Info about Endzone - A World Apart: Prosperity:

Official game description:
  
All life begins to flourish again! While the first settlers struggled for simple survival, their descendants were already able to bring modest prosperity to this world. Among the survivors, an unimagined zeal is now stirring. They dedicate themselves to great ideas and work hard to make them a reality. People have begun to dream; they look to the future full of wishes but also with high expectations.  
Lead this hopeful generation into a period of prosperity and new inventions. Make the former pioneers into citizens of a newly blossoming civilisation.  
*   **New era, new resources:** Make use of additional luxury goods like soap and coffee for better quality of life while sand, concrete and cement supply for enhanced constructions.  
*   **Prosperous time:** New technologies and research help you to cater for your new civilisations needs and demands, because they have never been more challenging than now.  
*   **Concrete dreams:** A flourishing settlement needs new buildings to grow; secure your settlers’ well-being with sand mines, a concrete factory and aqua farms, just to name a few.  
*   **Beautiful scenery:** Three new scenarios challenge you to explore your settlement’s hopes and dreams to provide for a glorious future.

Release date: Oct 21, 2021

Categories: City Builder, Colony Simulation, Survival, Resource Management, Base Building, Post-apocalyptic, Management Simulation

Feature scans:
- MTX: score 15; verdict: Fair / Traditional DLC Only; summary: The reviews for this Endzone DLC focus on paid expansion content, price/value complaints, and season pass repackaging. There is no direct evidence of in-game microtransactions, real-money gacha, loot boxes, pay-to-win mechanics, or convenience items. Under the audit rules, base-price and traditional DLC complaints cannot push the score above 20.

- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics:
  - Game completion: 1.0h
  - Story completion: N/A
  - Session length: 4.5h
  - Endgame: N/A
  - Reasoning: The French review states the DLC adds 60 minutes of gameplay to unlock everything, which I interpret as the DLC's completion/unlock time, so gameCompletion is 1 hour. The Portuguese review reports playing for four and a half hours in one sitting without noticing, supporting a sessionLength of 4.5 hours. There is no numeric evidence for scenario or story completion time, and reviews only describe endgame content without giving hours spent in the endgame, so storyCompletion and endgame are null.
- Time-to-fun:
  - Summary: Players describe the mid-to-late game content, resources and mechanics as the main attraction, while the early hours remain slow and visually unrewarding. Enjoyment is framed as arriving once the player reaches those later phases.
  - Stance: Clicks after
  - Anchor: Reaching the mid-to-late game content (new buildings and upgrades, resources, and settler-demand mechanics).
  - Time to anchor: N/A
  - Friction: Early city looks rough, like it was built from found trash; Slow visual/aesthetic payoff in the first hours; Longer game cycle before later content is reached
  - Unlock drivers: New late game buildings and building upgrades; New late game resources and mechanics; New settler demands adding motivation to push toward late game
  - Conditions: Enjoyment is tied to reaching the mid-to-late game rather than the opening phase; Later content requires investing time across a longer game cycle; Early aesthetic quality remains poor for at least the first few hours
- Player Archetypes:
  - Loyal City-Building Fan (buy)
    - Motivation: Enjoying and replaying city-building content.
    - Playstyle: Plays city builders and returns for replayable building and management sessions.
    - Experience: familiar
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: huge fan
    - Reference games: N/A
  - Value-Conscious Content Buyer (buy)
    - Motivation: Getting strong content for a fair price.
    - Playstyle: Evaluates included content and price before purchasing.
    - Experience: mixed
    - Purchase stance: buy
    - Labels: N/A
    - Reference games: N/A


