Dungeon of the Endless

[spelk]

*Dungeon of the Endless...*

Absolutely and unreservedly in love with this game, even in its Early Access state.

Its a roguelike, tower defense, RPG hybrid that just works effortlessly in combining all elements into a tense strategy game that has procedurally generated dungeons and heroes with unique abilities that encourages you to become attached to them, and then be desperate when the permadeath hits.

You have to carry your crashed shuttles power crystal through a maze of sci fi dungeon rooms. You only have the two heroes that crash landed. You open each airlocked door, with anticipation of what is beyond. As you deliberately carve a path through the maze to find the exit, you have to gather resources, industrial (to build things), biological (to heal and level up heroes), dust (dropped from the entrails of your enemy) to power up rooms with light and make the defences within functional. Dust is also the currency with which you can buy equipment/weapons from wandering merchants. So theres a balance between powering up a path, and getting new kit.

This intricate balance, means you have to be really careful which doors you open up, because from opened but darkened rooms come the snapping horde! In waves. Ultimately to see your heroes destroyed, but also to break the crystal and make the rooms dark again.

You command heroes, and tell them where to go, what to open. They auto-attack enemies in a room. You also build resource crystals on powered up rooms with appropriate crystal slots. Building a crystal costs industrial resources and gets increasingly more expensive. So first room has an industrial crystal, second room has a biocrystal, and so on. So that each open of a door, you net the resources pumped out by these structures. But with each open of the next door, comes the clawing enemy. They will destroy all crystals pumps if left to it. It's your job to place heroes, and defensive structures (turrets, mines, healing posts, extra damage posts) to prevent your demise.

As you carve this path through, you can turn power off to cul-de-sac in order to scrape together dust to buy kit, or to re-route power to another more resource lucrative track. But beware, darkened exposed rooms become sources of the creeping enemy. So make sure you have a heavily defended choke-point/killzone.

If damage to your defensive structures occurs some heroes have the ability to repair. Also, in combat you can spend bio crystals to heal heroes on the fly. However, this is also used to level up heroes (making them tougher) and also to buy new heroes you might meet stranded on the way. Always keep some bio spare to pickup new party members - you can have a max of four. Some are melee, some are ranged, some are healers, some are speedy, some are slow high hit points etc.

Lastly, once you have the exit in sight, use your resources and heroes to plot out a well protected lit path to the exit, then one of your heroes (I suggest a fast one) must uproot the original crystal and carry it to the exit, whilst under many waves of enemy clamouring to take your life and your crystal.

Absolutely thrilling stuff. Pixel art. Lovely lighting and effects. Only three levels of dungeon at present in the current early access, but its being crafted regularly with community feedback/votes etc. I've put many hours into it, and quite a bit of it isn't active yet (like crafting blueprints). It is a very playable game at the current state, and I can't wait to see what other complexities and excitement it has to offer during development.

Well worth the effort, I picked it up on the off chance for £7, but after playing my socks off, had to badger Steam into changing my purchase into the Founders edition for the extra fruits available later on. Only £12 for that.

I will be playing the fook out of this game for a long time coming methinks.

http://www.amplitude-studios.com/Articles/EARLY-ACCESS

[spelk]

Just been playing it, and have noticed something that I didn't twig earlier on, in that if you have your heroes in a room with a resource crystal, they work on it and maximise its output. So every new door (designating a "door opener" hero) requires hero placement management when the monsters start their assault. I was just keeping them all in a choke point room, and fending off the horde. But this doesn't really give me the best returns on crystal resources. So I need to spread them all out around my crystal generators, then when the attack begins, move them all to a fighting point as best I can. Timing based on their speed seems to be key, so that they all arrive when the nasties do. But they all have different speed stats! Amazing how this little nuance has just revealed itself to me, when I've been playing the game for 10+ hours. And theres only three levels at the moment!

