INTRO:
There is something in the psyche of game consumers and developers since the advent of digital games in the 1970s. This something is a ghastly yet delectable mix of aversion and fetishism towards enclosed places that promise both danger and reward. These places are, of course, “dungeons”, a word that is and will always be entrenched in video game parlance.
It is so pervasive, that game developers who started by making completely different kinds of games might eventually consider making a game about dungeons. Amplitude Studios, which made the 4X game IP that is Endless Space, is one such example.
PREMISE:
Where Endless Space is about wondrous empire-making and uncovering the secrets of the galaxy, Dungeon of the Endless is about whimsical survival and escape.
A prison-ship of sorts has been launched towards a certain world, known for the secrets underneath its crust. Unbeknownst to its crew and passengers, it will be crippled above said world, forcing them to land on the world with escape craft of dubious function.
Said escape craft can survive the landing, but by expending all of their energy by digging deep into the world. The survivors find themselves in peculiarly built-up environs, having to survive against hordes of monsters that have been riled up by their arrival. They have to manage their resources and exploration carefully, with the goal of finding the elevators that would bring them to the surface.
![Learning the hard way is not fun. There is a wiki for the game; learn through that instead.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/221/2215356/3403089-01%20yeahhhh.png)
DUNGEON FLOORS:
The survivors emerge into an underground complex, presumably made by the ancient Endless. The complex is composed of about a dozen floors. Each floor is procedurally generated to have a certain number of rooms. Higher-numbered floors generally have more rooms than the previous ones.
Each floor that the player has cleared also subtly increases the severity of the monster attacks on the subsequent levels, though it is not the greatest of factors.
There are several types of floors; they are called “biomes”, following a trend that has been popularized by the likes of Minecraft. These determine the kinds of enemies and, to a much lesser degree, the rewards that the player might find. (Of course, the biomes also determine the cosmetic appearance of the floor.)
DOORS & TURNS:
The number of doors that the player has opened is used for the purpose of measuring the effective progress that the player has spent on a floor of the dungeon. This means that the player can do anything and take as much time as he/she likes before opening another door.
For whatever reason, opening a door triggers reactions from the floor. These will be described later, but it should be mentioned now that these reactions are the tangible results of progressing through a floor.
The keyword to be focused on is “door”. A player may have uncovered a room and any other room that is adjacent to a room, but one of the doors linking a room to another already uncovered room may be unopened. Lowering that door will trigger the next step in the player’s progress through a floor, even though no new rooms have been uncovered.
In other words, the opening of doors is practically analogous to ending a turn in a turn-based game.
SEQUENCE OF REACTIONS:
The aforementioned reactions happen in a sequence; this is a subtle game design that can be observed and exploited by a cunning player.
The first reactions are the generation of resources. The resources are always generated in the following order: Industry, Science, Food and Dust. These resources will be described later. This is followed by the spawning of anything in a discovered room, and this is in turn followed by a lull of a second or two. Next, the game calculates the probabilities of monster waves being spawned, and spawns the waves, if any.
The aforementioned lull can be used to shuffle power around, if only to maximize resource generation while minimizing monster spawns with the player’s limited supply of Dust. (Again, these gameplay elements will be described further later.) This is of course quite risky to do, even with the pause feature.
![It is usually wise to NOT complete a potential loop of pathways; a completed loop make monster waves more difficult to funnel.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/221/2215356/3403090-02%20don%27t%20open%20door.png)
UNCOVERING ROOMS:
Opening a door into unexplored regions of the floor typically leads to the discovery of a room.
The size of a room and the number of doorways that it has (which also indicate the number of rooms that it is connected to) are already determined when the floor is procedurally generated. However, its contents are only generated when the room is discovered.
Nonetheless, the overarching nature of the contents is determined when the floor is generated. For example, a room that has been assigned to have loot will have loot, but the type of loot is randomized. This can be exploited to a limited degree by unscrupulous players who make back-ups of game-save data.
Sometimes though, the room would simply have nothing, other than module slots. (There will be more on these shortly.)
MODULE SLOTS:
A room might be one of the nodes in the energy grid of the floor. If so, it will have slots for the installation of modules (more on these later).
There are two types of module slots: major and minor. Major slots are for major modules, which provide the most potent of benefits to the player. Minor slots are for minor modules, which are devices that help in the defense of a room or that bolster the effectiveness of heroes and/or major modules in the rooms.
