Quarantine Zone: The Final Test evaluation
must know
What’s it? A primary-person sim the place you are a zombie plague “physician”
Launch date: January 12, 2026
Count on to pay: $20/£17
Developer: Brigada Video games
Writer: Devolver Digital
Reviewed on: Intel i7 9700K, RTX 4070 Ti, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck: Playable
Hyperlink: Steam
Do not attempt to conceal a hand grenade in your butt. Which will sound like recommendation so apparent that it want by no means be stated, however in zombie outbreak administration sim Quarantine Zone: The Final Test, folks attempt to conceal stay grenades of their asses so typically I am beginning to fear youngsters will suppose it is simply one thing that will get accomplished.
In Quarantine Zone: The Final Test, you are a… effectively, I am unable to actually name you a physician, although 95% of your job is performing medical exams. You are answerable for screening the survivors of a zombie apocalypse as they enter a army outpost, ensuring they don’t seem to be contaminated by the zombie virus or different sicknesses or hiding explosives of their butts, earlier than letting them in.
It is an excellent concept for a sport, kind of a grisly Papers, Please, and inspecting folks’s disgusting rashes, bloodshot eyes, and gooey inner organs for telltale indicators of a virus is yucky enjoyable—for at the least just a few hours. Unhappy, then, that examinations get repetitive fairly rapidly and the bottom administration programs are so slight they barely even matter. I completed Quarantine Zone’s marketing campaign in below 12 hours, however I ran out of persistence earlier than I ran out of sufferers.
28 Cheeks Later
One after the other, survivors line up on the checkpoint on your examination and also you check out whoever is first in line. Are their eyes clear, bloodshot, a bit yellow? How about their pores and skin: have they got a rash, bruises, cuts, or some indication they have been bitten by a zombie? Test their pulse and temperature, whack them with a hammer to see if their reflexes appear regular, and evaluate their signs to what you already know in regards to the virus. And do not forget to look by way of their backpacks and their butts for contraband.
If they appear wholesome, ship them to the survivor camp the place you will ship them out on vans on the finish of the week. If they have the zed virus, march them off to be liquidated—which suggests being shot to demise by troopers in a darkened cargo container. In the event that they’re sick, however not zombie-sick, stick them in quarantine and test on them each day to see if their signs enhance, or in the event that they flip into zombies and kill everybody else in quarantine.
Feels like clear-cut post-apocalyptic authoritarianism, however it’s not so easy in observe. Diagnosing is difficult, particularly at first: it may be exhausting to inform if somebody is bruised or simply soiled, if eyes are simply bloodshot purple or zombie-red, if their ragged respiratory signifies a easy chest chilly or zombie-style wheezing. There are different types of rashes that may simply be mistaken for one another, and somebody with a livid expression could be offended on the indignity of the examination or within the grips of a zombie rage.
Fortunately, you may have instruments to look at these unlucky people, and your medical arsenal grows as you progress by way of the sport. One gizmo enables you to peer by way of folks’s clothes to look at their pores and skin for indicators of the zombie plague (and some entertaining tattoos), and one other hand-held machine enables you to look proper by way of their pores and skin to test their inner organs for bleeding or necrosis and smuggled contraband—like these hand grenades I saved discovering up folks’s butts.
For some time that is enjoyable, kind of like a match sport: take a look at an image of a rash or a bruise in your menu and attempt to inform if the particular person in entrance of you has the identical rash or bruise, or perhaps uncover a brand new symptom you have not seen earlier than. However there simply aren’t all that many various signs, and listening to the identical lung rattle, seeing the identical bloodshot eyes, and checking off the identical rash, time and again, it will get outdated fairly rapidly.
Checkpoint gnarly
Along with screening survivors, you may have base administration duties, however they’re so primary they do not add a lot to the sport. Preserve meals stocked, gas within the generator, medkits within the sick bay, and spend cash to improve your instruments and base’s capability for survivors and defenses.
Within the demo of Quarantine Zone I performed final yr, you probably did this stuff manually by loading up a cart with provides and pushing it round from place to put, however that function has been lower and now you merely click on just a few buttons in a menu to restock. Which means you may deal with the administration of the bottom inside seconds and get again to inspecting survivors—so the sport virtually completely consists of nothing however the examinations, which is why it will get repetitive fairly rapidly.
There is a lab minigame the place you take away organs from a dwelling topic with a laser to be able to categorize unknown signs, and sometimes you will additionally pilot a drone when zombies assault the perimeter, peppering them with bullets, bombs, and airstrikes. These aren’t unhealthy little diversions from squinting at rashes and eye parasites, however they’re each over inside a minute or two and also you’re again to performing exams once more.
Extra fleshed-out base administration options and a bit extra selection within the exams, signs, and sufferers would have gone a good distance in Quarantine Zone: The Final Test. There are some nice concepts right here, however they do not add as much as an excellent sport.