Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation is a survival-management game developed and published by Suncrash which is currently in Early Access.
History
While you and a few friends were camping, you come face to face with a terrifying creature attacking you, the latter is nothing but a demon. You then discover with horror that the Apocalypse has been triggered and that all the demons have landed on earth to eradicate all of humanity. This is how the small group of friends try to build a makeshift camp to be safe and collect the rare survivors to help them survive and fight the demon hordes!
The Apocalypse is here, but as humanity awaits judgment, hope is still there!
The story mainly serves to set up the world and the reason for our fight as well as our survival, but it will not evolve. Your goal is not to find out about history, just to survive the Apocalypse! And, at least, this has the merit of changing the eternal survival games with monsters, zombies, that we eat (uhuh) for ten years!
Game and gameplay
First of all I would like to point out that, even if some screens will be in spanish, the game is (officially) not yet translated (it should be once the game is released). This is due to a community translation that you can find on the Steam workshop! Be careful though, if you want to use a mod to translate the game, installing a mod (even a simple translation) disables achievements for that game!
We start with the creation of parts. During the latter, you can configure several options, whether for the world, which will be generated randomly, as for your starting survivors, which you can customize a little!
Now that this small clarification has been made, let's move on to the game which is divided into two phases: the colony management phase and the exploration / combat phase.
When you are in the colony management, you will take care of ... your colony! (Captain Obvious has struck again!) This is where all your survivors who are not on a mission will meet up: you can set up camp, collect resources, craft items, etc.
The first thing to worry about are the needs of your survivors. It will therefore be necessary to ensure that they can eat, drink and sleep. Your survivors eat only prepared or cooked food, so it will not only be necessary to ensure the harvest of raw materials (wheat, vegetables of all kinds, etc.), but also that they prepare meals to be able to eat. In addition to that, they will become dehydrated as time passes and according to your actions, so it will also be necessary to make sure to have drinking water available, whether by building a well or going to explore the region to bring water. And, of course, it will also be necessary to ensure that they sleep! For that, it will therefore be necessary to make them beds (even of "makeshift") and in a building so that they can sleep in "safety".
If you do not take care of these three basic needs, your survivors will have great grave malus. Lack of sleep will cause them to simply no longer be able to fight and will thus be torn and torn to pieces by the teeth of the least demon! While hunger and thirst will cause them to lose health continuously until they die. It is therefore, above all things, elements to be occupied in priority!
The rest of survival is similar to other management games. You will have to send your survivors harvest resources to be able to build new buildings or craft new objects. There are “core” resources that can be transformed. For example, wood allows you to acquire planks, clay will allow you to make bricks, etc.
However, you will not have access to all buildings, furniture, items, weapons, and tackles from the start. For this, it will take carry out research. Research will require one of your survivors to get down to it. Indeed, to obtain research points, it will be necessary that one or more survivors "work" on the research work plan in order to garner enough. research points to unlock new ones. This can range from ten research points to several hundred. In addition, some research will also require specific materials, which will be possible to recover only during recovery missions.
There is also a second type of research, the occult research. The latter will allow you to discover ancient rituals that can grant you very interesting bonuses. But, as for research, it will be necessary that one or more survivors apply to "research" to unlock buildings and spells linked to it. Once that is done, it will still take a long time and have a survivor to take care of that to get to start a ritual!
Your survivors will "work" more or less autonomously, place a construction or indicate resources to be harvested and one or more survivors will get to work. But each survivor has bonuses / penalties in the different tasks to be accomplished, and it is possible to draw up a "Priority list" for each of your survivors. So you can, for example, tell your survivor number 1, who has a harvest bonus, to take care of this first if you give the order to harvest wood. Your number 2 survivor can prioritize building buildings, and your third survivor can research and cook meals, etc. This is very easy to manage thanks to the "task management" page which lists all of them as well as all of your survivors.
And to finish on the management of the colony, it will undergo many events. Survivors can sometimes disembark and to barter with you, which is very practical for recovering materials that you lack or "selling" your surplus! In addition, it happens from time to time that random events are triggered which can be beneficial as well as evil!
And finally, you will need to keep an eye on the " sensitization ". Indeed, the more you go on an expedition, you develop too quickly or perform big actions (launching rituals, doing research, etc.), the more the demons are likely to find your camp and attack you. And the higher the awareness, the more the attack will consist of many powerful creatures. You will therefore have to be very careful not to develop your colony too quickly, otherwise you risk suffering a raid too important for your poor little colony which will be unable to defend itself!
Now on to the second side of the game, the exploration and combat phases. Thanks to them, you will be able to send one or more of your survivors (or several groups of survivors) on mission in other areas. There are many different areas, each inviting you to collect specific materials, but they will also be places to face various enemies.
There are several types of missions as well. Excavation missions: it is about exploring a specific area to recover materials, these are the "basic" missions. The second missions are assistance missions. They will appear randomly when you are taking care of your colony and, thanks to them, you can go and try to save a survivor who, if successful, will join your camp! The last type of mission is rescue missions: similar to assistances, except that you can run into them randomly, without necessarily being aware!
Rescue missions can be dangerous, as you will need to protect one of your survivors while they try to save a character. The longer the rescuer will take to free the hostage, the more the demons will be able to give the alert and bring in reinforcements, so everything will have to be done to prevent him from being interrupted in order to free the survivor as quickly as possible!
Conclusion
Judgment is a good little survival-management game. Even if, visually, it does not look like much, it absolutely does not bother once you stick to the game. The fact that the cards and the characters are all created in a random way allows an immense replayability. The game is still in development via early access, but it is already well filled in terms of content and can easily occupy many hours, as long as we do not see the time passing while we are looking after our little ones. survivors!
