Infection Free Zone
“The Mad Virus” has spread throughout the world with the speed of jet planes. The infected are highly aggressive, fast and strong.
In a couple of weeks, society collapsed. Cities are empty. There is no electricity, no water, and no food. Yet, there are a few survivors…
Type in the name of the city or town, download the map and start playing! Thanks to OpenStreetMap’s real-world data you can choose any place in the world for your survivors.
Establish a new “Infection Free Zone” wherever you choose. Set up shelters and production facilities. Adapt existing buildings to new needs. Build new farms and power houses. Establish defenses with walls, gates and towers.
Utilize your knowledge of the city. What is the best place to defend? Where were the grocery stores, where were the pharmacies? Where would you look for weapons?
Remember that it’s dangerous to search the old buildings, there might be some infected lurking in the dark!
Each night your settlement might be attacked by large hordes of the infected. Fight them off with every tool available - melee and ranged weapons, vehicles, walls and light. Research a vaccine or a cure for ultimate victory, or just enjoy rebuilding entire cities!
Your Zone is not the only one that exists. Your survivors will surely find other surviving groups. Some will be friendly and willing to trade, but others will be extremely hostile. There might be some fighting involved!
Read More: Best City Builder Base Building Games.
Endzone - A World Apart
Good concept, well developed scenario, extensive tutorials possibly the best I’ve seen in games I’ve played, nice graphics, random system generated maps for new environment every time, simple game mechanics with standardized keys, many options for difficulty levels including custom settings, fun achievements, good balance of resources, mix of post apocalypse survival with city building, some fighting of raiders but can be turned off in settings if you only want to do survival or city building, many different side missions with interesting bylines, prosperity DLC is nice but I still think we should not have to pay for it as it doesn’t change the game enough, played 280 hours but still have some things to try and haven’t completed all the achievements yet. Overall very good game.
– Real player with 333.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Survival Games.
Endzone is a city builder in an apocolyptic world. It is a tougher challenge than other games in the same genre. Mistakes can lead to punishing death spirals in communities. But it is rewarding when all goes well overall.
The colour palette of the game is dreary and this can make finding particular buildings difficult to do, especially in the late game when buildings are crowded together. There is no search function for building types which is definitely a drawback.
The latest expansion, “Prosperity”, does not offer much – a few new buildings and missions – you miss little by sticking with the base game.
– Real player with 251.2 hrs in game
Atomic Society
When I first purchased this game, I have to admit, my initial judgement of it was not favorable. The game was slow and plodding as it was so resource intensive. Saving took several minutes, for example. But, as the years passed, the devs overcame these obstacles and created a fairly decent game. To be certain, it isn’t yet completed, but in its current state, it is definitely worth the money. I would recommend getting the game now before it leaves early access as I imagine they will be asking much more for it once completed.
– Real player with 116.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best City Builder Colony Sim Games.
You know that meme with “I expected nothing and I’m still disappointed”?
This pretty much sums up how I feel about “Atomic Society” after 1 day of playing it.
(I can’t ask for a refund anymore, but I would if I could.)
Think at your ordinary city building game. Food buildings for food, water buildings for water, housing… and that’s it. There is nothing post-apocalyptic, no danger, no radiation, no mutants, nothing. You start the game with 35-50 people (depending on the difficulty) + your “custom” character. As you play the game, no matter how bad you do, other people join your city. There is literally an endless line of people on the map, heading to your location. (Ah, and before you ask, I did “finished” it on expert mode.).
– Real player with 71.6 hrs in game
Frostpunk
Dear God, yes I recommend. I’m fucking obsessed with this game. It dominates my every goddamn thought nowadays. I don’t think I’ve ever been so obsessed with a game before in my life. If you’re reading this, buy the game. Buy the DLC’s. And somehow contain your excitement for Frostpunk 2.
– Real player with 329.4 hrs in game
The Good:
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Special and creative gameplay will make just enough to enjoy the game in Easy and Normal mode but also very very difficult and hardcore in Hard, Extreme, Survival mode.
