Dungeon of the Endless (2014)

Played during Steam free trial. Started on easy and could not get past the 1st level. Switched to too easy and failed a few more times before I got the hang of what you are supposed to do. The game really does not do an adequate job of explaining how to play.

I used the bounty hunter that looks like Samus and the red haired nurse. They were a good team because they turned out to be a tank and healer. My last run I made it to the last small level dot, whatever that means. Not sure if the big dot at the end is another level or not. I had an insectoid and bird woman as other party members. My strategy early on was to focus on food to get a few level ups and then balance resources. By the late game I had huge amounts of resources. My strategy was to put 2 heroes operating resource generators (since they had the skill for it) while the other 2 opened a door. Then everyone would run to the crystal or a choke point to fight the waves of enemies, while I had a trail of slowing, confusion and damage turrets. The point was more to delay enemies so the heroes would not have to deal with too many at once. On the level where I failed, I had already cleared most of the map and found the exit. Heroes were leveled between 10 and 12 and they had been slaughtering everything up until this one door. I am not really sure why everyone died. Was it a new enemy type that was too strong? Just too many enemies at once? Not high enough level? Bug? All I know is I had to click the heal button on the tank every second and it did not look like enemies were dying, until I ran out of food and everyone died.

It is an interesting game that combines elements of different genres in a cool way but I am not sure if I would want to buy it.

First of all, i want to clarify that this is not a Tower Defense game. A TD is a game in which the primary source of damage is objects (towers, traps, units) you place but don't control directly. This is a strategy game, like RTS games that let you build turrets. I like TD games, this isn't one of them.

As for the game itself, let's start by saying nice things. I love how they tried something different, the main menu looks nice and it has a decent variety of towers.

However, the problem with DotE is that it isn't fun. It's not light enough for a rogue-like and too random for a strategy game. You barely have a clue what you're doing, you start with a tiny roster of characters and if things go wrong early on it will ruin the rest of your run. Another annoyance is the crappy in-game UI. Amplitude seems to have a fetish for tiny menus, though it's not quite as bad as in Endless Space.

The worst thing about DotE, and why i wouldn't recommend it even to people who like rogue-likes, is how it boots. At first nothing happens. Then everything starts to lag and you think your PC is crashing. After over a minute the game finale loads. It's just bizarre, i've never experienced anything like this.

Just finished Dungeon of the Endless for the first time after playing 34 hours in. (countless runs of death). It's basically a tower defense game with heroes, except you are trying to get this crystal carried to the top of this tower to reach the surface.

Two of my heroes were bantering back and forth in a sort of hostile manner. I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was just flavor text. Except after the 10th floor I witnessed one of my heroes (Sarah) murdering another hero (Gork) in the elevator. This was pretty late in the game and there was no hope of finding another hero in the tower so I beat the game (the last two floors) using 3 heroes. It was nuts.

Pretty darn fun, considering purchasing the DLC.