ENDZONE - A WORLD APART First Impression: Intense And Unforgiving, But Insanely Fun And Rewarding

Endzone - A World Apart is a post-apocalyptic city-builder set in a world suffering the consequences of a global nuclear disaster. Players take control of a small community returning to the surface after sitting in a bunker for over 150 years and must attempt to build a settlement that can withstand the new, brutally unforgiving environment. The game is currently being developed by Gentlymad Studios, and can be purchased on Steam Early Access for $23.99 or $33.99. The game provides insanely fun and captivating gameplay, while also being extremely brutal and intense, making all of your accomplishments that much more satisfying.

Gameplay

The current version of Endzone: A World Apart offers three different modes for players to try. The Tutorial, Survival mode, and Scenarios. While not required, it is highly recommended that players start with the tutorial for obvious reasons.

While the tutorial itself does a great job at introducing you to the many mechanics Endzone has to offer, at the same time, the game really does not hold your hand the same way most other tutorials do. Running at close to three hours long, the tutorial presents players with various tasks to complete as they learn the ropes, each one greater in difficulty and more costly on their resources than the last. I’ll admit that towards the end, I tried to rush the tutorial and expanded my settlement of around 200 citizens much too fast. Needless to say, that three-digit number became two digits fairly quickly…

The Survival mode allows players to customize the world they play in by giving them the options to configure the wasteland to their liking. Being able to enter a specific seed, alter the map size, and determine the number of forests, mountains, and lakes will provide many unique gameplay experiences across the player base. Survival mode has no set goal/objective, so it is up to the player how they grow their community in the world being ravaged by intense droughts and sandstorms.

The Scenarios mode is fairly similar to that of Survival but provides more specific objectives across a set of various levels/environments with fewer customization options.

Expectations

I am a huge fan of how intense and brutal the game can be because it makes even the smallest of accomplishments very rewarding. I hope that Endzone keeps the level of intensity it currently has through the course of its development but I also wouldn’t mind seeing ways to alter the difficulty for players new to the genre, or those just looking to casually endure the harsh post-apocalyptic environment. With how/where the game is set up, I think it would be very cool to see some sort of story mode in the future as well.

Conclusion

Gentlymad has already packed this game full of content, providing almost infinite hours of play, and they plan to add much more throughout Endzone’s early access period. As pointed out by their update roadmap, the game has seen many updates since launch and will see more in the future. I adore the amount of transparency the studio has shown with the development of the game, which I think is not just important for the development of any title, but especially an early access one. I am sure Endzone - A World Apart will do just fine throughout its early access period, and am very excited to see where it ends up after the game sees a full release.

I highly recommend you pick up the game while it is in Early Access and if you act quickly, you can get the game at a 25% discount.