Endless Dungeon Is Doing What Every Smart Sequel Should Do

I love it when studios take ideas and concepts from earlier games and find clever ways to reuse them down the road. And Amplitude Studios, who are also busy working on their own Civ-esque 4X, are doing just that with Endless Dungeon.

When Endless Dungeon first appeared, it looked like a neat flex from Amplitude’s regular fare. They’ve done strategy before, but not straight up isometric action. But hey, Endless Space, Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless all slapped, so why not?

Dungeon of the Endless is the studio’s most unique title, though. It’s partly a tower defence game, partly an RPG, part dungeon exploration, part resource management, part rogue-lite, part strategy. The goal was to search for the exit on each level, clearing out rooms and dealing with extra waves of enemies the further you progressed.

Your starting room had a crystal which effectively provided the power to rooms later on. As you explored, those rooms could provide extra research, food to recruit new heroes or industry (money).

But as it turns out, Endless Dungeon is more of a sequel to Dungeon of the Endless than it first seemed. In the latest trailer shown off early Friday morning Australian time, some familiar Dungeon of the Endless concepts returned.

Defending the crystal is back, as is the turret defence elements. Endless Dungeon is still a twin-stick shooter; you didn’t directly control your heroes in Dungeon of the Endless. And the rogue-lite elements are still there, too.

I’m keen to get hands on with the game to see if some of the other elements of Dungeon of the Endless have been simplified a bit. Having to juggle three seperate resources in Dungeon of the Endless was a bit much for some, especially when paired with active abilities on your heroes, turret placement, microing heroes to keep the crystal alive, keeping your party balanced and making sure you invest enough into research for future floors.

If Endless Dungeon can smooth over the rougher cracks, it could be an absolute winner. Amplitude already has a solid record, and if they can convert the spirit of Dungeon of the Endless in something more translatable, that solid record might translate into a much bigger hit.

Endless Dungeon didn’t announce a release date in the trailer, but it is targeting PC, Switch, last and current gen consoles. A separate release emailed to media said it will be “released on consoles in 2022”, although it’s not clear what that means for PC users.