A room with module slots may only have minor slots. This greatly limits the beneficial potential of the room, but even these rooms can be used for the purpose of stalling or whittling enemy waves (assuming that they actually pass through the room).
Module slots generally stay around, unless there is a Dust Generator that is created as “loot” for the room. If the player is unlucky in the RNG roll for the activation of the Generator, all module slots in the room are removed.
LOOT BLOCKING MAJOR MODULE SLOT:
Any loot that is generated in a room will block the major module slot of the room, if there is any. This is generally not an issue in the case of readily collectible loot, but if the loot are devices that have to be activated with the expenditure of resources (usually Industry), this can be a problem. If the player does not have the resources to activate them, they continue to obstruct any attempt to build major modules in their rooms.
![The Crystal is always there to hear the characters’ woes, even if the others are uncaring. The Crystal is a good listener.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/221/2215356/3403092-03%20character%20banter.png)
THE CRYSTAL & POWER NETWORK:
The escape craft that bore the survivors has a peculiarly portable power source. This is just as well, because the underground complex does not have entirely functional power systems. The crystal has to be used to power the complex, room by room. In order to power a room that is away from the crystal, all of the rooms in between it and the room with the crystal have to be powered.
Breaking the sequence of rooms causes any rooms that are further down the line from the point of breakage to be powered down. This is not a good thing, but breaking power is entirely in the control of the player; there does not appear to be any external factors that cause power breakage.
DUST:
The crystal cannot power every room on a floor, at least not always. This is because it is limited by its energy source, the “Dust”.
Dust is an esoteric golden sand-like substance. It happens to be the main form of currency across the entire galaxy in Endless Space fiction. Its value comes not from its golden lustre (though it is certainly beautiful), but from its wondrous properties. In the lore of the Endless IP, it can produce power, manufacture things on the microscopic level, and even grant super-powers to individuals with the will to harness Dust without losing their sanity.
In Dungeon of the Endless, it so happens that the underground complex has a lot of Dust. Some rooms, when discovered, readily yield any Dust that had been in them. The Dust enters the energy grid of the floor, seemingly flowing back to the Crystal and accumulating in it.
Gameplay-wise, Dust is not a consumable resource, or at least is not spent like the other three. Every ten units of Dust can generate enough power indefinitely to power one room. Incidentally, the Crystal always starts each floor with some Dust (but gradually less as the number of cleared floors increases), so the player can power the first few rooms.
If the Crystal is attacked – and it certainly draws attention from monsters – it loses Dust. Lost Dust also leads to rooms being powered down. If the Crystal loses all of its Dust, the player is doomed. Therefore, protecting the Crystal from encroaching enemies is important. This is complicated by the fact that doors cannot be raised once lowered, and the room with the Crystal has no module slots whatsoever.
The main source of Dust is the Dust from discovered rooms, but there are others. Some enemies drop Dust; they have swirly golden vapours around them. Dust can also be obtained from Dust Generators, which are special devices that can either waste the player’s Industry resource (and wipe out all module slots in the rooms that they are in) or give a lot of Dust in return. There are also merchants who trade in Dust; merchants will be described further later.
Among the four resources, Dust is the only one that the player cannot keep indefinitely. Presumably, the Crystal expends most of the Dust in it when it is used to power the elevator to the next floor, but this is of course a matter of narrative. Gameplay-wise, it prevents the player from hoarding enough Dust to power every room in the subsequent floors, thus requiring the player to plan the allocation of power to rooms, floor to floor to floor.
SELF-POWERED ROOMS:
Not all rooms in the underground complex are decrepit. Some of them have functional power; hence they are “self-powered”, to use the game’s own parlance. These rooms will always be powered, which is of considerable benefit to the player, especially at monitoring and weakening incoming monster waves.
![It is very rare to have enough Dust to power all rooms in a floor.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403093-04%20very%20rare%20to%20power%20up%20all%20rooms.jpg)
MODULES:
Modules can only work in powered rooms; if they are unpowered, they provide no benefit whatsoever and can still be damaged (though they can still be repaired when unpowered too).
Major modules are the mainstay of the player’s economy on a floor. In particular, there are the resource generation modules, which, obviously, produce resources. However, to prevent the player from accruing too many resources as to imbalance the gameplay, the Industry cost to build a resource module increases with each major module built (that includes non-resource models).
