Endzone - A World Apart Reviews

I am rewriting my review after embarrassingly claiming the game was too difficult if not impossible to figure out how to have a colony survive after replaying the game and having much better luck this time. Iniatially I put around 80 hours into the game and each round I played my civ died around the 150 pop mark. Right after writing my review and playing another round now Im at around 1000 pop plus and a surplus of all resources with almost everything unlocked. To describe my troubles briefly, in the past I had placed my farms on the outside of my resource buildings ,like recycler and tailor shop, and also outside my housing blocks. Even if I had 50 farmers for 60 people my town would starve to death. On my current playthrough I have 60 farmers for roughly 1500 pop. This time I immediately abandoned my van town square starting location, built a market and a couple warehouses as the center of my town and built farms around it. I had my resource jobs on the outside with houses on the outskirts and ranches past them. With this style my food income was ridiculous and survival was extremely easy from that point on. So I have learnt that the game isnt impossible to figure out however it can be very sensitive to strategy. I had included in my last review that there werent any bug problems, or any other issues than the difficulty. I still had given it a thumbs up on that account but now since I know how to play Its a big thumbs up now

"Endzone - A World Apart" ultimately falls short of expectations, especially when comparing it to other titles within the survival and city-building genres. While the game attempts to present an engaging post-apocalyptic scenario in which players must rebuild civilisation, it fails to deliver a compelling or innovative experience. Many mechanics feel shallow or poorly executed, detracting from the potential for meaningful gameplay. Given the breadth of alternatives available, both within the same genre and beyond, it becomes challenging to justify investing time and resources into "Endzone." In summary, while the premise has merit, there are certainly superior games that offer more fulfilling and polished experiences, making "Endzone" one that may be easily overlooked by discerning players.

This game is beautifully done. Haven't played much but from what I have played it's well thought out. Great design overall and I will definitely be sinking hundreds of hours into this masterpiece.

Great game. Good tutorials to teach you how to play.

fun game, easy to play. some things not covered in tutorial, wish i could streamline warehouses and production better. cant pick where things are stored or collected from and sometimes the survivors walk across the whole map for something that was right next to them.

This game is a very fine balancing act between not expanding too fast and starving, and making sure you expand fast enough so you don't starve. It's hard, it's grueling, and I haven't managed to quite figure it out yet, but I'm having fun.

Couldn't get through two minutes of the game because the font is so thin and condensed, and there are no options to scale the interface or text. Never have I been turned away from a game by its choice of font and lack of visual accessibility.

+ early game tends to be enjoyable + visuals, soundtrack, and so on + lots of customisable settings + solid basics, smooth wsad controls, comprehensive tutorials - no different kinds of wonders, more meaningful or substantial content or DLC - late game frequently breaking - no building space overlay, or other useful overlays - settlers are way too anonymous / seem to die too fast to matter as individuals

As a fan of the Fallout, Sim City, and Civilization games I really wanted to like this game. Nope, I'm uninstalling it and never playing this one or the sequel (that's in beta right now). Here's why: the game mechanics don't make sense, the game breaks when there's about 1000 settlers on the screen, and it's not fun. As far as game mechanics are concerned, you're at the mercy of your idiotic settlers. They might all be dying of radiation but will not divert resources from making buildings to making radiation suits or masks. So if you have 5 buildings queued that use cloth, then guess what they will continue making those instead of radiation suits. There's no way to stop them. As their seemingly immortal benevolent leader you should be able to manually intercede and prioritize critical items, food, etc. Nope, and keep in mind that it takes only one mistake to wipe out the entire settlement. As far as the side quests are concerned they are beyond silly, they are obnoxious. For example, as I am fending of a horde of raiders I fail a side quest to bake cakes. The climate also doesn't make any sense, the droughts and sandstorms are all way to frequent for the climate that this supposedly takes place in. With regard to the crashes, my PC can handle about 1000-1500 settlers. Beyond that the game slows down too much to be playable. Apparently this is a technical "feature" where each settler is rendered and interacts with the environment despite them not really being relevant 99% of the time. The developer really should have either optimized this so that it is less resource intensive or at some point decided that rendering individual settlers isn't the right technical solution for this game (there's other ways of doing this). Finally, with regard to how much fun this game is. It just isn't. Once you grow a large settlement you realize what it really is, a game about logistics. Plain, boring logistics. Whether you're converting scrap into cloth, or cloth and wood into shelters or scrap into electronics and then into solar plants, it's all logistics. Compare this to other games such as Civ where there is an element of discovery and adventure. There's nothing here except a hollow husk. This is one of the very few games that I feel like I've wasted my time trying to understand. Save yourself time and headaches, this game isn't worth it.

