Endless Dungeon attempts to marry the concepts of roguelike progression, isometric twin-stick shooters, tower defense, and run-of-the-mill escort missions into one appealing package. There is a problem, though: out of the gate, I didn’t find most of my time with Endless Dungeon all that fun. That isn’t to say the game is bad overall, but the review felt like a chore, and you’ll soon understand why.
If you were like me, you may be looking at your Steam library, wondering why Endless Dungeon sounds so familiar. Developed by Amplitude Studios, Endless Dungeon is the latest installment in the ‘Endless’ series. Sort of the more aesthetically pleasing (depending on who you ask) big brother of Dungeon of the Endless, this offers a bit more old-school Saturday morning cartoon vibe than previous ‘Endless’ installments and a more isometric twin-stick shooter approach.
Diving into the Endless
Endless Dungeon starts with enough bang to get your interests piqued. You get control of the sole survivor, who happens to be the janitor, of a crash that kills the more heroic members of your crew. You meet a rough and tumble wise-cracking soldier that helps you through the basics. No matter your character, your goal is to ultimately escort a defenseless robot through the maze-like chambers of the space station. If the bot is destroyed or your team falls, you are rebooted back at the saloon, which serves as the central hub of the game.
You will see A LOT of the saloon through your many attempts to escort the robot to the station’s core. The saloon also serves as the hub when you want to play co-op as well. The thing with the saloon is that while it’s a neat place on the surface, it doesn’t do much outside of serving as a standard no-frills hub. You can’t try out weapons or abilities, you get a basic lore library to learn about characters and a simplistic option to improve your characters slightly.
An Excercise in Futility
Before I go into Endless Dungeon’s characters, we will go over the standard gameplay loop. As you progress through the game, you earn entrance into a few different areas of the station. Within each wing, the goal is to open doors of the wing you are in; research turrets needed to handle portions of the defense workload, and do your best to gear up with what you need to stay alive and keep the bot safe. The secondary wings will also feature a boss to fight.
Each Endless Dungeon wing has a theme. You may encounter more bugs, bots, blobs, or blurs on each wing’s spawners. Each enemy type has its strengths and weaknesses and while having the right guns helps, the right turrets can make a world of difference. Bugs are strong against acid but weak against fire. Bots aren’t affected much by light but are shut down with electricity.
Blobs can’t deal with acid, but soak up electricity damage like a sponge. Finally, the ghostly blurs are banished easily with light but shrug off fire damage. Having the right tools for the job is important, but as you can only carry two guns on a character, using the right turrets is important. Endless Dungeon has a slew of offensive, defensive, and support-based turrets—each with generally a weaker long-range version and a more potent shorter-range one. You will start your run with the standard generic physical damage turret and then will have to research randomly selected turrets while on the runs to add to that. Weapons can be bought from the merchant or found in chests, which is also random as well. This is also how you’ll find most collectibles and progression tokens.
You will juggle your turret types, and weapons to try to keep Endless Dungeon’s crystal robot alive, which sounds sort of easy, except you have to put it in immediate danger often. You must order it to dig up upgrades, unlock doors, and advance to a new area or floor. Playing solo can be a pain because every time an enemy wave is triggered, you run a larger risk of whittling away at the non-recoverable health or the bot for the run. Of course, when that hits 0, it’s back to the saloon.
Endless Dungeon does offer a handful of different character archetypes for you to choose from that you will unlock on runs. These characters have their lore and their strengths and weaknesses. Support characters and provide faster repairs or aid their teammates; defensive characters can draw enemies away from their intended target and take a hit, and offensive characters are built to decimate enemies faster. Each character has a normal skill, which is the base aspect of their kit, and an ultimate, which is usually your “Oh s**t” button. They each offer a standard weapon type, but almost every character’s weapons overlap to an extent, so skills are what sets them apart.
It’s important to note here that when you play Endless Dungeon alone, you can freely swap between two (or later three) characters as needed. This will allow a bit more flexibility on weapon types, but I also noticed that the AI isn’t super great, so expect to see them mindlessly standing around if you are trying to keep waves at a distance. This is most noticeable when fighting bosses. In single-player, turrets will handle most of the heavy lifting, but you won’t be able to watch the chaos, as you’ll need to keep your characters near the crystal bot to eliminate stragglers.
At this point, you may be reading this and expecting Endless Dungeon to be getting an astronomically low score. I was thinking this too, that is until I was able to play the game co-op. I can tell you with absolute certainty that Endless Dungeon is a game that was first and foremost meant to be played with other humans. The game is a different experience when you have one or two other people with you. Let’s talk about it.
Better Together
Playing Endless Dungeon co-op means you can do more than one thing at a time. I was able to work on thinning out a herd of enemies we didn’t unlock a turret to deal with while my teammate watched over the crystal bot. We also were able to go in separate directions and clear the rooms faster, which made progression towards the core so much quicker. There are points where the crystal bot can be upgraded, but it requires escorting it to the drill point and back to a base. One of us was able to cover the bot while the other ran back to trigger the base. This alleviated so much frustration.
My first playthrough with co-op was with our own Xevrin. While our run wasn’t flawless and was stopped by not quite understanding boss mechanics, it was the most fun I had with Endless Dungeon up to this point. The grind was less chore-like and while we were restricted to my world as I was the host, Xevrin could still gain his own unlocks and currency for his game when our session ended. Co-op will only allow you to use characters you have personally unlocked, so it will still require some work to use more than the standard three characters that the game gives you at the start. I was able to link up with other players as well; having their stronger skills made it much easier to make it through different wings, and we proceeded down to the core efficiently. The progression you unlock is only for the host player, so keep that in mind as well.
Verdict
Endless Dungeon suffers from a lot of different issues. Lore dumps are only available in a library tab in the saloon, so there isn’t much in ways of story. I like roguelike games, and I began to wonder if I really did, or I just liked the ones I had played. Single-player is painfully bland, and the random aspects will often put you in nearly unwinnable situations. There is a lot that the game doesn’t outright explain, which had me consulting things like the in-game glossary for clarification. However, co-op turns the game upside down and gives a lot more enjoyment for your time.
If you have been thinking about jumping into Endless Dungeon, don’t do it alone, which means at this moment, you and a friend will have to fork out at least $40. You may want to wait for a Steam sale for this one.
Full Disclosure: Copies of this game were provided by PR for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PC.
