You’d be forgiven for getting confused between Quarantine Zombies and Quarantine Zone, given that they launched at almost the same time, have a similar naming convention, and have almost the same gameplay loop and core mechanics. The story behind these two games is weird, to say the least, but I’ve given both a run for their money in recent weeks.
Quarantine Zombies is… interesting. It claims to do everything better than Quarantine Zone and offers more content, but it’s riddled with gen-AI content, a fair amount of jank, and, as I write this, it has just 0.05% of the player count that Quarantine Zone does on Steam.
Let’s get into the Quarantine Zombies review and see what’s what.
Is Quarantine Zombies Worth $10?
Quarantine Zombies comes from Stones Games, a company led by a former lead designer of Brigada Games, the developer behind Quarantine Zone: The Last Check.
I said this was a weird story. I even exchanged a message with the former Brigada developer in question and asked if he was concerned about the proximity of the launch or the subject matter, and he simply said, ‘No concerns.’
In the marketing materials for Quarantine Zombies, it was pointed out that this game does everything that Quarantine Zone does, and per the story told, the developers at Stones Games played Zone’s demo and were ‘inspired’ to make their own, better version.
The problem is, it hasn’t paid off.
Quarantine Zombies plants you at a checkpoint at the end of the world, and holds you responsible for controlling a zombie outbreak, holding back waves of the undead, and verifying who can make it through to the safe zone, and who must perish.
As the game unravels, you build a car that eventually takes you out into the open-world environment of post-apocalyptic Chicago, using a few different weapons to tackle hordes of bloodthirsty zombies. There are some base defence mechanics, the management sim side of things, and classic first-person shooter features that are relatively run-of-the-mill.
It’s not as in-depth as Quarantine Zone: The Last Check in the ‘patient examination’ stakes, but it has an identical gameplay loop in that respect. You’re just not managing a camp and the evacuation pipeline out the back of it all, so it’s less complex and focuses more on action sequences.
In the hours that I played Quarantine Zombies, I had frame rate issues, texture problems, and problems surface with the game’s rampant gen-AI content. From the art on the walls to the clothes characters wear, and from every voice line uttered to some environmental aspects, AI is thick in Quarantine Zombies, which makes this an instant no-no for many.
I won’t say that I didn’t have fun, because I did. It’s dumb fun, though. I would see a survivor walk in with a bite and gleefully pop them in the head with my trusty 1911 before venturing outside the gates to pick off zombies trying to bash my walls down. It was mindless entertainment, but truth be told, it wasn’t awful.
It was just pretty janky.
I probably wouldn’t pay $10 for Quarantine Zombies, not when I could spend another $7 or $8 and get Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, which is also on PC Game Pass. It seems like a project that surfaced out of some rivalry or a situation with a disgruntled former employee, and while it has more than Quarantine Zone in terms of the exploration and combat mechanics, more doesn’t necessarily mean better.
Quarantine Zombies Review: Verdict
I had enough fun to consider Quarantine Zombies enjoyable, but the jank got old pretty fast, and some of the game’s mechanics, like the examinations and subsequent failures, felt too punishing and restrictive to be sustainable. There’s little replayability, the gen-AI inclusion will put off 99% of gamers, and the story behind the game’s creation is too bizarre to be ignored.
Quarantine Zombies is available exclusively on PC via Steam. To talk about this game and others, join the Insider Gaming Discord server.
Quarantine Zombies
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Quarantine Zombies
Grant's adoration for gaming started on the Amstrad CPC in 1996. Now, he's a multi-platform expert gamer with a deep love for the industry, a passion for esports, and more…
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