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Detailed images, map design make you really feel the “frost” of the game
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Each map has its own story and gameplay.
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Nice background music.
The Bad:
- The gameplay is hard to get used to for newbies (I gave up 3 times because I couldn’t understand the game, but it wasn’t until the 4th time that I felt the fun of it because I believe 11 bit studios can always make a good one).
– Real player with 152.1 hrs in game
Cliff Empire
It’s quite a decent game for $15. There is a lot of unlockable content in the mid to late game that the sheer scale of the world makes you think that you really got value for money. The game starts off slow but picks up the pace later so in the beginning expect to wait around a lot for your production to catch up with your construction needs.
At the start, you can get whatever you need from your great “supplier” in the sky as long as you have money but in the later part of the game, the “cheat” in production closes and you’ll start to need to produce everything by yourself. This slowly ramps up the difficulty. Expect to lose your first 3 or 4 games before you learn the mechanics of the game and it becomes easier, if you go in with preconceived notions of “how the game MUST work!!”, you are going to be in for a rough time. Remember to save a lot if you’re still learning if you don’t feel like restarting from the beginning often.
– Real player with 175.9 hrs in game
Wow. This game is my surprise packet of the last 5 years.
Bought game in very early access for about $8.00 - could see potential, but it needed work and content was limited. Thought it was a good concept and small amount of money well spent. Never expected what I got for that paltry $8.00.
After playing about an hour and moving on, I noticed that the game was constantly on the update list, so started taking notice of developer updates - man these guys, whoever they are, or whether they are “guys” at all, work very damn hard.
– Real player with 92.7 hrs in game
Frostpunk 2
Frostpunk 2 is the sequel to the highly acclaimed, BAFTA-nominated society survival game that blended city building, strategy and management gameplay, creating a brand new genre. Its successor takes place 30 years after the apocalyptic blizzard storm, and Earth is still overwhelmed by the icy climate of neverending frost and harsh weather.
You play as the leader of a resource-hungry metropolis where the expansion and search for new sources of power is an unavoidable reality. After the age of coal, conquering Frostland for the oil extraction industry is expected to be the new salvation of what’s left of humanity. However, change does not come easily, and not everyone in this new multi-layered society will welcome this new direction.
Demands and expectations of various factions will raise tensions and evoke conflicts, but will a cold-blooded rule and a Machiavellian approach to politics be necessary? As the everlasting cold continues its grip on the city and outside threats arise, you’ll need to make sure your people are united, driven, and ready for difficult, unavoidable sacrifices!
Jakub Stokalski, Frostpunk 2 Co-Director, had this to say about the grand vision of the game:
“What we aim to deliver to players is an experience that goes vastly beyond that of the original Frostpunk. With a still-growing team of nearly 70 people, we have more manpower available to focus on all aspects of the game from the scale, the production value, and the quality of UX, but our ambition is to do more than a straight-up sequel. What players should expect is a wide universe of choices, the freedom to shape the society and the city however they see fit - and reap the consequences. Frostpunk 2 builds on the conflicts of its predecessor - survival vs human values, life vs the arctic frost. But most importantly, it adds a new layer that is present in many aspects of the game - be it politics, society or technological progress - the conflict between humans and their nature".
Industries of Titan
There are already a lot of excellent (constructive) reviews here already for the 21 June 2021 Steam release but I’ll add my 2 cents here to talk more about the side elements of the game and offer some advice for potential players who are still sitting on the fence.
What do you get when you combine the macro-management aspects of SimCity 2013, with FTL-like micro-management in factory management and combat, then slap on a UI that’s reminiscent of grand strategy games? You get the absolutely fascinating city builder that is Industries of Titan (IoT for short).
