A zombie outbreak is a truly terrifying situation. Put it this way, if I was in The Walking Dead, I’d be the first to die. Yet, in Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, a game revolving around this very thing, dare I say it, I feel safe and… empowered? You’re put in charge of a military checkpoint, survivors lining up for their shot at safe passage, and handed the tools to determine who does and doesn’t get to pass. A position that I found to be a welcome reprieve from the usual zombie horror genre where you’d be fighting off terrifying hordes and unpleasant mutant hybrids in swathes, but QZTLC is different.
At first glance, it reminds me of two games I love; Papers, Please and Left 4 Dead. But, they are also vastly different genres. Papers, Please itches that part of my brain that loves monotonous tasks. Left 4 Dead is unrelenting survival that, at times, makes me squeal (sometimes with joy, if I’m playing with friends). For QZTLC, developer Devolver Digital has done a lovely job of combining the two.
Show me the zombie
As Commander of Checkpoint Alpha, you’re armed with different instruments to assess survivors. Working your way through the queue of survivors, the last check to see if they’re free of infection or teeming with the virus. If they’ve got any dodgy symptoms, it’s bye bye, zombie. Or, just a touch of quarantine.
Unsurprisingly, the survivors are dead set on hiding their symptoms from you. Who can blame them? If you surmise that they’re breathing a little funny, that’s a ticket to quarantine. If they’ve rocked up with a weird rash you’ve never seen before, they’re off to the lab (and no one comes back from the lab). Or, if they’ve got a bite mark on the middle of their forehead, well, that’s a date with the firing squad, aka. liquidation.
Even with glaringly obvious symptoms like bright red eyes and horrifying necrosis cocooning their torsos, they’ll still quip with you to beg for safe passage. “Lie for me,” they’ll whisper. “I’ve got kids waiting for me, really, I’m fine,” they’ll pull at the heart strings. And I’ll be honest, some of them almost made me want to let them through to the survival zone, almost.
I’ve watched enough Border Security on TV to know people will do just about anything to get through a checkpoint with something they shouldn’t. And, in QZTLC, that even includes hiding a grenade in their bottom, which is not something I’ve ever seen on TV, I might add. The objective is simple though; examine survivors with a set of different tools and evacuate the uninfected. You log the symptoms you come across that will either clear the survivor, arouse suspicion, or confirm an infection. Get it wrong and people die. Get it right and, well, people still die, but far less.
It’s a little lonely at the top
It’s a solid concept for a game with an abundance of great elements. Ultimately, you need to check if someone is trustworthy, and there are plenty of ways to do just that. The main gameplay is very much focused on ticking off symptoms and sending survivors where you think they should go, until you’ve reached your quota. There’s not much more to it at first, but as you make your way through, you’ll get more tools, separate objectives on the noticeboard, and new symptoms to uncover. Plus, you’ll also get rated on how good an inspection you do. In games like these, it’s nice for your hard work to get recognition (otherwise, I wouldn’t bother doing it).
And while that’s the core of the game, it’s certainly not where your duties at the checkpoint end. Alongside your daily survivor quota, you’ve got to check on how the possibly infected are doing in quarantine, clearing them out or burning them in hellfire. You’ve also got to head to the lab and perform operations to discover new symptoms. And, there’s a drone minigame that pops up now and again to fight off hordes trying to infiltrate the base. This one, I could do without. Oh, and you can also stroke your cat, if you need a moment’s peace. I ended up doing that a few times. It’s a strangely lonely job detecting zombies day in and day out.
The biggest sub-game mechanic is the base management. There are survivor mouths to feed and med kits to deal out if they’re unwell, and there’s the all-important power to keep fueling up so that the whole base doesn’t go to pot. I’ll be perfectly honest here, this part for me was easily forgotten. It became just another part of my daily routine at the checkpoint, clear quarantine, clear the survivors, and then top up supplies. But, as I said before, I’m actually partial to a bit of monotony.
It’s not for everyone though, and if you’re strongly against repeating the same task over and over again, this one’s not for you. I’m extrinsically motivated, and when I’d come across a new symptom hiding like a diseased floater in the back of their eye or wake up and find out nobody died in the survivor zone, I’d be verbally congratulating myself as I played. I did say it was a little lonely.
A surprising amount of thongs
Devolver Digital keeps it fresh with new symptom-checking tools as you progress through the game. Some, a little tedious like the matioscope for checking retinas. Some, a little fun, like the scanner that’ll give you a good look at their undies (and any hidden bite marks). After the 50th pair though, it wasn’t as enjoyable. And, there was also just a surprising amount of thongs considering it’s a zombie apocalypse.
What it started to turn into was a bit of a zombie Groundhog Day. Sleep, check for zombies, repeat. I found myself counting down the days to the next evacuation, sending people to the lab because I was a little eager for something else to do and confiscating things I shouldn’t. Perhaps a little more depth to the symptom-checking or a few more volatile events would’ve mixed up proceedings. And, maybe controversially, if you offered me a swap for more symptoms in exchange for the drone minigame, I’d bite your arm off. Don’t worry, I’m not infected.
Some survivors do get a bit violent, even if they’re not infected. There’s contraband to confiscate, both in their bags and inside their bodies. And if you send them to quarantine or to liquidation, they might try and revolt. It’s okay, you’ve got a gun.
Clever, but not quite compelling
At its core, QZTLC executes on what it clearly intends to do and that’s create a checkpoint game with linear results. I’ve just been left feeling a bit concerned that it’s not quite enough. I appreciate the minigames, but they do seem a bit like distractions to give you a minute or two off from the symptom checking before getting back at it. And, by the end of the campaign, if one more potential zombie whacks me when I try to check their reflexes, I might just go and get bitten myself.
After hours spent repeating the same checks over and over again, I toyed with getting a bit mischievous to see what possibilities there were for fun. But, there’s a limit on what you can actually do without ruining your game. It’s your job, after all. Don’t try to rob the survivors, you lose money. Don’t hit innocents on the head with the reflex hammer, they’ll be mad about it. At one point, I ‘accidentally’ shot one of them, but they just shrugged it off and stood back in their spot. You can kill them, but you’ll be penalised.
It is a seriously clever game, but I fear it’s not quite compelling enough. I didn’t develop any survivor guilt. I was tempted to start skipping symptoms after I’d determined one that would be good enough to confirm infection. Yet, I was still doing a pretty good job. At the end of the day, in a zombie apocalypse, people are going to die one way or another, but maybe that’s the whole point. I was a cog in a grotesque machine, and at surface level, I was having a pretty good time keeping everyone in check.
