Quarantine 2019 Review

There are few times when a completely PvP-based game emerges from the cold, briny depths of the Internet.

Sure, one might find a game that has a somewhat successful system of PvP, but these are usually limited to MMORPGs. I believed this to be true until I found out about a little game run by some SomethingAwful that was completely PvP. As luck would have it, it was a browser-based zombie survival genre game. This game is Quarantine 2019.

How the game generally works is that humans try to kill zombies and get brain samples to work on a cure, while zombies try to ruin buildings so they have nowhere left to hide, and try to infect all the humans to win. Now, this splits into a number of tactics including taking out ISPs to slow research, taking out power plants to halt research, radio, and lights, and defensive measures against these, as well as general carnage on the street. One starts with 50 HP, 50 EP, 0 XP and SP, and 0/15 IP. HP is, predictably, health. EP is Energy Points, that one uses to do most things. XP is the total SP you earned insofar, and SP is what one spends on skills and class training. IP is Inventory space, your current over your maximum.

What’s amusing to find is that, after 19 rounds of this game being on, the players develop a set of colloquialisms on the forums. Trenchcoat, trenchcoater or even trenchie is used to denote a player of selfish standing, usually a human, and that also tends to demand outright game-breaking things from the creator (such as assault rifles or massive nuclear strike grenades). Zombies are nicknamed Zeds, and affiliation is often referred to as being either green or pink. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. It could be interpreted as a good or bad sign depending on how its looked at.

Since the game is entirely PvP-based; players have a choice of being either a survivor or a zombie. Even though the game is asymmetrical, it is fairly balanced. With a genre like zombie survival, one knows that to balance such a game, one must often scale apples alongside oranges and fractions of oranges to form any semblance of asymmetry and balance; and the game does it to a great scale.

While there is still some argument amongst the players about balance, the balancing is done to a perfect tee, and as the game develops and grow, there surely will be even more balance and even more fun to be had. An example of the balancing is in the skill system. Both sides have a number of what players call “useless skills”, classes are set up for both sides in a way that makes it fun and fair. For example, while all citizens have a number of skills commonly shared between them, they can only achieve great killing ability through the Soldier path, can only take brain samples (and therefore, contribute to the main goal of the survivors) and have any degree of accuracy with curing zombies to survivors as a Scientist, can only repair ruined buildings as an Engineer and can only heal citizens to any degree of reliability as a Medic. Likewise, zombies can only ruin buildings as a Strong, can only open doors and listen to radio messages as a Smart, and can only climb in buildings as a Fast. Often, rounds can be won or lost based on how rounded their people are. Thus, one must choose what they want to be carefully, and to play what benefits their team best, which keeps the game balanced further. IN a competitive MMORPG-like game such as this, it’s a crucial factor to be as balanced as possible.

The game also focuses on tactical decisions. For example, one can spend energy to barricade a building in, but then, can only get out by climbing, which is often unreliable, uses more energy than leaving, and can deal damage over a series of repeated tries, but, zombies can easily bust open or even just open closed doors, and more easily kill the player. Also, to get items and decent weapons, one must search places, which takes a lot of energy over time. But where to look? These tactical decisions can add flavor and realism to a game which I honestly have not seen in a long while, and it is a welcome refresher.

A beef I’ve had with the game, however, is the meta-gaming. Whilst humans have radios and have established an “official” frequency to broadcast on, zombies merely have a set of non-sequitur-like groans to talk with. Realizing the need for communication, they assemble themselves into groups and IRC channels to talk effectively. This is a huge downside, as this meta-gaming is almost necessary to effectively play a zombie; after all, how else are you going to raid buildings with tens of humans in them?

Yet another admirable quality of the game is the fact that it uses a clean, simple, low-graphics interface that uses lots of text. For computer power-lite players like myself, it makes the gaming better, and for mobile phone users, it might make the game playable, possibly, on some phones. It still looks good, but is not burdened by blocks of massive pictures.

The game updates in real-time, but EP takes a long while to recharge (6 hours for 50 EP), thus giving way to a number of playing styles. Personally, I check about every 40 minutes and make sure to have a cache of 10 EP to respond to any events that may happen, in my free time, and when I’m busy, I usually just let it sit and charge EP, but whatever playstyle works for oneself, works in the grand scale. Very adaptable, and very fun.

To sum it up:

Pros:

• Ridiculously well balanced
• Adaptable to many schedules
• Portable game
• Tactically rich
• Somewhat rich roleplayability

Cons:

• Metagaming can ruin the realism of the game in some part
• Real time vs. EP recharge rate requires odd planning of EP use

by Clotifoth