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It’s one hour deep into a station dive before things take a sharp turn for the worse. Every teammate’s weapon is suddenly subpar, the wrong doors were opened, wrong buffs deactivated, and the crabby little crystal bot’s already suffered a beating. In Endless Dungeon — a modern refresh of 2014’s one-of-a-kind roguelite hybrid Dungeon of the Endless — things often go from routine rut to restart in the blink of an eye. It’s a dynamic aligned with the title’s front loaded high-challenge proposition, but its peculiar game feel and rhythms risk alienating trigger-happy players who’d prefer to get meaningfully stronger and OP every step of the way.
Space Dungeons, Then And Now
Dungeon of the Endless was an outlier on release, a sprawling roguelike dungeon-crawling RPG mixed with survival and tower-defense gameplay. It featured a gorgeous retro art style — a somewhat singular banner-wave during those budding years when pixel art in games became reappraised by the masses — and a deep sci-fi narrative told through lore drops and emergent storytelling. The latter wasn’t necessarily surprising, considering how the game was originally devised as a small side project to accompany AMPLITUDE Studios' flagship releases Endless Space and Endless Legend, but it ended up commanding a larger audience as its fanbase cohered through a year spent in Early Access, and beyond.
Those original fans will have to face how Endless Dungeon tampers with its predecessor’s formula to deliver a real-time action framework this time, while yet retaining some of its foundational mechanics. They're the same audience who will most likely cobble together a quick understanding of the new game’s obtuse tricks, rules, and best practices; for the rest, frustration with the game’s somewhat bizarre structure could be a problem, especially if they prefer to dive in solo.
Getting Started At The Saloon
All playthroughs begin in the Saloon, Endless Dungeon’s hub area and co-op lobby, which presents a few upgradeable secrets and unlockables tucked into simple character and prop interactions. First impressions of the game’s departure from pixelated graphics are altogether excellent, with a smoothly animated 3D isometric style that magically combines lighting, colors, and particle effects into a readable and attractive presentation. The writing is playfully strange throughout, and the OST and sound effects seem sculpted to fit the dark, slightly sarcastic sci-fi storytelling and atmosphere.
The script plays out in a classic roguelite sense, with a group of travelers and malcontents trapped on a space station. To break free of its bonds, someone has to carry a crystal-laden robot down into the depths of the station to reactivate its core, which should disarm its defenses and allow for a quick exit. On failure, these adventurers are just whisked back to the Saloon to reorient themselves and try again.
Groups of one to three players pick a single starting point onward out of the hub — a basic AI can fill in for one or two partners in solo mode — with three starter zones eventually unlocked with district keys found in later areas. Each biome possesses their own themed flavor and different monster spawner types, all of which react to simple rock-paper-scissors elemental systems, where certain elements are weaker or stronger against specific mobs. The overall goal in each level is to bring the crystal bot from start to end, all while waves of creatures relentlessly target it for destruction, an eventuality which functions as a team wipe.
Turret Tactics Over Gunplay
The start of any Endless Dungeon level looks the same every time: a single room, a squad of heroes, an immobile bot, and a group of doors. Opening a door grants three different resources: science upgrades and unlocks new turrets, industry is required to install turrets or generators and purchase merchant stock, and food is used to obtain cumulative hero buffs and medkits. Additionally, opening a door advances the current danger window until it eventually results in a monster wave, with all spawners firing off their payload of mobs in a march towards the crystal bot.
Individual heroes have their own loosely readable class affinities (like tank/healer/scout) and loot-dropped heavy guns or handguns are restricted to certain characters for use. They also each wield a unique passive ability, can equip up to two weapons at a time, and use a special move and an ultimate, but any hero can install turrets in designated slots throughout each map. Most any group of heroes can typically hold their own against small waves, but those turrets quickly become a necessity. There are a few different elemental damage turrets, as well as buffing turrets, which can affect things like critical damage or overall DPS in a given room. Shoving a turret repairs it and, after it’s destroyed enough monsters, will upgrade it to be even more efficient.
The turrets are a key ingredient in Endless Dungeon’s structure; players might feel more than formidable against certain waves, but the game intends for turrets to be smartly installed and upgraded to fend off the toughest special waves and scenarios. After the door to the next area is revealed and activated (and in a few other special instances), the crystal bot will have to be slowly escorted from one end of the map to the other, where a well-designed turret matrix will be ruthlessly tested, showing the full brunt of the game’s adherence to the tower defense genre.