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Extensive late-game content addition (weight 0.97): The DLC adds a significant amount of content focused on the mid-to-late game, including new technologies, buildings, resources, and mechanics. This addresses the previously lacking endgame and extends the overall game cycle.
- New buildings and resources (weight 0.97): The expansion introduces many new buildings, such as greenhouses, water pumps, and residential buildings with personal wind generation. It also adds new resource types like glass, steel beams, and concrete, along with luxury goods like soap and coffee.
- Quality of life improvements (weight 0.4): The expansion introduces several quality-of-life enhancements, such as an irrigator with a huge area, water pumps that automate water collection, and buildings that generate their own electricity. These changes reduce micromanagement and improve the overall gameplay experience.
- New technologies and research (weight 0.35): The DLC adds new technologies and a reworked research interface, providing meaningful upgrades that integrate well into the existing tech tree. This gives players new goals to aim for in the mid-to-late game.
- Great value for price (weight 0.35): Many reviewers feel the DLC offers a fair amount of new content for its price, with some calling it a nice content pack for a proper price. It provides good value and is generally considered worth the cost.
- Improved late-game experience (weight 0.31): The expansion greatly simplifies life in the late game by removing water and food problems and adds much-needed quality-of-life buildings. It makes the game more fun and engaging in later stages.
- Makes game more fun and addictive (weight 0.3): The expansion makes the game much more fun in later stages and is described as very enjoyable and addictive. It brought some reviewers back to the game.
- Visual and atmospheric upgrades (weight 0.26): Buildings shift from rusty metal to a futuristic and somewhat steampunk style, and the overall graphics and atmosphere are praised. The new style of settlements and attractive towns are highlighted.
- Three new scenarios included (weight 0.24): The DLC adds three new scenarios that are exciting and challenging, each with unique objectives. These scenarios enhance the community, bring split communities together, and prepare a nearby Enzone for return.
- Challenging and engaging scenarios (weight 0.22): The included scenarios are exciting and partly very challenging, noticeably making the game harder. Multiple attempts to figure out strategies are part of the experience.
- Improves housing and settlements (weight 0.22): Housing can be upgraded to autonomous and nice houses, removing shanty housing. Residential buildings become energy-independent with personal wind generation.
- Integrates well into base game (weight 0.19): The new content integrates neatly into the main game, with new technologies fitting well into the existing tech tree and buildings complementing the base mechanics. The expansion feels like a natural extension.
- New finale and objectives (weight 0.18): The expansion adds a finale where players build a progress beacon (a three-level building requiring many resources) and reach 1400 settlers. Completing all requests gives an end summary and allows continuing in endless mode.
- Meaningful progression and industrialization (weight 0.13): The DLC provides a logical progression as the settlement grows beyond survival toward prosperity and civilization rebirth. It moves the game toward industrialization, modernization, and automation.
- Adds luxury goods and decor (weight 0.13): New luxury goods for settlers, such as soap and coffee, are introduced, along with decor items. These additions enhance the settlement's development and provide more variety.
- Save game compatibility (weight 0.08): The expansion is save game compatible, allowing players to upgrade their existing colonies with the new content. This is a convenient feature for continuing ongoing games.
- Adds new social goods and upgrades (weight 0.08): The DLC introduces new social goods and building upgrades, enhancing the settlement's development and providing more options for players.
- Only greenhouse truly adds value (weight 0.07): One reviewer feels that the greenhouse is the only building that truly brings something to the DLC, suggesting other additions may be less impactful.