The non-resource modules are not as critical to the player’s survival as the resource modules, but they do provide a major edge, especially on the higher-numbered floors where there are many rooms to be discovered. Having these modules will help a lot, because most of them grant considerable buffs to heroes and other modules.
Minor modules are often meant for defensive purposes. There are modules that attack monsters in the same room, and there are modules that grant bonuses to heroes that are defending their rooms. Strategic placement of minor modules is often important, because their benefits are only provided to the rooms that they are in.
OPERATING MAJOR MODULES:
The major modules are automated, but apparently their programming is not efficient. For better returns, they have to be operated by a hero with the Operator passive ability. Not just anyone would be suitable for this work though; only those who can develop a high rating in the “Wit” statistic are suitable. This is because the benefits from operating something increases in potency according to the operator’s Wit.
A hero/heroine cannot immediately begin operating a module and reap the benefits from that. One door has to be opened before the hero/heroine is considered to be effectively operating the module. Therefore, the player has to be committed to the placement of an operator; changing his/her location afterwards would come with opportunity costs.
RESOURCES:
As mentioned earlier, there are three resources in addition to Dust. They are named after resources and assets in the Endless Space games, but they certainly work differently in this game.
There is Industry, chief among the three. Industry is needed to build any module, and is also used to activate any loot devices, such as the aforementioned risky but precious Dust Generator. It is a bold but perhaps foolish player indeed if he/she begins a floor by building anything other than an Industry module.
Next, there is Science. As its name suggests already, it is needed to unlock technologies, specifically the modules that the player can install into the aforementioned slots. Interestingly, Science is also used for resetting the cool-down times for the powers of the heroes (more on them later), thus allowing them to withstand the pressure from incoming enemy waves.
![Heroes that have not been recruited into the team will operate any major modules that are in their room.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403095-05%20npc%20heroes%20can%20work%20modules%20too.jpg)
Then, there is Food. Food is the main way to heal the heroes during battles, as to be expected of video-game food. Food, for whatever reason, is also the only way to have the heroes levelled up, and also the only means of hiring heroes wherever they are found.
Resources are only generated by their associated modules when the player has a door opened. They can also be gained as loot, but this is a minor source compared to the resources from modules. It is a simple but effective means of having the player progress through a floor.
HEROES:
The ‘heroes’ are the player’s main assets. They are the aforementioned survivors, and they are different from each other in terms of abilities, potential and personalities.
The heroes are grouped according to three categories, for the purpose of certain abilities that utilize these categories. As mentioned earlier, the ship that they came from is a prison-ship. Thus, one of the group is expectedly the “prisoners”; typically, they are criminals, scoundrels or insane. The other group is the “guards”, who are presumably the wardens and minders. The third group is the “natives”; the natives were presumably caught in the impact of the landing of the escape craft, or they were already in the underground complex.
The grouping is used for perks that give bonuses to characters of specific groups, as long as members of the other groups are not in the same room. The groupings are also used for some minor narrative elements, but otherwise they have no significant impact on storytelling. (The nature of the “natives” will become clearer at the end of the first playthrough.)
In most game modes, the player starts with two heroes; the player gets to pick these from the roster of heroes that have been unlocked for selection. The other heroes that have not been unlocked can be unlocked by finding them in the complex, but they have to be kept alive for at least three floors or they have to survive to the end of a playthrough.
Heroes that are found in the complex are recruited by spending food on them. They are higher than level 1, but their actual levels fluctuate a lot from one discovered hero to another. Their hiring costs fluctuate too (though they seem to be proportional to their character levels.).
The player can only have up to four heroes. The player can replace an existing hero for another; in fact, this is much encouraged. Some discovered heroes are of higher levels than the currently hired ones, and the cost to hire them is lower than the cost to level up the already-hired ones. Furthermore, dismissing heroes gives the player some food, for whatever (narrative) reason.
![Mizi is a member of a minor faction in another Amplitude game, Endless Legend. She also has the most amusing and exaggerated idle animations.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403096-06%20uhhhh.jpg)
HERO STATS:
The heroes have statistics, most of which determine their performance in combat. These statistics increase as they gain levels, though each hero has his/her/its own table of stat increments. For example, tough heroes gain increases to their hitpoints and defense more frequently than increases to their speed or attack cooldown.
