Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is a simulation game set during the post-apocalypse where you scan survivors for signs of a zombie virus before either letting them through a military checkpoint to safety or… y'know, icing them.
But I didn't need to explain that because you've probably either played the free demo or, even more likely, seen clips of it on social media. Have you watched a video of someone using an X-ray to look through people's clothing for zombie bites or necrosis, shining a purple light in their eyes, listening to their lungs for signs of illness, or gunning them down if they flee the checkpoint? That's Quarantine Zone.
The demo came out in May and almost instantly became a smash hit, netting developer Brigada Games over a million wishlists on Steam and a publishing deal with Devolver Digital. Not bad for a dev's first demo.
Speaking to Stas Staryk, Brigada Games CEO and co-founder this week, I asked why he thought the Quarantine Zone demo did so well on social media and what other games can do to achieve that sort of success.
"The game must provide the opportunity for the streamer to engage the audience, to talk to them, to ask them [questions], to [get] advice about what to do," Staryk. "The streamer also must make a lot of decisions. This is what the audience really likes, and to have opportunities to make mistakes, especially critical mistakes."
There's definitely lots of chances to make poor decisions in Quarantine Zone, because it's pretty hard to tell the difference between a survivor with a harmless cough and some bruises and one with a deadly zed infection coursing through their veins—as I found when I played the demo myself and frequently guessed wrong.
Another important quality for standing out on social media? A short game loop that can be fully absorbed by viewers.
"Our loop is just one minute. During one minute you inspect the refugee and make a decision, it takes about one minute for one refugee," Staryk said. "I didn't understand this, but this is what gave us a strong advantage for TikTok, because our game loop is very short and it can be fully demonstrated in a short TikTok video."
And there's one more advantage that a lot of other games don't have, since most of Quarantine Zone focuses on a single survivor standing right in front of the player: "Everything is happening in the center of the screen," Staryk said. "It's very easy to make Tiktok videos and vertical videos."
And those videos spread fast. One streamer who made a TikTok video during a Quarantine Zone playtest, before the demo was even released, eventually racked up 30 million views, says Staryk. Now that's a viral (haha) video.
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