[Nefaro]

I was eyeing this recently but saw that it was realtime so I didn't bite.  I think some of the roguelike style is lost when games become more twitch from using realtime than the thinking game of a turn-based system.   Between that and the tower defense mention, I'm still not sure if it's for me despite the other pluses but I'll dig a bit further.

You made some mention of your hero auto-attacking.  Are you saying that you don't have to button mash the masses of pixel creatures to death?

[spelk]

You made some mention of your hero auto-attacking.  Are you saying that you don't have to button mash the masses of pixel creatures to death?

It is real time, but it is quite slow paced. You only right click on the room you want them in, then they walk to the room, and auto-attack monsters that come into the room. So management isn't really twitch as such. In fact the only aspect where you might become a little stressed is keeping them alive, if you have to manually heal. But if you're having to spend all your bio resources on manual healing, you really haven't set up the defenses right, or you haven't got enough heroes in the room.

I think you can pause using the spacebar, and commit your commands to the heroes/building structures. But I haven't had to bother. Its only the action thats real time, once a wave of enemies has been dispatched then the next wave doesn't hit till you open the door.

[Nefaro]

Thanks.  This is a well detailed summation of the game you have in this thread. 

Now I know that the realtime aspect wouldn't bother me much but I never liked the tower defense stuff so I'm still unsure.  I'll just check out some gameplay vids and finger out if it has that same wave-after-wave feel to it.

[spelk]

Now I know that the realtime aspect wouldn't bother me much but I never liked the tower defense stuff so I'm still unsure.  I'll just check out some gameplay vids and finger out if it has that same wave-after-wave feel to it.

Not trying to beat everyone over the head with it, or even sell it to you, but to answer your "wave after wave" comment and your Tower Defense concerns for purely information purposes...

..the game isn't a constant stream of creeps as in usual TD games. The enemy waves happen often when you open a door - basically all your unlit, opened rooms have a chance to spawn waves of enemies, so you can have 1, 2 or even 3 waves of enemies from different directions. But not every door opened results in an attack. Some open up to treasure chests. Some to Merchants. Some to new heroes waiting to be recruited. Some to just empty rooms. In fact one of the main aspects of the development is to provide more advanced events upon opening the doors. But these things can have combinations of enemies or none at all. So its a bit like a open it up and see whats going to land this time.

The opening door mechanic, is strictly in your control, and you choose the paths that are open to attack, but obviously you're trying to explore in the safest most defendable way. You need resources, to fund exploration, and betterment of your heroes. You need exploration to get to the exit. And you need combat to harvest the dust to power all the rest. So the whole thing plays a lot like a careful reveal game, of balance, fortify, move heroes and then open and see, and react if necessary. The defensive structures, begin simple like a small turret, and as you find blueprints you open up heavier, shock poles, and artillery style "mines". You can also open up things like defense boosters, healing units, enemy slowing units, even different types of modules from the Industrial/Bio ones. But usually you only have a small subset- based upon what has been revealed by exploration. This in itself makes the game change from session to session. Plus your starting heroes and recruits are different, and of course the rooms themselves are procedurally generated.

So really the TD aspect to the game is purely the ability to lay defensive structures (on fixed hard points in the rooms), and the fact that there are these randomly triggered, procedurally generated waves of enemies. With different mixtures of mobs, some heavy golems, for module destruction, some fast attack space dogs, some spiders, some slower trundlers that are only interested in the main crystal, some spinning cuboids desperate to destroy all of your structures! Theres no turret upgrade or preview of whats coming. In that respect its more a dungeon crawl with map wide rampages coming from areas you've opened but left unpowered. I suppose its more akin to the AI attacks in AI War than the lined up trundling creeps from Defense Grid: The Awakening.