The Risk Of One-And-Done Runs
That’s a harsh lesson to learn after burning one or two hours on a single run before it's trashed in mere seconds. Then it’s back to the Saloon with whatever available upgrades and currency were collected, which will result in…well, usually not much. Permanent unlocks include new heroes to select, each of whom have a single specific quest that unlocks other skill boosts and such, but most runs in the game don't lead to a genuine sense of power creep, time after time.
Rinsing the hero quests is curiously simple, and the resultant upgrades are useful, but fairly limited. Alternate entry points into the station are a theoretically nice way to mix things up, but each biome isn’t staggeringly different to one another. They all still amount to opening doors, lucking into good drops and more feasible maps, setting up the same small selection of turrets. Endless Dungeon’s systems are provably refined and precisely positioned, but they don’t make enough room for the expectant magic found in other roguelites: the crazy broken builds, the RNG surprises, the inspiring differentiation between runs.
More Or Less Multiplayer-Only
Solo players will doubtlessly struggle in Endless Dungeon, although AI companions are able to take on simple command prompts and employ payload defense tactics while lacking any complicated strategic capabilities, like upgrading turrets when ready. Gaining a third AI helper is a perk which confusingly has to be unlocked with scrap currency, a weirdly punishing design decision for single player devotees.
Online co-op practically feels like the only way to go, and coordinating with friends over voice coms works as well as one would expect. Co-op play also has its own eccentricities, and the lack of a fully-fledged map ping system may lead to issues when playing with international companions. Unvetted players may also up and decide to just sabotage a run, opening random doors or spending shared resources selfishly; sure, the same can happen with any co-op game, but these shenanigans combined with Endless Dungeon’s lengthier runs could lead to a rightful rage-quit.
Boss Battles Raise The Bar
A boss lies in wait on the second floor of any route, and these encounters are a notable high point for Endless Dungeon. Every boss incorporates some interesting wrinkle to the game’s standard, whether it’s dodging the boss’ AOE attacks while contending with swarms or, in one special instance, guiding the crystal bot to a weakpoint while scurrying around to protect it from damage. There’s only one boss encounter and one final boss in any complete run, but each represents a well-designed confrontation which requires full team alignment to solve.
There are a few additional features in Endless Dungeon, like special challenge modifiers which can be activated at the Saloon’s bar, as well as some sweet unlockable skins for each hero. The story is told through lightly animated cinematic interludes, and taking the time to read through the lore points in each level or watch the accumulated animated shorts in the Saloon reveals the care and attention that’s been paid to the narrative, even though it’s hard to appreciate these finer details in the midst of a frantic co-op session.
Final Thoughts & Review Score
Endless Dungeon is a fascinating update of a fascinating game. Adapting Dungeon of the Endless into a real-time structure results in a game that is arguably more approachable and readable than its predecessor, and the basic gunplay and turret formations are easy to understand and fun to learn, even when they result in failed runs along the way to mastery.
However, it’s also clear that AMPLITUDE Studios has sanded off a lot of the corners of its unconventional concept. The complexity has been dialed down and deeper RPG elements denatured, and not necessarily for the better. Most permanent unlocks and temporary upgrades feel sadly uninspired — like the numerous minimal X% stat buffs to sift through — making it feel as if the game’s foundation itself was so carefully balanced that it would risk being broken by anything drastic. Considering how lengthy runs are the name of the game, the lack of radical perks and hero changes might dampen a player’s resolve to dive in again after a crucial mistake.
Still, Endless Dungeon’s strong presentation, characterful sci-fi culture, and unique cooperative approach remains intact. It’s a game of on-the-fly decisions and intimidating combat encounters, with success often separated from failure by a hair. Those qualities should draw in the more patient and masochistic roguelite aficionados, and better still if they have a like-minded, agreeable team in tow, the players committed to see the treacherous paths to the reactor all the way through and come back for more. Ultimately, Endless Dungeon offers a smart and strategic co-op challenge with minimal hand-holding, but its structure feels all a little too delicate to deliver up the next real roguelite obsession.
Source: Endless Universe/YouTube
Endless Dungeon releases on October 19 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. A digital PC code was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review.