'Quarantine Zone: The Last Check' is the most viral game on Xbox right now — and you can play it on PC Game Pass

The zombie apocalypse is brutal. Resources are scarce, good defense is the best offense, and scrutiny is a survival skill. One could argue that in Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, scrutiny is actually the most important survival skill of them all.

As society collapses under the weight of a horrific zombie virus, it's you who has become the frontman for the last checkpoint before survivors evacuate to what one must assume is a zombie-free utopia. Not every survivor is fit for evacuation, though. Some will hide bites, while others are infected without even knowing it. It's up to you to use the tools at your disposal to determine which survivors are safe to evac and who has to be — well. Liquidated.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, developed by Brigada Games and published by Devolver Digital, has already seen viral success during its early beta. Now the virality has spread as the game enters early access on Steam and Xbox PC.

The concept of the game is relatively simple: Survivors arrive at the checkpoint, and the player must analyze their health and condition using available tools to determine if they are healthy enough for extraction. Infected survivors can and do try to swindle their way to safety, but letting in an infected survivor can lead to your entire camp becoming overrun with zombies. There’s a price to be paid for each healthy survivor, and an even higher price to be paid for liquidating civilians who aren’t infected.

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It's of the utmost importance that you use the tools available to sort the civilians, but at the start of the game little is known about the pathogen causing the virus and how to determine if a civilian is safe. Freckles can be an interesting beauty mark, or they can be a telltale sign of illness. Bite marks are indisputable, but they’re also easily hidden with clothing. The symptoms you can see — red eyes, bruising, and necrosis, for example — must be documented for each and every survivor.

Each new day in Quarantine Zone has something new to offer to the player, be it new symptoms and tools or additional challenges that can be found on the bulletin board. The ailments found in survivors change as the virus evolves. A cough might just be a cough, but it could also be a sign of infected breath that can only be detected with a stethoscope. One tool can let you look for bites that were previously hidden, don’t forget to check for — ahem, internal contraband — using the handheld X-Ray machine.

There’s a plethora of symptoms that can help you determine if someone is safe to bring into the camp. But it's not always cut and dry. Some symptoms can just indicate sickness, but do not necessarily mean that a civilian is destined to become a shambling, brain-eating corpse. Thankfully, the checkpoint is equipped with a quarantine zone that lets you separate potentially infected survivors for a day or two to monitor their symptoms without risking the entire camp.

Quarantine has added benefits for the checkpoint and the player. Sick civilians who recover in quarantine can make their way to the survivor camp, but those who turn into a roving zombie are safely secured with minimized losses. Those zombies can then be sent to the checkpoint’s laboratory, earning the player vital research points for handy tool upgrades. Just don’t forget to feed them from the body pile out behind liquidation that we don’t talk about.

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When your day of managing potential survivors and feeding zombies in cages is done, you get the joy to return to your cot in a shipping container to call it a night. The apocalypse doesn’t end just because you want a little bit of shut-eye, though. Sometimes you’ll find yourself awakened to sirens warning of incoming hordes that want to breach the fences of the checkpoint and nom on all your survivors’ tasty, tasty brains. During these segments, you’ll get to pilot a drone packed with heavy artillery that can decimate the horde — as long as your aim is true, anyway.

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check offers players two different endings for the campaign, but if you still haven’t had your fill of sending infected survivors off to liquidation after the story ends, there is the option to play an endless mode, as well. The game even features Twitch Integration for streamers who want to play the game with chat’s input. Neither Brigada Games nor Devolver Digital have confirmed plans to bring Quarantine Zone: The Last Check to consoles at this time, but Xbox Game Pass Ultimate or PC Game Pass subscribers can enjoy the game as part of their subscription on Xbox PC.

Dead inside

Quarantine Zone: The Last Check: $19.99 at xbox.com

You're the last line of defense between humanity and the infectious horde of zombies outside the gates. Check survivors for potential infection, quarantine the sick, and liquidate the would-be undead to protect the living and make your extraction quota.

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