Anyway, I think out of all the mechanics its the fact that every opening of a door requires a bit of strategic planning, resource management, tweaking defenses, powering up and powering down of opened rooms, moving heroes and readying for the anticipated retreat by your door opener. :) You tend to find that important decisions are made every "turn" (door open) - and they have consequences you have to deal with based on revealed events. You often find its the doors you don't open that are the really important ones. :)

[SgtRock]

If I want dungeons, I'll do them in Guild Wars 2, now there be dungeons!

[Yskonyn]

OT Whats your name in GW2, Sgt? I am just picking that back up again, but the Grogheads Guild seems to be inactive. Or are you listed in the Guild in which case I can already spot you. :)

[SgtRock]

OT Whats your name in GW2, Sgt? I am just picking that back up again, but the Grogheads Guild seems to be inactive. Or are you listed in the Guild in which case I can already spot you. :)

GW2 name Sola.7250
Ehmry Bay, no problem guesting to other servers, I do it all the time.
Not part of the Grogheads Guild, no one could even remember what server they were on when I asked ::)

PM - your server and time zone/time and we'll get together for gold making runs!

[Nefaro]

I didn't realize GW2 had proper dungeons. 

I only recall walking into a couple cave tunnels before, but no elaborate dungeons.  ???  They must be higher level stuff..?

[Yskonyn]

Yes GW2 has lots of dungeons ! And they have several modes of play too. First complete story mode to unlock explorable mode.
Each dungeon has several paths and events inside. Its a pretty cool system and makes you wanting to run it several times just to see it all. Not talking about farming, but pure fresh content.
Anyway, we are getting too much OT.

[Nefaro]

Yes GW2 has lots of dungeons ! And they have several modes of play too. First complete story mode to unlock explorable mode.
Each dungeon has several paths and events inside. Its a pretty cool system and makes you wanting to run it several times just to see it all. Not talking about farming, but pure fresh content.
Anyway, we are getting too much OT.

You're right.

Thanks for the explanation though.  I may have to check out GW2 again soon.

[SgtRock]

GW2 Dungeons are also the best way to make gold, 1/2 gold for Explorer mode, 1-1.5 gold for each path, it's easy to run two Path 1 dungeons and get 2.5 gold in less  than an hour with a little experience, plus lots of other goodies! Doing paths 2,3,4 can't take a long time (hours) and be a challenge. Best to watch youtube videos before running them.

The in game LFG (looking for group) tool makes it easy to join others in a Dungeon run, the bad side, doing dungeons you can run into some real elitist jerks. >:(

[LongBlade]

Thanks for the post, Spelk. I'll keep my eye on this one.

[spelk]

I wrote a few lines of tips to help new players:

1) Only open doors in single paths as much as possible, so you have to defend across chokepoints.

2) Power as many rooms as you can, because opened dark rooms are sources of enemy waves

3) Use the fastest hero you have as the door opener, so they can leg it back to a defensive position.

4) Defend your main chokepoint with turrets (defense boosts, healing units etc), and the beefiest, hardest hitting heroes

5) always save 30+ bio resource to pick up new heroes as you come across them - till you get the full complement of 4

6) Once you have 4 heroes, use bio to level them up, high attackers first - keeping a reserve of 20+ to use emergency manual heals (costs 5).

7) Buy from merchants sparingly - because the dust is used to power your rooms. You'll find loot for free, and you need lit rooms rather than
dark enemy spawning ones.

8) dead-end/cul-de-sac module rooms off your killing path, don't need any defensive structures (unless they have dark open rooms attached to them).

9) Before opening a new door, move all your heroes to a module room, you'll boost resource production. Once the enemies attack move them swiftly to your defensive chokepoints. (Heroes add points to resource collection if they are in a module room when the door is open, some can even repair modules and structures during an attack!)

10) Its the doors you don't open that are the important ones.

Finally, for your crystal run, plot the fastest path possible, then power all the rooms around that path, and darken ones far off the path, get your speedy door opener/runner to do the crystal humping, and get the others to stand in a chokepoint along the way - hopefully thinning out the hordes. Use Bio to keep them all alive for the next level.