Endzone: A World Apart challenges players to prove themselves as a worthy leader and survive in a hostile environment where the most dangerous foes are the unforgiving climate and catastrophic weather events. 

Endzone: A World Apart follows a group of refugees who, more than a century after a devastating worldwide nuclear powerplant terrorist attack, are leaving their underground bunkers and rebuilding society on the surface. After 150 years dwelling underground in bunkers called ‘endzones,” Earth’s surface seems like a breath of fresh air, though that couldn’t be any further from the truth! Players will face the likes of toxic rain, dangerously radioactive environments, raging sandstorms, and a merciless climate.

While spearheading the rise of humanity, men, women, and children will need protection from threats of all kinds, and there’s no telling what each new day will bring on the forsaken planet from which they’ve emerged. 

Titled A New Civilization, the update brings a plethora of new features and content, including new buildings, new Settler quality of life settings, a complete rework of the Electricity mechanic, general polishing and bug fixes, and finally, a highly requested feature: autosav<

We have reworked a system that dates back to the Closed Beta and needed an overhaul. When implementing the Confidence System, we deliberately built in advantages and disadvantages early on, which should have a significant influence on the flow of the game and the player's decisions. With the previous system, this effect was unfortunately hardly noticeable, or expressed itself mainly through negative influences. The reworked system now brings much more depth and complements the Gameplay with meaningful and credible needs of the settlers and, of course, their reaction to fulfilling or not fulfilling them. We also aimed on making Endzone easier to observe and read. With two new Heatmaps, the created electricity network can be surveyed better, and the newly implemented attractiveness of the settlement can be tracked.

With this Update, we enable the possibility of an Autosave. It is disabled by default, but can be activated manually in the settings. You can also change the time interval, in which the Autosave saves your current game. Right now the system can hold up to 5 automatically saved savegames per session. After reaching this number, older saves are automatically deleted.

Added

• User Interface: Added a new UI for Confidence and overhauled the confidence system. Confidence is now divided into 3 sections: Negative, Neutral, and Positive confidence. The Negative and Positive sections are further divided into 3 Tiers. Slipping into the negative confidence zone will cause riots in your settlement and people may start to leave. Being in the positive confidence zone will give you benefits such as special side missions.
• User Interface: Added a new Analytic View for Electricity. This view helps you to view and analyze your electricity network without having to click on individual buildings. It displays valid power line connections and highlights all power consumers and producers.
• User Interface: Added a new Analytic View for Attractiveness: Since buildings now have different Attractiveness values and your settlers react to them, it is important to have a clear overview on how buildings affect the attractiveness of your settlement and, therefore, your settlers’ confidence.
• User Interface: Added special notifications when a seed or a new technology has been unlocked. In addition, a new notification triggers when new settlers are joining your settlement.
• User Interface: Added a food variety indicator to show how many different food sources are available in the settlement. Having different food sources was always important for the health of the individual settler, but it was never really properly displayed.
• Settlers: Added Birth Control as part of the functionality unlocked when upgrading your town center to level 2. Birth Control will result in a negative confidence debuff, but also prevent any new births for a certain period of time.
• Buildings: Added the kitchen which allows your settlers to produce processed food/meals and can help to withstand a food shortage.
• Buildings: Added 5 decorative buildings to the game that also contribute to the attractiveness of an area.
• Expeditions: Added sound effects to all expeditions for better immersion. When making a decision for an expedition, there are sets of sound effects to complement your actions.
• Savegames: Added optional AutoSave functionality to the game. You can enable AutoSave and a timing interval in the Options menu.
• Achievements: Added 17 new achievements to the game.
• Side Missions: Added 17 new side missions to the game.
• Music: Added 1 new music track to the game.
• Social Media: Added several social media icons in the main menu with direct links to Endzone.

Fixed

• Statistics: Temporary Storeroom and Warehouse are now contributing to statistics.
• Statistics: The UI of the statistics window now works better with different aspect ratios.
• Buildings: Orchards now correctly change their seed. Beware: trees are immediately chopped down when selecting a new seed, but you’ll also get some wood out of it.
• Buildings: Fixed coal pile not marked as blocking during building placement.
• Buildings: Fixed wind effect for the School.
• Buildings: Fixed possible errors caused by the building system.
• Buildings: The inspector for farms now shows “Hemp” instead of “Food” to signal that hemp is not a food resource.
• Buildings: Hemp is now correctly decontaminated in all storage buildings.
• Settlers: Fixed possible error when a pub is among the possible visitable buildings.
• Settlers: Prevent error when a settler is living in a non existing house on startup.
• Expeditions: The tool requirement for one of the Endzone expeditions now increases the chance as expected.
• Expedition Post: Expedition Post now gives correct feedback when the production limit is reached or inventory is full.
• Side Missions: Fixed several missing headlines for Side Missions.
• Feedback (Stomt): Fixed that shortcuts were still fired in the background, when the feedback popup was opened.

