Amplitude Studios are having one hell of a year. Not only is its strategy title Endless Legend one of the year’s biggest surprises, one of its other games is also going to quietly sneak onto some people’s GOTY lists as well.
That game is Dungeon of the Endless. It’s a… weird game, one that mixes rogue-like dungeon exploration, RPGs and tower defence and somehow gets it all to work.
You play a team of space-farers who crash on an alien planet, and have to escort a crystal through a huge dungeon and get it to the surface. That dungeon is randomly generated, though, and to get through safely you’ll need the help of automated guns (and other helpful gadgets). Only the number of rooms in the dungeon you can use them in are capped, and it’s kinda turn-based in that you can only advance your research/experience every time you open a new door in the dungeon and…
It’s a lot to get your head around — the game’s tutorial even ends with a shrug that you’re going to die a lot — but once it starts making sense, this is a game quite unlike anything you’ve ever played. Confident in what it’s messing with, assured that it’s going to work, brutal in the way it just doesn’t give a hit how you feel because it’s going to kill you at a moment’s notice.
It also has some great pixel art. You should check it out.
Comments
5 responses to “Dungeon Of The Endless Is Pretty Good, Guys”
I’ve looked at possibly getting this a few times… but always changed my mind.
I will now though.
And for those who haven’t played Endless Space as well, that’s bloody good. Amplitude is on a roll.
I wanted to like it, but found it too difficult. The resource scarcity was frustrating, and it was too difficult to farm my heroes up to ULTIMATE POWAH, which is ideally what I want from a game with heroes you can level up. I don’t even mind unit-death in games like XCOM, but
90%uh… 50% of cases in XCOM it’s because you did something stupid or careless, whereas in Dungeon of the Endless it felt more like… I dunno… unmanageable bullshit was responsible for character deaths.I’m not cut out for most roguelikes, hey.
As some one that sucks at RTS titles; I gotta say that the game ain’t that hard. As soon as you work out how the room to room economy works its pretty straight forward. The only downside to a game like this is that the first three levels make or break you; if you don’t find research before the end of the second floor you are in for a bad time.
Yes this is a great game. Although the multiplayer does need some refinement. Resource module upgrades don’t seem to do anything, which is a frustration. (Unless there is something I really don’t understand).
Also I am angry at the gif at the top of this post, why would you open three doors at once!!!
10/10