The stats can be further altered with the use of gear. There is some min-maxing to be done of course (not to mention that the player needs to come across the gear first), but if the player can do this efficiently, having a tuned-up hero can be gratifying.
EQUIPMENT:
Equipment items are categorized according to the gear slots that they go into. There are weapons, armor and ‘device’ items. Weapons are categorized further into four types: handguns, heavy guns, polearms and blades, bringing the total of gear types to six. (Some others call the heavy guns “SMGs”, but considering their rather heavy nature, this is unlikely.)
Each hero can equip up to three items. Interestingly, the three slots for these items come in permutations, each of which is unique to a specific character. For example, there is a creepy lady who believes that she is a spider; she has a slot for armor, and two slots for device items. Incidentally, she fights unarmed.
Conveniently, the player is shown the changes to a character’s statistics when the player is contemplating whether to have an item equipped or not. Perhaps the most important change is their “DPS”, or damage per second; this is obviously the statistic that determines their damage output, and it is of more worth than the relatively useless “damage per hit”. Incidentally, there are items that reduce attack cooldown, which is a sure-fire way to ramp up DPS.
EQUIPMENT GRADE:
The gear pieces that the heroes can equip are color-coded according to their quality. For example, the backdrop for the picture of a gear piece is grey, if it is of the lowest quality. The higher quality gear pieces are understandably rarer and have higher prices, but they appear more frequently as the floor number gets higher.
HITPOINTS, HEALING & DYING:
The “heroes” are not invincible. They can die, generally when their hitpoints reach zero. Slain heroes are gone permanently from the playthrough, but they do drop their items so that they can be retrieved. (That is, unless they die in one of the interactions between characters.)
When their hitpoints drop too low, the player is notified via visual indicators like increases in the size of their portraits and an alarming sound clip (that is not used for any other occurrence). This is the player’s cue to spend food to heal them, or at least get them out of harm’s way.
Healing heroes by spending food on them can be done by simply clicking the food icon next to their hitpoint meters. The amount of food spent is always fixed at about 4 units, but the amount of hitpoints restored is also fixed too. This means that as the heroes become more powerful and gain more hitpoints, the player needs to make more clicks to heal them.
![It was not easy.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403097-07%20it%20was%20not%20easy.jpg)
Heroes can also be healed through the use of some abilities, but these do not last forever and resetting their cool-downs can be costly. There are modules that heal them automatically, such as the Auto-Doc and Bio-Transference modules, but these either take time (in the case of the Auto-Doc) or involve risks (in the case of the Bio-Transference modules).
In playthroughs made with the regular escape craft and some others, the heroes are rapidly and completely healed when all existing monsters on the floor have been slain. This is convenient, though some escape craft prevent this, thus necessitating more careful planning on the part of the player.
ACTIVATING DEVICES, INTERACTING WITH MERCHANTS & HIRING HEROES:
All of the abovementioned actions have to be performed by a hero. Furthermore, the player has to be looking at the hero when he/she is doing this; only then, the pop-up dialogs that are associated with these actions would appear.
This can seem tedious, but it may have been implemented with the intention of having the player doing such things during down-times, or to add some risk to these activities if they are done during wave attacks.
CARRYING THE CRYSTAL TO THE EXIT:
Each floor ends with the crystal being carried by one of the heroes to the room with the exit, after it has been found. This is more dangerous than it sounds. Somehow, plucking the crystal riles up the hidden monsters of the floor, causing them to randomly but continuously spawn in unpowered rooms. The hero/heroine that is carrying the crystal is slowed down and cannot attack too. Therefore, planning the escape is important.
Interestingly, in previous builds of the game, removing the crystal and having it pass by powered rooms causes them to power down. This makes the trip to the exit more dangerous by every second. This has been toned down in the latest build, which is perhaps more tolerable.
HERO INTERACTIONS:
The personalities of some of the heroes are not just there for cosmetic purposes. If the player has the correct permutation of heroes and heroines at the end of a floor, a conversation – usually a humorous one – between them would trigger. Then, if the player is able to keep these people alive for a few more floors, their interactions conclude and they gain passive abilities that cannot be obtained elsewhere, assuming that they survive.
