In Endless Dungeon, players rely on a team of up to 3 characters as they systemically gun and hack through enemies and doors to reach the Core and escape the station "We Must Know More". It was created by the Endless for... well, for everyone trapped aboard it isn't important. What is important is that the people there came for a reason - whether that's to kill everything aboard and claim ownership of the station or to learn how to make the greatest drink in the universe.
Like its predecessors, it uses the 'FIDS' (Food, Industry, Dust, Science) resources but you'll find their use reworked a little bit. You can't use Food to outright heal any more but instead convert it into Medkits or level up at the appropriate station. Industry is just about the same, and Dust can be used to reactivate unlit rooms or deactivate more hostile steles. Science can't be used to recharge abilities immediately either but you can still research a variety of turrets to employ against your foes.
Unlike its predecessor, you're not as turn-based any more. Monsters won't spawn in only dark rooms like they did before, but they can spawn in lit ones and rely on spawn points now. They're not as reliant on you opening doors either - take too long and the swarm will arrive to give you a push. You will have to navigate between different Zones in a Sector to progress instead of just gunning it straight to the exit too - a big station has a lot of space, after all. Thankfully, this time around, your Crystal isn't stuck in one place on each floor - now it can move itself to other spots (by your command), or if you really want to, never let it settle down for constant waves of enemies. Is it smart to keep it in that starter room? Or will moving it to another location be safer or have a faster path to the exit later on?
And yes, now you're dealing with Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors - Fire, Electric, Acid and Light. Each of your enemies embody one of them, being resistant to it and weak to another. Good thing you'll be able to employ them yourself and - with some time, effort and Science - your turrets can too!
Select your Tropes to explore the Work:
- Action RPG: Explore the randomly generated Zones of each Sector, fight horrible monster, find new weapons to equip your crew with, rinse and repeat.
- Character Class System: Downplayed but still worth bearing in mind: characters' archetypes mostly boil down to Combat and Support. The only outlier is Bunker, who's more of a Mighty Glacier with their Ultimate allowing them to taunt enemies and become untouchable.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: White for Neutral, Green for Acid, Red for Fire, Blue for Electric and Purple for Light. For you, anyway. Bugs are usually brown with orange accents, Bots are usually a bluish-gray, Blobs are pink with white bones and Blurs are black and bright yellow-orange.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: What the game was designed around this time. You can play it solo, but you'll find yourself having to play a little more strategically.
- Developer's Foresight: If you have a wave starting for another reason, accessing a Zone Door or starting Research will reinforce the incoming wave, making it tougher to deal with.
- Escort Mission: This time, the Crystal walks itself thankfully, but you're still taking it to an exit and it will be defenceless. With upgrades, you can downplay this to an extent as the Crystal-Bot can gain an attack and upgrade its defence to be a bit more tanky... or you can make it move and act faster at the cost of defence instead.
- The Goomba: Nibblers and Postal Drones are the core of your early game waves usually. Mitosis avoid this by virtue of their ability to split on death and Ghosts by phasing in and out of reality to dodge attacks.
- Practical Currency: Shops trade your resources for Weapons or Devices, but the resource chosen is randomly decided when you find them and won't change. You can refresh their stock with Dust no matter what though.
- Resources Management Gameplay: There are four different types of resources — Industry (for building), Science (for getting upgrades and researching turrets), Food (for leveling up and healing), and Dust (for powering rooms). While Dust isn't as vital as before, having it can help immensely.
- Respawn Point: Justified by the Reloader - at the start of the game, it's brought back online in order to prevent the station's inhabitants from running out of bodies to throw at the problem of escaping. Unfortunately for the characters, they're still dead according to the Security Vault's District entry - the Reloader just prints out a new copy of you at the moment of your permanent demise. Although whether this is really an example of Body Backup Drive or Expendable Clone is another question entirely.
- Revolutionaries Who Don't Do Anything: There's a good number of Saloon residents who just sit around instead of actually fighting their way out like the Heroes. Then again, it's only recently that the Reloader got working...
- Shoot the Medic First: Refurbishers will sit in the back and periodically heal any nearby injured Bots. Given how tanky some of the more advanced ones can become, shutting it down fast is often a good thing to prioritize.
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Spiritual Successor: Very much inspired by Dungeon of the Endless - unlike said game however, this one was designed more for multiplayer. - Status Effects: Not as prevalent as prior, but still there. Turret exclusive effects include slowing or lowering enemies defense in an area. Elements typically have an effect associated with them, proccing on a crit. Acid will poison monsters, Fire will burn them, Electric stuns enemies and Light confuses them.
- Tower Defense: Creatures now have spawn points in areas regardless of their power, and you're more likely to find a powered room than an unpowered room now. That doesn't stop turrets from being your first line of defense against them. Their roster isn't as large as before with 4 Neutral towers and 2 of each elemental tower, but you can upgrade them for greater efficacy.
- Zerg Rush:
- Get the Crystal-Bot to start moving for any reason - or none at all - and monsters will crawl out of the woodwork to hunt it down.
- Each of the enemy factions' most basic monsters are an example of this, but Mitosis takes the cake by splitting every time you kill one. If you can't wipe them out before they close the distance, you can and will be mauled to death by them.
