Review by Jon Donnis
Endzone: A World Apart is a city building game, now before you roll your eyes and say "oh no, not another one" please read on.
2021, a group of Terrorists have blown up nuclear power plants all across the world, and well I am sure you can imagine the rest. Luckily some people were able to seek refuge underground in facilities called "Endzones". 150 odd years later and it is time to return to the surface and this is where you step in. You see, you are in charge of the rebuilding process.
Now things would be easy if the world wasn't full of radioactive round, acid rain and climate change run amok. I am guessing already you are seeing that this is not your average run of the mill city building game.
You will start off with a nice tutorial mode that will talk you through things and get you used to everything, and as someone who is nearly always moaning about tutorials either being too over detailed or completely inadequate, I can say that Endzone gets it just right, I am not a big player of city building games, so any such game really needs to work hard to make me a fan and get me interested, and the tutorial did that perfectly. And once completed I felt confident enough to jump head first into the game proper.
You start off with your little bus and camp, and slowly slowly, you need to start setting up a production of food & water, then you will need to collect wood from the trees, and any scrap you can find. As you start to progress you will research and unlock more and more buildings, over 50 by my last count.
Sounds easy so far, right! Well, you need to keep your people happy, they are going to have kids, so you will need a school, parents will need to relax so you might need to build a pub, oh and since some parts of the land are radioactive you might need a tailor to craft gas masks and so on. As soon as you think you have a handle on things, something will come up that you need to overcome, luckily there is a handy "tasks" tab which tells you what you need. You can even pause time or speed it up, depending on if you need to plan something before disaster strikes, or you just want that building built quicker.
This game is not as easy as you think, and the first few games you attempt you will make mistakes, but you will learn from them, and that is a great thing about this game, you will learn the more you play, and you will want to start again to get things right. Imagine creating the perfect little town and then it gets wiped out by a dust storm because you never quite prepared for it. There is always a challenge.
The Good
Stunning graphics, detailed but easy to learn interface. Enjoyable and challenging gameplay.
The Bad
The balance can be hard to judge sometimes, things can get out of hand a bit too quickly, however this game is in Early Access so little things like this will be improved.
Overall
I am not a person who plays City Buidling games very often, but I really enjoyed this, and I look forward to playing it more, as well as new updates from the game makers. I don't usually give scores to early access games, but I will make an exception for Endzone, I score it 8/10.
Out Now on Early Access
Review by Jon Donnis
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