The passive abilities are not always beneficial though. There might be penalties as there are benefits. Furthermore, some interactions conclude with the death of a character, to be decided randomly by the game. This can be unpleasant, because the player is likely depending on his/her heroes/heroines to carry the day.
![Surprisingly, the Bug versus Bug-eater hero interaction does not result in either hero dying. The same cannot be said about two other hero interactions.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/original/221/2215356/3403098-08%20synergy%20bonus.png)
RESEARCH:
Artifacts are the things that the player needs to make modules available for construction. These are edifices that resemble mineral geodes, and can be found occupying major module slots. The player can invest the science resource into them to unlock modules or upgrade existing ones. Each Artifact can only unlock or upgrade one module at a time, and it takes a few doors before it completes its job.
Artifacts can be attacked, just as if they are major modules; it so happens that some monsters will target them above all else. They are much tougher than major modules, but Artifacts cannot be repaired. On the other hand, having Artifacts destroyed is not an entirely bad thing; it means that they have taken the brunt of attacks from monsters who would have otherwise attacked other less tough things. Destroyed artifacts also release the major module slot that they were sitting on.
(However, if an Artifact is destroyed while it is doing a project, all progress that it has achieved is lost.)
RESEARCH SELECTION:
There is perhaps an issue of frustration with the Artifacts. This is the randomly populated selection of research projects that an Artifact can work on. The selection may not be what the player wants. There is an option to reroll the available selection, but the player has no control over the outcome and every reroll costs a bit of Science.
There are times when the player could get lucky instead. For example, one or more of the projects offered may allow the upgrade of a module by two levels instead of one, for a very affordable price. Yet, this can give the impression that the player is having some success because he/she has been lucky.
HERO ACTIVE ABILITIES:
Each hero/heroine has active abilities that become available after they reach certain levels. These abilities are meant for combat, either improving their survivability (i.e. by buffing heroes or healing them) or eliminating pressure on the heroes (i.e. by killing enemies or hobbling them). Indeed, they are potent enough to turn the tide against overwhelming monster waves (pun not intended).
However, the active abilities have considerable cooldown times that are determined by the number of doors that the player has opened. Most of them have a cycle of two doors at least, so the player will have to be careful about when to use them.
The player can immediately reset the cooldown times by spending Science points on the heroes. This can be quite costly, but resetting and then activating an ability at the onset of a crisis can prevent a disaster (and can be very gratifying).
HERO PASSIVE ABILITIES:
Some capabilities of a hero come in the form of passive abilities. These grant secondary effects that are different from mere statistical bonuses. For example, there is the “Me First!” passive ability, which causes enemies to exclusively target a hero above all else in the room. Obviously, some of them can be risky, but each is guaranteed to have some tactical value in one or more situations.
Interestingly, some passive abilities can be granted by gear to heroes that cannot get them from their level ups. This can result in some potent combinations. For example, a hero with very low attack cooldowns (i.e. he/she/it attacks very rapidly) generally does not have passive abilities that grant secondary effects to regular attacks. Equipping them with gear that grants such abilities can make them particularly overpowered.
![The pepper spray minor modules are very effective at weakening monster waves.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403099-09%20pepper%20sprays%20wreak%20havoc.jpg)
STELES:
There are a few rooms that have peculiar objects that the game calls “Steles”. The Steles activate when their rooms are discovered, imposing their effects on whoever and whatever is on the floor. The effects are not always beneficial.
The player might get lucky; a Stele may grant powerful buffs to heroes and/or the modules. The player might get a package deal: some buffs, and some penalties. The player might hit a spot of bad luck; the Stele inflicts nothing but penalties, or even disables certain assets.
The Steles do not last forever. They may persist for several doors, after which they disappear and release the major module slots that they have been occupying. However, unlike Artifacts, they are indestructible, so the player has no means of ending their effects earlier.
MAP VIEW:
The player can switch to a view that shows rooms, characters, loot and monsters with simplified icons and shapes. This view also happens to be necessary for the powering of rooms, so the player will have to use this view mode anyway.
The other importance of this view mode is the monitoring of monster waves. The icons for monsters will not appear in unpowered rooms, but the view will show the rooms of origin of the waves, which help a lot in figuring out their path of assault.
The biggest problem with the map view is that it is poor at indicating which icon belongs to which hero. Each hero’s icon is actually the head of his/her/its in-game sprite, but it is not particularly detailed in the first place and the icon is quite small in the map view.
