Endzone – A World Apart

Good city builder with a grunge/post-apocalyptic theme... a Fallout city builder if you like. Good game, rock-solid & sensible... as in no ridiculously silly dynamics, plus relevant tiering, your old stuff & resources are are still relevant end game.

I recommend the add-ons, as they add a lot of replayibility & depth to the game, but the game is also fine without them.

This game doesn't deserve mixed reviews its a fine survival city building game. I thoroughly enjoy games like this and you can play on a variety of difficulties including chillax ezmode (I assume) although I prefer harder difficulties because I like to see what happens and how fast. So far all the mixed reviews sound like skill issues and one guy hating on them for doing a kick starter for the second game which isn't uncommon or unethical for game devs to do.
It's a great game I got it on massive discount and I plan on getting Endzone 2 after I plug a couple hundred hours into this. I played the Endzone 2 demo as well and it seems legit.
Great series well done.

Played enough to see the flaws. Better memorize where your buildings are and what they are. People just show up, even when you dont want any. If the premise si you stayed under ground before finally returning, where did they all come from?
You are basically building non stop, resources being abundant but being used before you need to build another building to gather. Pointless builds and the need to research how to build things or have tell your people not to loiter is a bit weak,
Only paif $5.00, so it was worth buy, but only reason it gets a thumbs up. Better games out there, better balanced, better period.

After playing for almost 15hrs, this game isn't too bad as they say.
The mechanics are similar to Frostpunk survival-based city building game yet it has different setting, different approach, different features and has a decent game difficullty.
This game is so chill.

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.
Mechanics
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.
Gathering, scavenging, and crafting. 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.
Economy and trade. Speaking of trade, let's get to the economic aspect of this game. A majority falls under the Gathering, scavenging, and crafting 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).
Game Modes
Tutorial 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.
Survival Mode. 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.
Challenges. 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.
The World
Exploration. 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.
Interacting WITH the world. 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.
Final Thoughts
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.
Ultimately, I give this game a final rating of 8/10.

As someone who played a lot of city builders, from Anno series (yes, resource management in a nutshell but you're still building stuff) to Simcity (easiest one I could think of) I can confidently say that Endzone falls right in between of complexity and fun for someone who likes these kind of games.
Endzone - world apart has unique charm to the game, it starts simple and slow but as you phase through out the game there are more things that you need to pay attention to, especially food/water rations, for a season your stock is full then drought comes along and you go from 500 population to 200 because you ran out of water. Quicksaves are neat way to reverse but usually not enough to mitigate disaster, so its not as easy as it may look, but then again its not Frostpunk or They are Billions level of disaster when if things go wrong, and you spend 2-3-5h on a single session and then it all goes down the drain because you were not ready. So it has perfect blend of difficulty and reward for when things do go right.
Challenge series are also fun, DLCs are nice to have but not necessary (not worth full price tho!!), reaching the endgame goal feels a bit blunt but the journey towards it is what makes it a wroth while.
People reviewing it recently are saying its hard and messy disliking UI but game actually do look nice, with plenty of details both up close and zoomed out. Unlike other similar games like Surviving the Aftermath/Mars and Banished, Endzone has it all, open map, no limit or borders for buildable space (unlike its successor) lovely music and cosy feeling of what would it feel like starting from ruins of apocalypse. 9.5/10

I love this game! The gameplay is engaging and challenging, but not so difficult that a new player can't quickly learn. The structure of the game means that you don't have to learn all the advanced techniques to just jump in and enjoy -- but if you WANT to keep going, the game's complexity ramps up enough that you'll remain challenged even through long playthroughs. The terrain generation is excellent and gives basically endless replay options.
One tip for new players: when you start setting up markets, remember to change their work area to you central warehouse district. Otherwise, they won't replenish their stock.
The best way I can describe this is a spiritual successor to Banished. If you liked that game, you'll love this.