Common complaints:
- DLC lacks necessary content (weight 0.56): Players widely feel the DLC provides insufficient content for its price and is essentially cut end-game content that should have been in the base game. It adds only a few buildings and minimal mechanics that do not significantly affect gameplay.
- Quests demand excessive resources (weight 0.31): Some quests are mechanically difficult, requiring huge amounts of resources that are hard to produce in time, such as 9000 coffee for poor settlers or 10k cakes. These demands are often impossible and force success, leading to looting if failed.
- Combat system is imprecise (weight 0.3): The attacks and defense systems are imprecise, similar to Tropico, with no direct control of troops and no proper walls. Guard towers are inefficient and useless, and fighting raiders is boring.
- Some buildings are useless (weight 0.25): Several added buildings are ineffective, such as greenhouses producing slower than farms, aquafarms being useless, and the lighthouse serving only as decoration. The workshop and bus upgrades are questionable.
- Research progress is overly slow (weight 0.24): Research points accumulate at a dreadfully slow rate, even with full staffing and electrification, making it take a long time to unlock necessary technologies and reach fun content.
- Survival mode endgame was lacking (weight 0.23): The base game's survival mode lacked end-game objectives and content; once all buildings were built and expeditions made, there was nothing left to do. The DLC was supposed to address this but returned to an empty endgame.
- New missions lack achievements (weight 0.22): The added story and new scenarios do not affect or add Steam achievements, despite being a paid DLC. This reduces the incentive for achievement hunters.
- Pawn management and AI issues (weight 0.22): Pawns constantly queue at food distribution points and die, builders never build on time and forget to repair, and assigning jobs is difficult with many pawns. Lag from large numbers of pawns remains.
- Advanced water tower is overpowered (weight 0.21): The advanced water tower can draw water from anywhere, eliminating late-game challenge and making rain collection barrels useless. Pumps can be placed by a lake to supply far inland water towers.
- New resources lack integration (weight 0.21): New resources like coffee are only justifiable in new buildings and do not change the rest of the game. Only one new seed is added, no new animals, and requests for coffee appear before the seed is discovered.
- Town hall demands are absurd (weight 0.21): Town hall adds trials that force success; failure results in villagers looting 2000 resources. Demands are absurd and time given is short, and building the town hall early can start prosperity phase before technology allows producing luxury goods.
- Storage and logistics are poor (weight 0.19): The storage system is bad, preventing manual management of many resources, and phantom resources interfere with limit calculations. Lack of logistics bureau and vehicles forces workers to haul resources manually.
- Game crashes frequently (weight 0.19): Multiple crashes occurred within a short playtime, during map generation, while paused, and during gameplay. This indicates stability issues.
- DLC is anti-quality-of-life (weight 0.18): The DLC introduces systems that annoy players, such as frequent demands that forcibly take supplies if unmet, and bad systems overall. It is seen as an anti-QoL addition.
- DLC is unbalanced and untested (weight 0.13): The DLC suffers from bugs, typos in mission requirements, and unbalanced mechanics, with developers refusing to acknowledge mistakes. It was barely tested.
- Existing building productivity reduced (weight 0.13): Productivity of existing buildings (medical facility, ammunition factory, mine, workshop, tailor shop, pub) was reduced to justify new factories. The 'USINE' building produces nothing but a productivity aura while nearby buildings had their productivity reduced.
- Building upgrades lack happiness (weight 0.12): Building upgrades like comfortable house, comfortable shelter, and improved water tower do not improve happiness and consume new resources. They are not worth the cost.
- Endless mode adds more tasks (weight 0.12): In endless mode, the DLC just adds more things to do, including frequent sub-missions that were previously only in scenarios. This may not be seen as meaningful content.
- City appearance remains poor (weight 0.07): Even after several hours, the city still looked like it was founded from found trash a moment ago. This suggests visual progression is lacking.

Gameplay feedback:
- New Resources and Goods (weight 0.4): Adds new temporary resources like sand and cement, processed goods such as glass, concrete, reinforced metal, soap, and coffee, and luxury goods demanded by settlers. These expand production chains and trading options.
- New Scenarios and Content (weight 0.35): The DLC adds three new scenarios and expands the game with additional late-game content. This provides players with more challenges and extended playtime.
- Advanced Water Management Systems (weight 0.32): New water towers and pumping stations allow water to be drawn from any distance and automatically fill nearby towers. This improves water distribution efficiency.
- New Buildings and Structures (weight 0.29): The expansion introduces a variety of new buildings including advanced water towers, greenhouses, fish farms, comfortable houses, and a giant lighthouse. These enhance gameplay and settlement development.
- Food Production Independence (weight 0.27): Greenhouses and aquafarms produce crops and fish regardless of pollution, drought, or weather, though they consume electricity and water. This ensures a stable food supply.
- Settlement Demands and Trials (weight 0.26): Residents periodically make demands for resources, and failing to meet them results in seizure of supplies. Town hall adds trials that trigger the prosperity phase.
- Difficulty and Strategy (weight 0.26): The expansion increases difficulty and requires players to choose starting points and strategies, often needing multiple attempts. This appeals to experienced players.
- Electricity and Power Generation (weight 0.23): New homes and settlements can generate their own electricity, reducing the need for power lines. Players must supply factories and pumps with electricity.
- Resource Management Features (weight 0.21): Warehouse resource management, food distribution queues, and logistics are key mechanics. These require careful planning.
- Building and Combat Mechanics (weight 0.21): Raider combat, fence building, and builder assignment add depth. These are core gameplay elements.
- Infrastructure and Utilities (weight 0.17): Power poles, water pipes, and electricity distribution are essential for settlement functioning. Players must manage these networks.
- Late-Game Survival Changes (weight 0.08): The add-on eliminates water and food management issues in the late game, simplifying survival. This allows focus on other aspects.
- Research Interface Rework (weight 0.07): The research interface has been reworked, likely improving usability and clarity. This helps players navigate new technologies.
- Workshop Production Boost (weight 0.07): A workshop speeds up five building types by 20% within a small radius. This enhances production efficiency.
- Bus Upgrade to Magistrate (weight 0.07): The bus can be upgraded to a magistrate that gives timed production requests. This adds a new management layer.
- No New Animals (weight 0.06): The DLC adds no new animals, which may disappoint some players. This is a minor limitation.