MONSTERS:
Most, if not all, of the enemies that the player would face are monstrous single-minded things. They may be spawned when a room is discovered, and they can also spawn out of unpowered rooms. As mentioned earlier, the types of the monsters that the player would face is determined by the biome of the floor. The first appearance of monsters in a floor is a reliable indicator of what the player would encounter when more monsters spawn, so the player can adjust his/her tactics and build priorities accordingly.
For example, the first monsters to appear on a floor might include the crystalline almost-phallic monster that is immune to the attacks of minor modules; this monster is particularly ardent on destroying minor modules, and its attack damages everything in the room, especially modules. The player can expect more of them to appear later in the same floor, so the player might want to build things that improve the toughness of modules, such as the LAN module.
![Most of the writing for interactions between heroes is humorous.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403100-10%20special%20banter.jpg)
The monsters do not coordinate with each other and will follow their own paths; if they happen to be together, that is only because they coincidentally have the same paths. This means that having monster waves move along long stretches of rooms is a viable strategy; the faster monsters would reach the player’s defences first and can be dealt with piece-meal, assuming that they can be quickly eliminated.
The monsters will not attack each other, at least not by default. However, there are means to make them turn on each other. Indeed, these are useful at stalling the momentum of the monster waves.
For example, there is the Pepper Spray minor module (the “pepper” is actually a hallucinogenic substance); any monster that it hits turns hostile to other monsters and will not attack the player’s assets. The other monster that the mind-bent monster attacks will retaliate in turn. Therefore, a single Pepper Spray gun can stall not one, but two monsters. (To balance the pepper spray, it will always shoot at the same monster if it can, instead of shooting unaffected monsters; it will prioritize powerful monsters though.)
COMBAT:
The heroes can only attack monsters that are in the same room as them and vice versa. They will not pursue enemies to another room; the player needs to have them move over to other rooms to chase them down. That said, the heroes will not attack monsters that are in doorways, and vice versa.
Heroes with ranged attacks have to saunter up to a certain minimum distance from their targets before they can start shooting. As for monsters with ranged attacks, most of them have to do the same thing. Melee-only heroes and monsters have to get up close and personal with their enemies, of course.
For better or worse, the player has no control over the targeting priorities of the heroes. They always attack the first monster to enter the room, and will attack this one to the exclusion of the others. The player could order them to move to another room to break their attack behaviour, but ordering them back into the room with enemies has them attacking the nearest enemy yet again.
As mentioned earlier, the monsters have target priorities; these are applicable as long as their behaviour has not been subverted. For the purpose of going after their target priorities, the monsters always know the whereabouts of each of the player’s assets. Their intended targets are not shown, but they always go after the nearest of their preferred targets, if there are more than one. These predictable behaviours help the player change his/her own priorities in order to protect critical assets.
MERCHANTS:
Apparently, the heroes and heroines are not the only sentient and (sort of) reasonable beings that are in the underground complex. There are humanoid people who are, according to them, looking for treasures in the complex, and they are more than happy to trade with anyone who could be customers.
As to be expected of merchants in video games, they buy low and sell high. In particular, the player should think twice about selling items, because if the player wants to buy them back, they have to be bought at inflated prices. (In previous builds of the game, there used to be a buyback feature; this has been removed and as compensation, the merchant’s selling prices have been lowered.)
![The east- and west-facing doorways can obscure the player’s view.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403101-11%20stupid%20crystals.jpg)
Interestingly, each merchant wants to use only one type of resource as trade currency, which limits the player’s options in trading with the merchant. However, this still can be exploited by the player to gain much needed resources or to spend excess resources on more gear. This becomes even more exploitable if the player could find two Merchants on the same floor, provided that they trade in different resources.
There is also a Module that is dedicated to Merchants: the Shop. The Shop, on its own, does no more than give a Merchant a place in a powered room to do business in. (Of course, this also keeps him safe, if the shop is away from the path of monster waves.) The Shop can also be “operated”, giving the player a small amount of Dust for each door. (Presumably, the player is being paid for the hero/heroine’s work at sorting out the Merchant’s inventory.)
DEATH, THE SPECIAL MERCHANT:
The Grim Reaper, officially called “Dood” in the official writing for the game, is also eager to do business with the player, for unknown but likely goofily sinister reasons. However, transactions can only happen one way: moolah goes into the inner pockets of his cloak, in return for his dubious wares.
