Quarantine Zone Review: The Last Check – Present Your Symptoms

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, from Russian studio Brigada Games, is a cross between Contraband Police and Papers, Please, spiced up with a zombie setting and colorful humor. The game sold well upon release and garnered mostly positive reviews on Steam. But does it deserve its acclaim? We’ll try to answer that question in this review.

• Developer: Brigada Games
• Publisher: Devolver Digital
• Platforms: PC
• Release date: January 12 , 2026

In the world of Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, an epidemic of a dangerous virus has occurred, turning people into zombies . Humanity has been all but wiped out, but the survivors have managed to organize and build safe camps, where new people are constantly arriving in search of shelter, food, and protection.

You become a checkpoint employee, and your job is to filter incoming patients, separating the healthy from the infected. The problem is that the disease doesn’t always show signs, especially in the early stages, and if you’re negligent and don’t recognize the symptoms of an infected person, sending them to the general camp, they can cause a lot of trouble when they return.

To do their job more effectively , the protagonist acquires various gadgets. Initially, only a flashlight is available: with it, they can conduct a cursory examination and detect, for example, a bite mark on their arm or blood-red eyes, indicating an infection.

Over time, the list of symptoms will expand, and the player will be given new tools: a thermometer will show temperature and pulse, a hammer will test reflexes, a scanner will detect everything hidden under clothing, a stethoscope can be used to check breathing, and an X-ray will reveal the visitor’s rich inner world, including any contraband they decide to smuggle in.

Yes, you’ll be tasked with examining the survivors’ luggage, removing weapons, zombie body parts, and other unwanted items. This is another important part of the inspection that shouldn’t be ignored.

Fortunately, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check doesn’t limit the time the player spends examining each new arrival, so you can proceed at your own pace and take your time, working toward results rather than a timer. All detected symptoms are recorded in your tablet , after which you must decide where to send the visitor—to a safe zone, to quarantine (if their condition is suspicious, such as a cough or rash), or for disposal. The effectiveness of the examination determines the number of upgrade points you receive, and the fate of each survivor and the contraband seized determines your monetary reward.

You might ask, why do we need money in a post-apocalyptic world ? The fact is, in addition to your primary task of filtering incoming campers, you’ll be responsible for maintaining the base, which includes replenishing resources such as fuel for the generator, first aid kits for the medbay, and food supplies, as well as building and upgrading new modules.

This gameplay layer is a game within a game, a strategy game that requires managing energy and managing funds wisely. Managing a settlement isn’t exactly engaging, and the strategic component lacks depth: regularly purchasing resources and upgrading essential buildings, like the residential area and quarantine, is sufficient.

But the game also features another additional mechanic: base defense. Here, the player controls an armed drone , shooting down waves of zombies with a machine gun or rocket launcher. The goal is to prevent the monsters from breaching the base; defeat forces a restart of the level.

In fact, sometimes it feels like the developers of Quarantine Zone: The Last Check bit off more than they could chew. There are simply too many diverse gameplay mechanics and systems, some of which could have been cut without compromising the game’s quality, allowing for greater focus on other aspects. For example, both the strategic base development and its defense against the infected are equally primitive and more annoying than engaging.

Moreover, the project’s basic gameplay systems also become boring over time. This isn’t so much due to monotony as to the strict adherence to game rules. For example, each visitor must be thoroughly examined, with every inspection tool used and all possible symptoms noted. If you immediately spot red eyes and dispatch a character for disposal based solely on this symptom, the game might flag your insufficiently thorough examination, depriving you of development points—even though you technically did everything correctly. So you have to be a nerd and devote a ton of time to each survivor.

It’s not always easy to correctly identify symptoms. Sometimes you look at someone and they might look like they have a rash, but they could actually be scratches or bruises. Some signs are very similar; one might indicate a healthy person, while another might indicate a sick person. Of course, you can quarantine all suspicious characters, but that’s not an unlimited space, so you’re forced to make decisions with long-term consequences. The game severely lacks clarity about the signs of illness, despite the fact that there are quite a few of them, and you’ll have to discover some of them yourself by sending survivors to the lab (which is also a separate minigame).

Technically, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is quite good, as long as you don’t mind slightly sloppy graphics. Sure, the character models quickly become repetitive and the visuals lack polish, but at least there are no serious bugs, the Russian voice acting is high-quality, and the post-apocalyptic atmosphere is well-crafted. Ultimately, the game ranks among the best of similar titles, like Contraband Police , No, I’m Not a Human , and Papers, Please, but it could still use a little more polish.