Performance notes:
- Poor Performance With Large Populations (weight 0.08): Players report that the game only reaches 30+ FPS when the population reaches 1000, indicating significant performance degradation with larger colonies. This remains a persistent issue according to player feedback.
- Worsening Optimization Issues (weight 0.08): Feedback specifically states that the game's optimization has become worse, suggesting a decline in performance over updates. This is a direct complaint about the overall performance quality.
- Lag From Many Pawns (weight 0.08): Players continue to experience lag caused by a large number of pawns in the game. This issue appears to be unresolved and still affects gameplay.
- Crashes During Map Generation (weight 0.08): Some players encounter crashes while the game is generating a map. This is a critical bug that prevents starting a new game.
- Crashes When Game Paused (weight 0.08): Players report that the game crashes while it is paused. This unexpected crash disrupts gameplay and can cause loss of progress.

Recommendations:
- Overall positive recommendation (weight 0.21): A number of players give general positive recommendations and thumbs up, often without detailed reasoning. The overall sentiment leans recommended.
- Recommended for genre fans (weight 0.18): Many reviewers recommend the DLC specifically for fans of city builders, Endzone, and post-apocalyptic resource management games. It appeals strongly to players already invested in the genre.
- Essential for late game (weight 0.12): The DLC is considered semi-essential and especially recommended for players reaching the late stage of the game. It adds meaningful content for advanced playthroughs.
- Optional or unnecessary DLC (weight 0.11): Some reviewers describe it as a normal, optional DLC that players do not need to buy. It is recommended only conditionally.
- Boosts replayability (weight 0.07): The DLC enhances the game's replayability according to some feedback. It provides additional reasons to return to the game.

Other player notes:
- DLC extends endgame content (weight 0.35): The DLC adds building, resource, and objective options for the late game, including a new tech tree and final goal of building a progress beacon. It expands the game by adding new chains, goods, upgrades, and research.
- DLC content specifics (weight 0.3): The DLC adds 19 new researches, 4 new missions (including a tutorial), 7 new buildings, 4 new resources, and 1 new seed (coffee). It does not add new animals, and only the greenhouse among new buildings is considered impactful.
- DLC value questioned (weight 0.26): Some reviewers feel the DLC is not worth the price, could have been free, and should arguably have been part of the base game. It is also compared unfavorably to other DLCs like Space Engineers for offering less content.
- DLC is an addition (weight 0.14): Reviewers confirm the content is a DLC and an addition to the base game.
- Balance and tweaks (weight 0.13): The DLC reduces productivity on 6 buildings from the base game and fixes some of the most annoying issues from the original. No new mechanics were introduced.
- Scenario gating (weight 0.13): New content is gated behind unlocking 3 related scenarios, and one goal requires 1400 settlers in the city. This may limit immediate access to the DLC features.
- Mid-to-late game improved (weight 0.13): The mid-to-late game was considered the biggest flaw and has been addressed by the developers. These changes are described as necessary for good Endzone enjoyment.
- DLC availability history (weight 0.07): The DLC was previously part of a full season pass before being removed by the developers. This may affect purchase decisions for some players.
- Base game stability praised (weight 0.07): The base game provided many hours of story and survival without crashes, indicating solid technical performance.
- Quality of life upgrades (weight 0.07): The DLC adds quality of life buildings and upgrades that improve the overall experience.
- Meaningful expansion (weight 0.07): The DLC extends the game in a meaningful way, adding depth and new gameplay elements.
- Missing protective suits building (weight 0.07): A reviewer noted that no building for mass-producing protective suits was added, which might be expected for the endgame content.
- Potential outside settlement (weight 0.07): Reviewers see remaining potential for content outside the settlement, suggesting future expansions could explore this area.
- Combat compared to Tropico (weight 0.07): Attacks and defense systems are compared to Tropico for being imprecise.
- No new animals added (weight 0.07): The DLC does not introduce any new animals to the game.
- Content beyond house skins (weight 0.07): The content includes more than just house skins, offering additional variety.
- New forum requests (weight 0.06): Some new forum requests are added, but they are not considered extraordinary.
- DLC compared to Anno (weight 0.06): The game is compared to Anno with an end-times vibe, highlighting its unique setting.