One of his wares is always The Time of Sands (which is an obvious reference to a certain Ubisoft game, also made by French hands). The only use of this item is that it can revive a slain hero, but this is also the only way for a slain hero to come back. It has no other uses, and it is a cursed item that cannot be taken off after it has been equipped.
The other items that he has on sale have their exact properties hidden from the player’s view; the only certainty that the player gets is the type of the item. Of course, when the player makes a purchase, the actual item is randomly generated. Nevertheless, they are useful options if the player has yet to come across an item to equip a hero with.
The Grim Reaper will not be targeted by monsters at all, for reasons that are perhaps obvious. He will not occupy any Shop module that the player has built.
ESCAPE CRAFTS:
The escape crafts are practically game modes. The player unlocks more of them to start new playthroughs with by achieving specific conditions that are shown in the mode selection screen. Most of the conditions can be achieved through determination. There are also conditions that are alternatives to each other, which is convenient if one of the conditions seems unfair to the player.
WRITING:
There are no legible voice-overs and no cutscenes other than the intro and the outro of a playthrough, so the quality of the writing is the most dominant aspect of the story-telling. Much of the writing has the intention of conveying humour instead of telling a story though.
Most of the writing can be read in the descriptions of the heroes, their abilities, modules and equipment. Some of the humour is convincingly goofy, such as the description of the Mechanical Pal. Some of the humour relies on cringe-worthy wordplay and puns, such as the description of the “T-shirt”.
Ultimately though, only the intro and outro of a playthrough matter with regards to the game’s contribution to the lore of the Endless Space IP. Much of the content of the game is either a parody of things in Endless Space or is a cross-promotional stint for other games.
![Unfortunately, there is no special remark for having specific characters approach and recruit other characters.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403102-12%20recruit%20pyro.jpg)
VISUAL DESIGNS:
Dungeon of the Endless appears to use pixel art, though closer inspection might reveal that its visual designs are not entirely pixel artwork. Firstly, the fluidity of the intro cutscene, especially the animations of the escape craft, strongly suggests that there is a mixture of simple 3D models draped over with pixelated textures and pixelated further with shaders. (The game happens to utilize the Unity engine, which can do such things.)
The sprites for heroes, monsters and cosmetic objects in rooms appear to be frame captures of the aforementioned kind of models with textures. The freeze frames are then mounted on otherwise invisible 3D objects that move about the floors. This masking is noticeable, but not entirely unconvincing because this allowed the game’s designers to apply very convincing graphical effects on them, such as angled lighting and shadows.
The animations of the sprites for characters and monsters are the most notable visual designs. The heroes and heroines have goofy idling animations, and most monsters have death throes that are gratifying to watch before they disappear with red splotches. Other examples include the bows that merchants (and Dood) make whenever a hero enters the room that they are in.
SOUND DESIGNS:
There are no voice-overs, though the monsters do make beastly noises as they romp through a floor or fight. Speaking of which, the noises of (sci-fi) battles would be particularly pervasive; they can be heard even if the player’s attention is away from the battle (for whatever reason). Perhaps the most memorable sound clip that the player would remember is that of a door hissing as it is opened; after all, opportunity or disaster tends to follow the opening of a door.
The music though, is the most prominent of the sound designs. Composed by FlyByNo, the soundtracks in this game are yet another set that the composer has made for Amplitude Studio’s games. This time around though, the soundtracks are entirely electronic with nothing that resembles real instruments. Nevertheless, they are memorable. For example, there is the loud and melancholic track for the main menu, and the heart-thumping ominous track that plays whenever the player has the crystal detached.
![The outro of a playthrough is very exhilarating, at least for the first time.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_medium/221/2215356/3403103-13%20beautiful%20sunlight.jpg)
CONCLUSION:
Dungeon of the Endless is something different from Amplitude Studios. It may not be the developer’s flagship series, but it was certainly refreshing, especially at how it merged turn-based gameplay, tower defense and hero-based progression systems.
Ultimately though, the best bits of Dungeon of the Endless can be found within the first couple of playthroughs. After that, there is the gradually dwindling freshness of the content in the game. Follow-up post-release content and the different escape craft did extend the life of the game, but there have not been anything that are significant game-changers. Nevertheless, the game is great while it lasted.