Dungeon of the Endless review

Your spaceship gets destroyed, sending a large chunk of it crashing down onto the planet below, into the sub-basement of some sort of facility, so deep that it is a dungeon. There, you start with two survivors, chosen from a crew of inmates and guards that have their own strengths and weaknesses. All you have to do is get to the elevator on each level to progress towards the surface.

But it’s never that simple.

Dungeon of the Endless is a hybrid that’s part rogue-like, part dungeon crawler, and part tower defense. There’s a lot of elements at play. Players explore each level of the unknown dungeon, encountering enemies that are trying to kill you and get to your ship where you have a power supply. While you unlock doors to explore, you gain more of the three resources available: Industry to build things, Science for upgrades, and Food to heal and upgrade members of your team. While your team starts as two, you’ll encounter other survivors that you can recruit for a certain amount of food. Characters gain levels and abilities, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and you can equip them with items and weapons to make your max squad of four ready to handle the challenges ahead.

While you explore the ship, you can build structures that give you more of those three resources in the rooms you’ve uncovered. You’ll also keep finding more Dust, which powers those rooms. Of course, you have a limited supply of Dust, so you’ll have to choose what rooms you want powered. Industry will also allow you to build turrets, helping you defend against waves of enemies that will randomly come for your ship. Why do you want to protect the ship? Because you have a crystal onboard that will power the elevator, bringing you to the next level. To get the crystal to the elevator, one of the members of your team will have to carry it, which slows them down, and they can’t attack while carrying it. The method I found best for this is to explore the entire dungeon, find the elevator, build defenses creating a path from your ship to the elevator, and then have your team guard the one carrying the crystal.

It took me a while to come up with a strategy that worked for me. The game provides little explanation at how things operate and what you should do. It’s all about figuring things out on your own. Part of me appreciates the lack of hand-holding, but it was also quite a frustrating experience figuring out how the game works. The first time I got to the elevator, I didn’t know that my whole team had to be on it to bring them all to the next level. So when I got there, I only had one crew member. Needless to say, things ended poorly. I would appreciate some more explanation into the game’s systems instead of having to just figure most of it out, but after a few hours with the game you’ll have a strong grasp of everything.

Dungeon of the Endless is also really difficult. There’s no continue; once you’re dead you start over, and the dungeons are randomly generated, so trying to memorize map layouts is pointless. I played most of the game on Too Easy, which is still really difficult. I found that I had to always keep a close eye on my party’s health with enough food to heal them up.

The visuals are pixilated. I realize that it might not appeal to some, but as a huge fan of FTL: Faster than Light, I love the look that Amplitude Studios went with here. As a matter of fact, FTL is a good comparison for this game. While they’re not at all the same, the difficulty is something that the two share in common. One last thing I should mention is the controls, which is just left click and right click. You don’t get to choose where in the room the characters walk to; you just choose the room. You also can’t target specific enemies, which is something I would have liked. I also found myself wanting to move multiple characters to the same location at once, but instead you have to move them one by one.

I love a lot of what Dungeon of the Endless does. It’s painfully difficult and doesn’t hold your hand, but I found myself embracing the challenge and celebrating every level I survived. You’ll figure out what team and strategy works for you, and you’ll adapt where you have to. The mixture of rogue-like and tower defense works brilliantly here. The only thing really holding the game back is the lack of explanation of how things work, and some of the UI/movement/combat decisions.

Reviewed with a provided Steam code.