Gentlymad Studios has released the sequel to their city-building survival sim Endzone – A World Apart. The sequel introduces many improvements of the previous game and for those already invested, a look at what is to come in the following months.

In Endzone 2, you are challenged to navigate a world plagued by a variety of hazards, such as radioactive terrain, toxic rain, and sandstorms. While the world is out to get you, your primary objectives include expanding your empire into multiple settlements, conducting research to advance technologies, gathering and refining resources in order to survive, and more. However, a key focus of the game lies in tending to the needs of your villagers, as happy people increase your chance of expansion. You can lay down trading routes between your towns to make exchanging resources easier. There are trading outposts scattered around the game map as well, which will be useful to include in the route, as they might have something you need. Your ultimate goal will be to create a self s sustaining society that can thrive in this dangerous land.

Endzone 2 introduces a unique feature, allowing players to embark on journeys with a bus across the wasteland. Along your excursions, you find ruins that can hold valuable loot, find new land where you can build a settlement, or you might find a trader with new trade opportunities. You can either randomly look around or take on missions and search for a specific goal. You will need to be careful on expeditions as it is not all fun times, your people can die if a natural disaster strikes, or they enter a radiated area. Each zone you explore has a distinct set of resources, meaning you need to make tough decisions on where to go next and set up a new town. While you are able to settle in a place where sandstorms happen, for example, this will cost more resources to upkeep the town as your people need to repair the damage.

As this is a sequel, there have been a few changes from the original. In the first Endzone, the world was a single expansive map where everything could be found anywhere. However, Endzone 2, introduces an even larger world but this time it is divided into distinct zones, each offering unique resources and threats. This makes managing multiple settlements more interesting as you have to pick and choose where to settle if you want a mass amount of a particular material. The NPC AI has been significantly improved, allowing you to construct a city with a massive population unlike before. The expedition system got a huge overhaul and the graphics have been majorly enhanced.

Just before launch, the developers shared a roadmap of what we can expect in the coming two months. Shortly after the release, they will be fixing the bugs they receive from the community, improving the stability of the game, and adding a few quality-of-life features. Then in the month of October, we can expect some bigger changes. They will be introducing electricity to Endzone 2, you will be able to generate and distribute it among your settlements. However, we the devs have not yet announced what we can use this new power source for. There will be many more points of interest to find around the map, more missions to go on, and some of the ruins will turn into explorable buildings.

You can get the game on Steam and GOG for $24.99 with a 10% discount until September 9, 2024.

What are your thoughts on the game? Let me know in the comments.