Early Access is often a troubling proposition. Is the game ready for the public or are the public just glorified beta testers? That’s where we come in. Welcome to the Early Access Report, where Player 2’s writers tackle an early access title to determine if it is worth your time now, or is something you should keep an eye on in the future.
The Early Access Report - Endzone 2
Key Information
The Game: Endzone 2
The Pitch:
The Game Version This Report is Based On: 0.8.9032.31072
The Developer: Gentlymad Studios
I have a penchant for city builders, and it barely matters the type. The ones I dig the most are ones where you can align with nature, taking a more sustainable stance rather than pillaging the land. In reality if it’s got good management, is mechanically complex and a good theme or hook, I’ll very likely check it out.
Endzone, the original, ticked quite a few boxes for me. Hell, the tutorial in it and its sequel took around 3 hours each so you can tell it’s meaty. When Endzone 2 was announced, and despite launching into Early Access quite close to Frostpunk 2, I knew I had to try it. Admittedly, I was a little sceptical about not building on the foundations of the first title, but after playing for a while I kind of understand. The sequel is a vastly different experience, for better and for worse.
The first thing that stands out is obvious; you start in a truck loaded with people and supplies, and it’s your job to find a place to set up your base. Areas are split into regions, and bases can be formed on high plateaus. Every ‘region’, areas enclosed by bridges from each other, has around 3 spots to choose from. Some are small but offer valuable resources, some are big and suit larger central camps. Once you’ve chosen where you want to set up base, that’s when the rest of the game begins.
Vehicles still play an important part though. They can be used to set up transport routes, moving items between bases; or driven around to loot ruins, taking place of the expeditions of Endzone. I’m a bit torn on this mechanic as there’s literally no risk to expeditions and the rewards can be really lucrative. Most of the time it’s just base materials, which are extremely useful in getting things started. Other times you’ll run into a full fledged expedition into a small diorama of a building. The rewards here are much greater, but you’ll need specific items to get into all the objects. I thought these were pretty cool, but as I said, no danger.
Base building is fun though. Working out exactly what you need to make things work across multiple bases is enjoyable, even if you can’t move buildings to make things more efficient. The devs do say this is coming later. The more important items are food, water, plastic, tools and scrap. There’s only a few options for getting water, and food only opens with two options. Everything else is either manufactured, foraged or deconstructed. My main bugbear with the base building is the sheer lack of options, or even the people’s needs. I can forage for berries and that’s very cool, but I can build a farm later and grow corn. But why would I? I can grow lots of different crops, but people don’t care. They only want ‘food’.
I played on the default difficulty and found it a bit too easy, so I amped it up to maximum. At first, things were going great but it quickly goes south. You see, there’s a set of disasters that will cause ground radiation to grow over time. Rain can be toxic, there’s radiation spikes, droughts, and if you’re not getting rid of your corpses, sickness. Ground radiation is by far the biggest threat, because at current it cannot be reduced. You need to make gear to keep people safe, but each unique piece only gives 20% radiation resistance. They’re not easy to make either, so the clock rapidly start rising for expansion, as you’ll need to push hard to get iron, iodine, sand (for glass) and lead, all of which is critical to the long term survival of your cities.
Risk feels lacking, but so does any huge consequences. If people die, you never see it other than a corpse appearing in your town centre. There’s no feedback on supply routes in town taking a long term, and there’s no connection to your citizens. There was a few times where everyone in my town died and I just shrugged it off, picked up some people from elsewhere and moved them in. Reproduction is also very fast and kids grow up enough to work at lightning speed. I guess radiation is good for the bones or something, because it only took me one season after a kid’s birth to send them off to the mines. Growing up is a queue too, so if you have ten kids, they’ll grow up one at a time. It’s all quite odd.
I miss some of the additions that were left behind from the first game. Raiders, traders, the ability to clean ground radiation to name a new. As it stands, Endzone 2 can’t help but feel a bit lacking. I love the vehicle mechanics, and it’s obviously early on in the release cycle. It’s still hard to recommend this at the moment because of that. The devs have a roadmap in place and I have faith in that, but this still needs a few major patches to make it more appealing.
Endzone 2 was played on PC. Thanks to the publishers for supplying code for coverage.
