A new zombie game, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, is gaining a lot of early popularity on Steam, due in large part to its unconventional contributions to the horror genre. The debut entry from developer Brigada Games, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check brings players on Steam a zombie game that cleverly places a much heavier focus on investigation than bashing in skulls.
While still maintaining the hopeless desperation of other zombie games, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check‘s system of scanning survivors for signs of infection is what really makes it stand out from the crowd. Handing players the heavy-hearted task of performing health checks on arriving humans and making complicated resource management and moral decisions for the good of those already in the secure outpost, the game presents a side of the zombie mystique that’s often left largely unexplored in similar games of its ilk.
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Quarantine Zone: The Last Check Turns Heads on Steam
Released on January 12, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check has performed quite well in both attracting players with its gameplay loop and providing a satisfying experience for them. Additionally, stats from SteamDB show it’s doing a good job of drawing in early player numbers, with a peak of more than 31,000 concurrent players on its first day since launch and similar numbers that haven’t dipped below 23,000 in the days since. It’s also achieved a “Mostly Positive” rating among English-language reviews on Steam, with 74 percent of players giving it their approval, making note of Quarantine Zone: The Last Check‘s base upgrade system and laboratory improvements as highlights, in addition to its screening process. As for its detractors, some acknowledge their enjoyment of the game but are simply urging others to wait until some early bugs are worked out before diving in.
The process of weeding out the infected is the game’s main focus, and also its strongest suit. Progressing through the story and unlocking a variety of medical inspection equipment, players use Quarantine Zone: The Last Checkpoint’s x-ray, stethoscope, reflex hammer, and a few less conventional medical tools to identify signs of zombie infection in arriving survivors, in addition to using their natural instincts based on their senses. Players then must make the difficult decision of whether to let survivors inside or sentence them to certain death even if their signs of unwellness could be unrelated to zombification. While its gameplay offers a different take on the zombie survival genre, fans have drawn comparisons between it and some other titles, like 3909 LLC’s 2013 border checkpoint hit Papers, Please and, more recently, Nachosama Games’ That’s Not My Neighbor.
Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is published by Devolver Digital, a company that has an impressive track record for getting its name attached to indie titles with unique gameplay styles that grow into big hits. After spending its first couple of years publishing HD remakes of the Serious Sam FPS games, Devolver Digital saw early success with Dennaton Games’ 2012 top-down shooter Hotline Miami, which still enjoys a 96 percent user review score on Steam. Some other hit games published by Devolver Digital over the past few years include Massive Monster’s amusingly cute horror roguelike Cult of the Lamb, bizarre FPS Anger Foot, 2D/3D combo platformer The Plucky Squire, and skateboarding demon game Skate Story. The company also serves as publisher for Ball x Pit, one of the biggest indie game success stories of 2025, and it will perform the same duties for the sequel to popular dungeon crawler Enter the Gungeon later in 2026.
Time will tell if Quarantine Zone: The Last Check can maintain its popularity and rise to the level of Devolver Digital’s other big hits, but signs indicate that the zombie genre will be having a big presence in the gaming world this year. Some of the biggest upcoming zombie games of the year include Resident Evil Requiem, John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando, and The Midnight Walkers, with long-awaited titles like Beautiful Light and State of Decay 3 expected to release before the end of 2026 as well.
