Endzone - A World Apart

This is one of my favorite games from GOG in a long time. The art direction and heart is world class. The mechanics feel like Banished meets Children of the Nile. City builder and logistics manager with some research trees. Unlike some games in this genre, the atmosphere is hopeful and communal, "We're all in this together." I couldn't get into FrostPunk because it felt more like being a dictator of the frozen wastes. If you enjoy being god-king, Endzone might not be the best fit for you, because the community voting and demanding things is baked in -- which is what I prefer. One of the best tutorials I've seen in a game. I played it for 20 hours (doing lots of side quests). The expeditions in the Expedition DLC and well drawn and well written. Recommended.

The description of the game made me very curious as I first thought of games like Frostpunk. After installing the game and starting my first round, I got horribly frustrated. The game looks really nice and you might think it should be easy but, it isn't. The game is extremely hard and shows no mercy. If you first manage to survive for the first 30-50 seasons, you might have a chance. But from then on you still need to be very careful with your settlers and the professions they are assigned to. Even if your stockpiles of food and water are at a very high level the next sandstorm, drought or disease can wipe our your whole settlement. To be honest I like the concept of the game, I like the graphic style, the sound is also as well but hell the balancing could be better... Technical: The UI is well designed. You'll easily manage to familiarize yourself with the UI. It's not too overloaded like other games, but it'S not too little either. Audio: Since the most soundtracks in games with simulation are repeat themselves far too often during the game, I didn't like it here either. I'd recommend to listening to it at the beginning, but turning it off and listening to music of your own choice. Level Design: Before starting a new game you can affect with just a handful of options the Level, terrain and the available resources, plus a preview of the map is available. It's not overloaded, but nevertheless enough to change nearly everything for your next round. Gameplay: The game runs very smoothly. The game itself gives you great opportunities and invites you to explore it. Later on you will be able to start expeditions which are quite fun. Balance: I described the issue of the balancing earlier. The balancing in this game is terrible. A World Apart will rip you apart if you leave it alone for a moment. The balancing could be even better imo.

Yeah, I know a lotta people like Banished for some bloody reason, but I've always found it to be a horribly dry and dull proof-of-concept masquerading as a game. So what EZ:AWA does is take the parts about Banished that works (the labour system, the aging mechanics, the extensive resource management and the raw, basic gameplay) and add some actual goddamned FLAVOUR to it. For instance, not all buildings are unlocked from the word "GO!" in EZ:AWA and instead requires you to research them, giving you a decent sense of actually freakin' *progressing* in the game, whereas in Banished you just had every from the start. Additionally, kids aren't useless meatbags that just wander around and steal all your pies (which they literally were and did in Banished), but actually fulfill the role of carrying goods home for their families when they're not in school. Oh yeah, and that's also a thing in EZ:AWA: kids actually go to school *during their childhood years*, like they're freakin' supposed to! So you no longer have the idiotic "choice" Banished had about having to "weigh the pros and cons" with educating your young adults before allowing them to become labourers. Nope, none of that BS in this game. Kids go to school, they learn, and they become more efficient *before* reaching adulthood (ideally). There's also the fact that EZ:AWA has SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting visuals. Since it's post-nuclear apocalypse-themed, you'll start out building crappy li'l shacks and other buildings using chunks of wood and scrap metal, but you'll eventually progress up to building... well, still kinda junky-looking structures out of wood 'n' metal, but at least they're bigger and sturdier, so they can weather the storms that affect your settlement. Oh yeah, and that's also new: disasters in EZ:AWA are WAY more fair than the ones in Banished, as they rarely catch you by surprise and screw up half your town in one stupid go. I'd write more about the game, but I'm already at the symbol limit.

Good game - has potential - but still needs a lot of balancing. It is definitely Alpha and sometimes extremely frustrating because people are dying and you can do nothing because of bugs

This game has a lot of potential but it's terribly balanced. Gathering rates and stockpiling resources is just terrible. You are guaranteed to always be lacking something by the time the first drought hits in season 22-23 and it all just goes downhill from there. Either you don't have enough materials to build things, food/water runs out and can't seem to replenish once the disaster event is over or you haven't built something in time that will ensure not all of your citizens will die en masse. Not to mention you will never be able to complete tasks on time without negative consequences that'll kill off your settlement (at least I wasn't able to). The tutorial isn't that great either, I was hoping we'd get a preview of all of the different production chains (because I gave up trying to do it solo) and get a sense of what speed I should aim to build things by before major disasters hit, but it only goes through establishing the most basic of resources. The UI and production overview could use an overhaul too. I really want to love this game because I'm starved for a good and challenging post-apocalyptic city builder. I like the aesthetic and the premise, but the poor balancing is a real killer. Hopefully it gets fixed soon in subsequent updates. I wanna have fun playing this. :(