Endzone 2 Review

Base-building games have seen a significant resurgence as of late. Genre giants like Anno, Tropico, and Cities Skylines remain strong. Games like Frostpunk and its soon-to-be-released successor, Frostpunk 2, have seen ample following. The rise of indie city builders like Memoriapolis has generally aided this. There have been countless more that have failed to get a following or just got stuck in the early access cycle and development hell. Endzone 2 seeks to stem away from both, with its post-apocalyptic setting and mechanics reminiscent of Frostpunk; Endzone 2 tries to mix in facets of its predecessor, with some new tools added in. The game tries to hook you in, but whether it succeeds is hard to answer.

 

Developed by Gentlymad Studios and published by Assemble Entertainment, Endzone 2 was released on Steam on August 26, 2024, in early access. The first game, Endzone – A World Apart, was relatively well-liked by fans. A pleasant and enjoyable game that was often compared to its similarities with Frostpunk yet applauded for its different setting and style. A mix of fair and unforgiving gameplay made the game stand out in an oversaturated market. The game, as we mentioned and will mention again, is in early access, with the developers stating that they wish for the community and players to be a part of the development journey, with feedback and all.

Roughly, in Endzone 2, you lead a group of survivors of a massive ecological disaster that has ruined the world beyond repair. In this post-apocalyptic setting, you have to rebuild society and not only survive but thrive. All the while trying to deal with the scarcity of resources and extreme weather. In Endzone 2, you control not only one settlement but a whole array of them, tending to their needs like a shepherd and trying to restore some semblance of society. The game can be extremely pressuring, so thankfully, you can change the settings to make it relatively easy or brutally hard. Like any decent game journalist, we decided to try it out in the easiest settings.

You start the game with a survival bus and explore the new wasted world to try and establish your settlement. Much of the land is not suitable, and once you find a place, you have to plop down your town center and get started on providing the bare necessities. These resources are food, water, scrap, and wood. To get these resources, you need to create a few buildings; with an array of nearly 70 different building types, Endzone 2 offers you a lot of choices.

However, notably, there is limited space in everything, and a few soil types are at play. Water, Mountain, Swamp, Fertile Soil and Ancient. A neat element of the game and one of its key mechanics is managing your limited space to build. You will have to encroach on arable land or take up space that could’ve otherwise gone to the production buildings that rely on water.

 

Eventually, or if you are unlucky, you will find that you can encounter many random events relatively quickly. In Endzone 2 range from drought, rain, and sickness to radiation, sandstorms, and more. None of them can be avoided, but throughout them, you can mitigate their effects and adapt to them. It is now that you should realize that the game is focusing more on your communities as a whole rather than the survivors themselves. In layman’s terms, your people will die. Quite a lot, actually. And you will struggle to find space to fill up graveyards of them. Keeping that in mind, you should look to focus on making sure they remain productive… and happy, too, but mostly productive.

As you expand your settlement, you will have to send out your survival bus loaded with a few people and supplies to head off into the wasteland, find another zone, and continue the process of building and expansion. Endzone 2 lets you have multiple settlements, all the while giving you the ability to essentially micro-manage all of them. You’ll occasionally need to transfer resources between settlements and explore to work things out efficiently.

Eventually, you’ll find a few points of interest. These allow you to send expeditions, where the game suddenly turns into a point-and-click adventure where you have to loot items and use tools to go through the expedition. Completing an expedition gives you a lot of resources and a facility for you to use. Still, more importantly, it gives you Knowledge Points throughout.

These Knowledge Points are essentially what you use for Endzone 2’s tech tree, where you can lock 3 different types of buildings. These are the society buildings, the ecology buildings, and the economy buildings. The society type allows you to get better housing and management, the ecology lets you build farms, recycling plants, and farms, and the economy tree lets you build various industrial buildings. The tech/skill tree in the game is restricted by its dependence on your other resources, and you will often move between your settlements, trying to find one that has enough resources for you to tech into something.

 

Throughout the game, you will construct buildings that let you harvest resources that are then transformed into other resources, such as Coal and Clay used to create Bricks or Herbs and Plastic for medicine. There are a few combinations here, but they are relatively simple. So, these supply lines are somewhat fun and intuitive to work out. In Endzone 2, you will find that specialization is the key.

It is more efficient to have settlements that focus on a few goods, especially those that complement each other. These goods can then be supplied between other settlements, creating a supply chain network that resembles an economy. Eventually, this will be necessary as you’ll find settlements that need to focus on producing essential goods like medicine to the point where they need to import food to survive.

As you progress more, you will find that after a few hours, the gameplay slows down with what feels like you endlessly upgrading buildings for a slight boost to production. Here, the early access nature of the game shows and makes a lot of it feel empty. After a while, it feels aimless and repetitive. Things feel Furthermore, the specialization at this point starts to become unnecessary, with buildings doing extremely specific tasks that can be looped into a single building.

The logistics and supply chains are really fun to manage and surprisingly intuitive. But the expedition mechanics with your explorer start to lose their charm the 6th time around. The game is also surprisingly peaceful, with only the random events giving you some trouble, albeit challenging. The lack of danger or a tangible enemy to ward off draws away from its post-apocalyptic theme.

Visually, the game looks rather realistic, with a grim and gritty atmosphere befitting of the post-apocalypse theme. Many of the functional graphics, like buildings, are worse for wear. Many look the same and often blend in with the environment. While much of it remains dull, the settlements themselves are extensively detailed, with people walking around and food on the tables of camps and buildings. But even here, things lack any flair.

 

The music and sound design feel like they were done as an afterthought, with the music feeling almost jovial compared to the gritty desperation faced by our survivors after a scary drought. While some of the sounds fit during your expeditions, ultimately, none of the music is memorable or really fitting.

Like most Early Access games, Endzone 2 lacks content and remains extremely unpolished. Yet, it is still fun, challenging, and addicting. Much of the game’s issues are related to performance and graphics and a non-existent and boring sound design that detracts from its promising atmosphere. Endzone 2 also suffers from performance issues, with the occasional hiccups and long load times.

The game’s complexity is a double-edged sword; sometimes, it feels unnecessary. However, thanks to its brilliantly made tutorial, the game gives you a sane start. But as you get on with your game, things become shallow and tiring. The game still has a long, long way to go. It definitely has potential and the opportunity to be a great game. Still, its ability to reach that potential remains to be seen. With an interesting roadmap and promised updates, the road ahead seems bright for the successor of a unique entry to the city-building crowd.