Emotions:
- Frustration (weight 0.19): Players experience frustration due to resource mismanagement, including residents seizing resources when demands are unmet and factories struggling with electricity supply. Slow research progress, poor performance at high populations, and unreliable clothing factories add to the irritation. Phantom resources, food queues causing deaths, and crashes during map generation or while paused further exacerbate the negative experience.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.15): Satisfaction arises from new settlements producing their own electricity, removing the need for power lines. Content expansions that advance game mechanics and fix annoying issues from the original game provide a fair price for the amount of content received. Powerful building functions that efficiently support large populations, along with new resources and late-game content, contribute to a satisfying experience.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.13): Enjoyment stems from increased fun in later stages of the game, making it very addictive and easy to get into. The DLC enhances the fun factor, and new content pushes motivation to reach late game, extending the game cycle. Nice upgrades and save game compatibility allowing continuation of old colonies also add to the enjoyment.
- Disappointment (weight 0.13): Disappointment is caused by the expectation of a completely new system or proper post-survival city building, but receiving only a few buildings and scenarios. The DLC feels empty of content, adding little fun or new features in survival mode, and lacks new achievements. An overpowered water tower removes late-game challenge, further contributing to disappointment.
- Anger (weight 0.06): Anger is driven by feeling ripped off by the DLC's lack of content for the price, along with absurd town hall demands and impossible missions. Unreasonable demand and time mechanics also contribute to the anger.
- Liking (weight 0.04): Liking is caused by the DLC expanding the final stage of the game, making it more interesting and setting a goal to achieve. New technologies and buildings are added, which players appreciate.
- Relief (weight 0.04): Relief comes from quality-of-life improvements such as water being pumped directly into cisterns without buckets. An irrigator with a huge area removes the headache of placing fields around a small irrigator.
- Excitement (weight 0.02): Excitement is caused by challenging and exciting scenarios.
- Motivation (weight 0.02): Motivation is driven by new buildings that encouraged pushing population beyond 1700.
- Surprise (weight 0.02): Surprise is caused by the absence of a building for mass-producing protective suits.
- Interest (weight 0.02): Interest is sparked by the DLC's quality-of-life buildings being unlocked through related scenarios.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope arises from the potential for more content outside the settlement.
- Dislike (weight 0.02): Dislike is caused by the greenhouse producing slower than the real farm.
- Annoyance (weight 0.02): Annoyance is caused by scenario quests asking for silly things, like finding seeds in illogical ruins.
- Pleasant surprise (weight 0.02): Pleasant surprise comes from discovering the content was more than just house skins and finding the game's content and potential as you progress despite its initially generic appearance.
- Feeling cheated (weight 0.02): Feeling cheated is caused by buying the game during Early Access to support developers but receiving a DLC that should have been part of the base game.
- Concern (weight 0.02): Concern is caused by building the town hall early, which can cause settlers to demand luxury goods before technology allows producing them.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.02): Enthusiasm is driven by an extensive expansion with many new buildings and the ability to build proper towns.
- Mild disappointment (weight 0.02): Mild disappointment is caused by the feeling that the DLC could have had more stuff in it.}