and upgrades — sometimes at the cost of lives. The game ships with a story mode (roughly 6–12 hours depending on playstyle and how stingy you are with resources) and an Endless mode for sandbox replayability with escalating difficulty and leaderboard-style goals. I ran into tangible set-pieces: one early scene forced me to choose whether to test a carrier with an unknown fever (testing yields upgrades but kills the subject), and another had me frantically piloting drones as a gate breach snowballed from one bad screening call. Presentation leans gritty and functional: UI is information-dense (in a good way), audio provides tense ambience, and the upgrade trees actually tempt you to be ruthless. Important caveat: several players report FOV/graphical pop-in, texture streaming issues and occasional hard-locks (not ubiquitous, but real). Workarounds I found and that the community suggests include lowering some graphics settings, alt-tabbing to free a stuck UI, avoiding certain upgrade timing that players say can trigger the upgrade-screen lock, and verifying game files. Official support is Windows-only at launch (Steam); no console or Mac/Linux ports announced yet and Steam Deck/Proton support is unconfirmed. The dev, Brigada Games, appears responsive in community threads, but expect a few patches before perfection.
Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is a smart, tense indie sim with a compelling hook and real replay value — just be ready for some polishing patches. Recommended for fans of Papers, Please, survival management and moral-choice games; less so for players who expect rock-solid technical stability from day one.
Pros
- Excellent Papers, Please-style decision loop with a fresh zombie twist.
- Satisfying resource and base management that forces brutal trade-offs.
- Endless mode and upgrade tree give strong replay value and temptation to 'optimize' morally questionable choices.
Cons
- Technical issues: FOV/texture pop-in, occasional pixelation and some reported hard-locks.
- Limited platform support at launch (Windows only) and unclear controller/accessibility options.
Player Opinion
Players love the tense bureaucratic vibe — many compare it to Papers, Please and praise the addictive loop and moral dilemmas. Several reviewers gush about the demo-to-full release improvement and replayability, and streamers have fun with the ‘deny-or-save’ moments. On the flip side, multiple users report graphic bugs (FOV tightness, texture streaming, pixelation) and at least a few mention a hard-lock in the upgrade screen or UI overlaps during the tutorial; community posts suggest workarounds like lowering settings or avoiding certain early upgrades. If you enjoy decision-driven sims with survival and base-management, this is very likely your cup of tea.