Tweaked

• Electricity: Warehouses, Cisterns, Irrigation Plants, and the Weather Station no longer consume power. This was done since they did not have any gameplay related effects.
• Electricity: Settlers working at Gatherer’s Cabins, Herbal Huts, Forester Lodges, Scrapyards, and Hunting Lodges now work faster if their production building has power connected.
• Electricity: A Power Line now loses all connections if it is in a demolished state, making it clearer as to why a power grid might be malfunctioning.
• User Interface: The "?"-button in building inspectors now shows the building tooltip instead of only title and description, so that all the info is right there.
• User Interface: Changed icons of some happiness buffs.
• Balancing: Tweaked balancing values for protective clothing and tools.
• Balancing: Doubled the wood cost for metal tools.
• Buildings: Created new visuals for the tailor building.
• Buildings: Changed visuals for the tank to be more immersive and fitting to the game’s story timeline.
• Buildings: Damaged buildings no longer show a large and clumsy UI in their inspector but are marked as “damaged” with a visual indicator on top. Additionally, the condition bar below the icon of the building now provides detailed information about the repair status in its tooltip.
• Glossary: Updated and added glossary entries for new and existing buildings.
• Research: Added the kitchen as a researchable technology.
• Performance: Ported entity tracing to a faster GPU solution.
• Sandstorm: Sandstorm no longer does percentile damage, so that hit points of buildings actually have an impact now.
• Side Missions: Tweaked Overloaded mission, so it only triggers if there is no battery connected at all.
• UI: Goals that involve the production or storage of resources now indicate whether the production limit of that resource prevents the goal from being solved.

With this update we have significantly revised the confidence system, so that there is now a clear added value in both positive and negative directions. Confidence was for a long time a value that should be kept in positive territory, but was difficult to bring into negative territory through the regular game flow. Mainly differences arose due to the death of a relative of a settler, which of course could not be averted. The system therefore offered only a small added value and was rather used or regarded as an accessory.

Through the refurbishment, Confidence is now a sensitive system, which is influenced by each individual settler in the settlement. Each settler has his own list of needs that can be met, not met or triggered. How happy an individual settler is now proportionally contributes to the overall Confidence of the settlement. This means that an average is calculated, which can effect which missions or actions are triggered and can influence the behavior of the settlers in a negative way as well as in a positive way. The new Confidence System is staggered in 3 sections, each consisting of 3 tiers which are in the negative, neutral and positive range.

This value is influenced by existing buildings, as well as food and events within the settlement. Confidence can fluctuate. The neutral area can be seen as a buffer zone in which the player has the possibility to protect himself from sliding into the negative area or to take effective steps to change into the positive area.

A well-known problem in Endzone was the readability of the electricity network. Electricity poles are not easy to recognize in the turmoil and also the overview of the connected power line quickly left a lot to be desired in a larger settlement. With the new Heatmap for electricity, buildings can now be distinguished more easily. Connections and consumption are also marked and can now be observed more easily. The change in readability, which was very positive for us, inspired us to introduce another Heatmap to illustrate the Attractiveness. In this view, the attractiveness of individual buildings is also shown very simply and schematically. It also shows how other buildings influence the status even before construction.

This update has only added one building to the world of Endzone, but it was intended to help new players in particular. Also, the proposal has been submitted many times as feedback, so we were happy to follow up on the request. Oh, and we redesigned the Tailor for better visual feedback and a more suitable presentation.

The Kitchen can be explored as a building and allows the player to increase the amount of valuable food for his settlement significantly by using a simple recipe. 10 units of food and 10 units of water can be processed in the kitchen to 100 units of food. It doesn't matter which food is used to create it. In addition, dishes that are produced in the kitchen are counted as variations in food and thus contribute to the diversity in the settlers' diet. Up to 5 cooks can work in the kitchen, but the amount of processed food does not increase proportionally from the fourth cook onwards, but increases slightly less.

Together with the new Confidence System, the first Decorative Elements are now available in Endzone. Decorations beautify the settlement by increasing its attractiveness. The 5 new elements have their own construction costs and can theoretically be placed infinitely often. Decoration buildings are not explicitly visited or viewed by settlement to give a bonus; the effect is permanent and passive.

We know that there are a few more things we need to address, and we are listening to your feedback. We're trying to address all the important issues in a timely manner and make the game as a whole more understandable and fair. However, it is important to remember that Endzone - A World Apart is a survival game, so we have made it challenging with full intention.

- Your Team von Gentlymad & Assemble Entertainment

Endzone: A World Apart is now available in Early Access through Steam and GOG for $23.99.

Key Features:

• The Pursuit of Happiness: The world as we know it is gone. Build a new home for the last human survivors! Provide them with a steady food and water supply, educate them on how to cultivate their own crops, and provide shelter that can withstand the worst the weather has to offer with over 30 different buildings, each with a significant purpose.
• Gather & Lead: As the leader of your settlement, coordinate and assign different professions and tasks. Let your people gather and refine a wide array of resources, and manage your economy by building an efficient infrastructure with streets, depositories, and markets.
• The Invisible Enemies: Though the nuclear meltdowns are long past, harmful radiation still haunts the surface of Earth in the form of toxic rains, contaminated soil, and more. Safeguard your people and their hard-earned crops with special anti-contamination gear, water filters, protective buildings, and more.
• Survive the Drought: The climate has changed, and not for the better! Prepare for recurring droughts by planning ahead and stocking up on food, water, and other essentials. Withstand unstoppable sandstorms as they destroy buildings and bring with them deadly radiation. Every weather cycle is a new challenge! 
• A Vivid, Dynamically Simulated World: Every inch of earth in the game features dynamically simulated humidity and radiation. Watch as rain clouds irrigate your soil, or prepare for ongoing battles against toxic rain as they bring devastating radiation to the land.
• Think like a Diplomat: The world beyond your safe and carefully crafted civilization is intimidating, but it’s your job to make the tough decisions that will secure the fate of your people, such as sending expeditions to remote, unexplored locations to source materials, locate resources, and more.    

Endzone: A World Apart is coming to PC in Fall 2020.