– Real player with 115.3 hrs in game
My first impression of the game:
The beginning is a bit confusing. You have different management levels:
1. Production
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Collect raw materials (initially from ruins, later in mines)
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Collect artifacts (also from ruins)
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Produce fuel and electricity
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manage garbage (a lot)
2. Citizens and workers
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Buy and house citizens
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Earn money from citizens watching advertisements
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convert some citizens into 24/7 workers (who then stop watching ads)
3. Build on two different levels
- Inside buildings on a square grid (reminiscent of Tetris blocks :D )
– Real player with 54.8 hrs in game
Surviving the Aftermath
So after investing a lot more time into this game, I’m able to make a much better go at reviewing it. Overall, the game is generally rough and unpolished. It’s features do not feel complete, it’s engagement is simplistic, and the AI is generally dense as a box of rocks with terrible priority management.
Logistics - A colony simulator lives and dies off of how it can handle logistics; people, resources, industry and so forth. This is StA’s -biggest- failure by far. There is one single method of moving resources, and that’s having individual units lug them from place to place. As bases get bigger, you’ll quickly hit a point where 15 to 20 percent of your population is employed in the role of porters. There is no method by which you can speed them up or get better ways of transporting goods. Even with that many porters, you’ll still be unable to get things to where they need to go half the time. Compare this to Surviving Mars (SM), where you have either porters, drones, or aircraft to rapidly transport items.
– Real player with 116.1 hrs in game
It’s a colony building game with a wider world (regions) that you interact with in the form of scouting, scavenging, trading with other colonies, setting up outposts, doing story events, and simplified combat.
It’s a great game with an immersive atmosphere. It requires critical thinking and problem solving skills.
It always has you thinking about the future; where will the resources come from after these run out? Can I use the last of them, or should I save them in case something comes up? What do I REALLY need from the tech tree that would be the most benefit right now? At the same time, it also has you problem solving on the fly; I put extra people working the clinics because a lot of people got sick at once…but now maybe should I send some of these medics to be lumberjacks today? (Yes, everyone can do every job…unrealistic, however the game would be even more complex if you had to train each person for each job.)
– Real player with 47.7 hrs in game
20 Minute Metropolis - The Action City Builder
I’ll confess I’m biased because a friend that works for me did some of the artwork on this and I’ve long been a fan of Dejobaan.
This is a fun, bite-sized strategy game and less than $3. It’s hard to go wrong. I can’t think of any time I’ve actually regretted spending $3, but this was enjoying to play, and I will keep trying to get my name on the top page.
I would love to see a couple quality of life improvements: namely drag and drop roads, hotkeys or an expanded toolbar so I don’t have to fuss with the selection menus. Daily leaderboards would be nice too, so I have a better chance at the top ten.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game
Super fun and hectic. It can become a little easy after you’ve figured out a good strategy but you can always use a different starting perk which adds and takes away some difficulty. The models are really cute, reminds me of a toy town or Lego.
Some improvements I’d make would be, dragging roads to build instead of clicking for each tile. This isn’t a big issue, but could herald RSI if played too often.
I’d like more maps, a random map generation would be cool, it would make each run very different and unique.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Project Apocalypse
Not a bad game, from what i understand so far its limited being a new game and all so i expect alot more in future but for now its pretty fun and alittle addictive for me the only thing is dislike so far which really takes away form game is lack of instructions the base tutorial pop ups were great but going further no direction I find mysel asking
Why do my ppl keep dying even when i have food and safety
Do i need 20 homes for a large population or can i upgrade existing to hold more people. game lacks small details so im just doing whatever hoping for best overall great game and i have found little wrong with it so far.
– Real player with 7.9 hrs in game
I just started the game, but can see a lot of potential! The developer is very passionate and invested in this game and you can tell. It seems as though if you don’t get featured as a big indie game on steam, it’s hard to get reviews, and I wanted to give a shout out for this one. I’m looking forward to supporting the developer as he continues the game. I read a comment on one of the discussion boards that was pretty nasty, saying the game looked like another game, and honestly, you can say that about so many games out there. It’s the way in which a game is developed, and particularly when the developer cares and listens to feedback, that can make a game feel different and fun.
– Real player with 4.8 hrs in game