In the world of Endzone - A World Apart, terrorists detonated nuclear power plants around the world in 2021, plunging the world into chaos. Few people fled to underground facilities called Endzones. 150 years later, humanity ventures back to the surface and attempts to repopulate the not-so-life-friendly environment. As a leader hovering over things, you direct the construction of the new settlement, place buildings, observe the goings-on of the settlers who cannot be directly controlled and take care of the supply of essentials.
The first step is to get fresh and preferably non-radioactive water. After that, the food supply is on the plan, whereby the game offers a wider range of food sources and it is rewarded to use different types of food in the sense of a healthy diet. It's a good idea to use multiple food sources anyway, as any droughts can quickly cripple farms. Otherwise, the inhabitants collect wood, scrap, and other stuff in the surroundings and process the resources further in very clear production chains. For example, it is necessary to provide the inhabitants with radiation protective clothing and produce tools or medicine. However, Endzone doesn't get beyond Settlers level in terms of the complexity of the production chains.
Nevertheless, survival in Endzone is no child's play, especially when the weather station predicts that there will be several "seasons" of radioactive precipitation or drought. Then the settlement management becomes surprisingly hairy and promises a challenge even on the normal difficulty level - more comparable to Banished and less to Surviving the Aftermath. Ideally, you should respond to such events with appropriate supplies and protective measures, but the length of weather events can mess up a lot. But there are other difficulty levels where the environment is not as hostile and some aspects of the game can be made easy or harder. In addition to a largely hazard-free building mode for laid-back beau builders, hardcore players may try their hand at a game variant without trees.
As in Settlers, you don't control the inhabitants directly. You construct buildings, define mining areas and draw roads for the logistics network, but you can determine which task or profession how many people should pursue. While "unassigned" people virtually take over the simple mining and gathering tasks, you set how many people should take care of, for example, water procurement, the production of protective clothing, or transportation.
Conclusion
The game is a fairly straightforward and down-to-earth construction game with survival elements, which can be tough on the "normal" difficulty level if you're unlucky with the weather and radiation. In contrast to the very similar Surviving the Aftermath, Endzone focuses on expanding the settlement, micromanaging the population, and constantly optimizing operations. Thus, it is a classic building strategy that scores with a more dynamic simulation of the weather, although the fight against diseases and radiation seems a bit clumsy.