A fun and enjoyable post-apocalyptic City Builder. I initially did not understand it when I first got it back on release so I only played for a bit and uninstalled. Lately I got into a phase where City Builders, 4x Strats, civ management and the like needed to be played so this was one of the few games I reinstalled, and after actually engaging with the mechanics and pushing myself to learn what I didn't understand prior I can finally say that I had fun. [h3]Mechanics[/h3] The mechanics of this game are fairly simple but can be hard to master at first glance, especially for someone like me where logistics is ironically one of my weakest aspects in gameplay. But once you get the hang of it and understand the steps your learning process and progress starts snowballing and becomes hard to stop. The only real issue I have come across is that there are times I find difficulty in actually trying to succeed in what I am doing but that is just me blundering than the game itself. [b]Gathering, scavenging, and crafting.[/b] Simple enough, gather resources and use said resources to craft buildings to provide settlers with jobs to use those same resources to convert them into other types of resources (ie Wood -> Coal) or construct areas where your settlers can chill to raise morale, or build places where your settlers can convert gathered resources into items for your settlers to provide good living or for their jobs(ie tools, better clothing, medicine, liqour, etc). Like I said, simple. [b]Economy and trade.[/b] Speaking of trade, let's get to the economic aspect of this game. A majority falls under the [b]Gathering, scavenging, and crafting[/b] above as that is pretty much all it is, a feedback loop. Managing your economy is easy once you get the hang of it but can run into complications and can be resolved immediately or just slogs your progress depending on how you can or can't handle it, for me it was not enough housing every time. For trading, you can build a Trading Post and have wasteland traders arrive in your settlement every now and then to trade with you. The bartering system with these traders is good but is really underwhelming as a standalone system, it is just an added layer to the feedback loop of managing your settlement. The only time to have one really is to get resources you yourself cannot actually get due to lack of resources (You want Hard Liqour but have no Wheat), or to sell your resources to get access to resources you don't have (Giving away some Metal and Food in exchange for Wheat seeds or a new animal for your Pasture). [h3]Game Modes[/h3] [b]Tutorial[/b] Self-explanatory, just teaches you how to play the game. For all intents and purposes, it is a good tutorial, I just found it to be a slog and did better at learning by actually playing the game. [b]Survival Mode.[/b] The "endless" mode. You can mess around with the gameplay and map settings, deciding whether you want it to be baby easy, challenging but fun, or hardcore masochistic when you build your settlement. Despite being a sandbox, you are given some direction in the form of some missions to do that may popup or to take from the Forum to be rewarded with resources, more research options, or morale from your settlers. The endgame mission in particular is just a way to flex and showoff your settlement via screenshots as it has you get hundreds of settlers in your settlement and finally constructing some big beacon/statue. Personally I am not a fan of this beacon mission as I enjoy just vibing and managing more but hey, it gives me something to do. [b]Challenges.[/b] Basically you can choose a scenario to build a settlement with some challenges and/or restrictions to make it challenging. Such scenarios range from constant drought with no rain, to repeated waves of raider attacks and you need to focus on defense, or some story-driven ones. I have only played with a few but they are honestly pretty fun if that is your kind of thing. [h3]The World[/h3] [b]Exploration[/b]. An IMO fun little side gig to do to have your settlers - and by proxy, you - to explore the ruined world around you. Another simple mechanic: send scouts to check certain spots of the map out, then send explorers there to thoroughly check the place out and come back with resources to your stockpile, items for your settlers, research options, or anything of use. My only cons are once you discover everything on the map then the world immediately becomes empty and loses the wonder of exploring or even surviving in it, and the fact you cannot come across other survivors to trade with; you can find a few settlers actually but they are just available to recruit for your settlement, so they are no different than the resources brought back. [b]Interacting WITH the world.[/b] Besides exploration and the Trading Pose, the only real interaction you will get is from raiders demanding you pay tribute so they leave you alone or they just straight up attack your settlement and take some resources while damaging some buildings. If you are playing Survival with raiders off then the world is completely boring, the little lore you can find and discover about it is often through wastelanders' stories you come across and how they got there, and those stories are very brief ie, a married couple was tricked by a previous group and are now holed up in a house and are wary, or you come across a woman who left an Endzone and set up camp in a nearby store and actually got its generator working again. The only "lore" you get is your settlers discovering pre-apocalypse buildings and being awed by them ie being amazed at how a hospital is so big and how much people it could treat. But you learn nothing about the world prior or during the apocalypse: you don't know what caused it, why Endzones (Think Fallout vaults) were made in the first place other than the idea of an underground shelter, etc. [h2]Final Thoughts[/h2] I love what they did here and it gives me a good balance of run and challenge with the only issues I had most of the time were me not managing my settlement well such as building too big too fast. If you enjoy logistical stuff in City Builders, and you want a post-apocalyptic aesthetic, this game is for you. This game is not without its flaws, however, as there are some aspects one can find that could use some extra depth. These elements of the game are not entirely bad, they are just features that make you go, "This is good but X would make it even better." For example, exploration is fun and rewarding but would be cool to come across some fluid events like "You come across a wastelander trying to make it as a trader, would you like to barter?" or "You come across a group of scavengers and they threaten you to give you X, will you comply, resist, or try to diffuse the situation?" It also would have been nice to find other settlements and potentially engage in trade or combat with them, the latter may seem odd but if you play Survival with raiders off then any building/resource related to defense becomes pointless so you might as well do something with them. I have only played with two DLCs, Prosperity and Halloween. Prosperity adds extra depth to settlement development such as actually making a town/city with actual buildings, while Halloween is just extra decorations for your settlement that are Halloween-themed. Out of the two, I would personally suggest getting Prosperity if you want more. Despite the less than satisfying reviews people gave it, I just bought Distant Places so I will be playing with that soon, if I decide to give it a review then it would be on its own store page, obviously. [b]Ultimately, I give this game a final rating of 8/10[/b].