Judgement: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
Suncrash
I first heard about indie developer Suncrash’s apocalyptic survival game, Judgement: Apocalypse Survival Simulation, a couple of years ago when it first appeared on Steam’s Early Access. I played it a few times and thought that the art style was a little lackluster but the concept was pretty interesting.
Judgment has finally made it out of EA and its developers couldn’t have chosen a better time to release it. Survival RTS games are becoming the “in” thing right now within the strategy market, spearheaded by titles such as Frostpunk, They are Billions, Rimworld, and Surviving Mars. However, out of those three hot titles, Judgement shares much more in common with the zombie-pocalyse hit, They are Billions.
That’s because in Judgment the environment isn’t your enemy – demonic forces are. It’s also similar to Billions in that it’s more of a tower defense game than it is a survival one. In this game, you oversee a small band of survivors within a post-apocalyptic near future. In fact, the environment is your one and only possible savior since it contains the valuable resources you will need to ward off the demons and eventually take the fight to them.
Each of your survivalists is customizable, at least to a certain degree. The intro shows people getting overwhelmed by hordes of demons and so the game begins with your small, rag-tag band who have wisely set up shop out in the isolation of the woods. Apparently, they were thinking “them demons won’t come for us way out here.”
However, as you begin to build up your little fledgling encampment, those pesky demons do indeed find you. Not only that, but they will start to harass you in bigger and bigger packs. Therefore, the name of the game here is to build up your camp by gathering resources and crafting weapons and other useful equipment so that you can stand up against the red-colored interlopers. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself getting crushed underneath their cloven hooves.
The base building aspect itself is pretty standard—you can construct different types of cabins, farms, workbenches, and the like. Usually, with survival games like this, you are incentivized to improve your base’s infrastructure as well as the types of weapons which you can use. In Judgment (I was playing on Normal Difficulty), once I had a couple of farms and water wells up and armed my gang with basic hunting bows, it was relatively easy to ward off the demonic incursions.
One thing that I found bizarre is that each of your characters is required to eat and drink about twenty times per day because your hunger and thirst meters whittle away so quickly.
As your characters gain experience they’ll level up, which unlocks new traits and skills, such as resistance to hunger and thirst, or improved melee proficiency. Combat-mechanic-wise, Judgment is pretty straight forward—you see a demon, click on it, and watch your survivor shoot or melee attack it. You can also use any special abilities that they have learned as well, in order to increase your chances in combat.
Once you get to later stages of the game (just like in Rimworld), you can gather a bunch of provisions together, assemble a task force composed of your meanest and toughest characters, and go out exploring. The game’s map is pretty large (not by Rimworld’s standards though) allowing your task force to scavenge around for more valuable resources (and weapons) while fending off various bands of increasingly dangerous demons.
In all, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation is a decent survival RTS title. There were some enjoyable tower defense moments when I fended off large groups of demons, but in the end, the graphics and art style left a lot to be desired. For what it does—simulate fending off waves of demons—it does capably. However, for those looking for a more engaging, narrative-driven experience such as Frostpunk (with prettier visuals to boot) it may not have enough going for it to provide much longevity.
SCORE: 71%
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation features outstanding graphics that make its survival RTS gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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