Ah, to travel to outer space and cruise through the vast reaches of the universe – it’s something everyone dreams about from time to time. Yet perhaps there is a species out there that is unwilling to tolerate our presence, a species for which war is the only course of action. This is precisely the scenario featured in Dungeon of the Endless, which starts when a spaceship containing human colonists is shot to pieces, with some of the survivors making it to the planet below in escape pods.
Crash landing, party of two
As mentioned above, you start out aboard a spaceship sent to colonize a faraway planet, when the ship is blown apart by a well-hidden defensive system placed there by a hostile species. Your only option to make it out alive is to get aboard one of the escape pods and get away from the ship as quickly as you can. As you leave the ship, you can count yourself lucky to have survived the carnage, but what is to become of you and your companion in the capsule? Before you have time to think about it all that much, the planet you were sent to colonize comes into view, and you direct the capsule towards it. Unfortunately, the capsule’s landing systems and your own piloting skills aren’t up to snuff, and you’re forced to make a crash landing, smashing right through an ancient complex of buildings, extending deep underground. Your new task is to escape from this dungeon-like maze of passageways by finding the elevator in each level until you’ve reached the surface, and the way out. The intro only takes about a minute, which doesn’t leave much room in the way of explanation for the kind of player who’s interested in backstory.
Tower defense, re-interpreted
Before you make your escape from the doomed ship, you’re able to choose one of seven different escape pods. The standard Escape Pod doesn’t have any particular advantages or disadvantages, but the other six are an altogether different story. Some of them give the heroes bonuses, some remove certain Modules at the beginning of the game (more on this later), and others allow you to resurrect dead heroes. As you might imagine, these specialized escape pods aren’t available from the start, of course, but need to be unlocked first. Each pod lets you know which criteria must be met in order to unlock it.
After you make this difficult decision, you’re asked to select your two heroes out of a total of eighteen (four at the beginning of the game). Each one has strengths and weaknesses, with stats that include Hit Points, Speed, Wit, and Attack Power, among others. If you can’t decide which hero you want to pick, or there’s just one hero you really want, you can let the game randomly choose both heroes, or just one, for you. The other sixteen will have to be found, recruited, or escorted to the exit in one of the various levels, after which they can join your little team and help you escape the facility. Your team is limited to a total of four heroes, however.
The next thing you have to do is select a difficulty level, and right now there are two to choose from: “Too Easy” and “Easy”. For beginners, we recommend “Too Easy”, so you can learn the all basics of game mechanics and maneuvering through the levels. When I first tried to play on “Easy”, I ended up dying a whole lot, and lost a few heroes.
Once you’ve decided all this, click “Start” and let the little intro scene play. Once you’ve survived the crash landing, the tutorial begins, where you learn the controls (really easy, actually) and start using them. Instructions are given in simple text boxes in an italic script written big enough so that you shouldn’t have any trouble making it out, and they also use colors and images to make everything easy to understand.
The game is played mainly with the mouse. You use the left mouse button to select a hero and the right button to move him or her into a room or to interact with Artifacts and the Merchant. You click the mouse wheel to give power to a room or shut it off. The mouse is also used to move the camera around, as are the WASD keys. If you want to go get a drink of coffee, you can press the space bar to pause the game at any time.
So far, so good. The goal of each level is to get the Crystal, your escape pod’s energy source, through the level and find the elevator to the next level, while at the same time fighting off the hordes of enemies who will try to destroy both the heroes and the Crystal. In the upper left corner of the screen are your “FIDS” indicators, for Food (used to heal, level, up, and recruit heroes), Industry (used to create Modules), Dust (used to supply energy to rooms), and Science (used to research and update Modules). Every time you open a room, you get a certain amount of each resource, shown by a “+” below the amount you already have.
As I mentioned above, the Industry resource allows you to create new Modules. There are two different kinds of Modules: Major and Minor. You can access your Major Modules via the button at the extreme lower left of the screen, the one that’s a little bit bigger than the other ones. Click on it, and you’ll be able to build a Food, Industry, Dust, or Science Module, which helps to increase the amount of resources you get per round. Minor Modules are divided into three categories: Support, Offensive, and Hindering Modules. Support Modules have positive effects on your heroes, such as buffs to HP Regeneration or Speed. Offensive Modules are used to battle your enemies and Hindering Modules are used to do things like slow them down. Industry is also useful as a currency when dealing with the Merchant, who will also pay you in Industry points when you sell him items.
Science allows you to research new Modules when you run across an Artifact, or update the ones you already have. Food is used to heal or level up your heroes. Last but not least is Dust. You get a small amount of it every time you open a door or kill an enemy, though you never know exactly how much it’s going to be. It takes ten units of dust to conduct energy to a room or cut it off.
Once a room has energy in it, no more enemies will appear, and you get a few more free slots for Modules. The small slots are for Minor Modules, of course, and the large ones for Major Modules. If you accidentally create the wrong one, just click the “demolish” icon (to the right of the Hindering Module) and then remove whatever Module you want.
Every now and then you can find chests, too, which will contain either a device, a weapon, or piece of armor. You can view and equip the items you find in the Character screen by clocking on the sword-and-shield icon at the top left of the screen. Make sure to remember, however, that all unequipped items in your Inventory are lost at the end of each level! So make sure you equip all the items you want before you enter the elevator. You can also put some items in the Backpack, which has four slots. Items in the Backpack are still accessible even after the level is over.
It’s also a good idea to open all doors before you end the level. You’ll get a notification when you’ve opened the last door. This is the time to think about how to best use your Dust in order to get to the elevator with as little trouble as possible along the way. The hero carrying the Crystal is a good bit slower than his comrades, but you have to make sure to do everything you can to keep him alive. This means it’s a good idea to run power to every room he has to go into, so that no new enemies can appear. As soon as you pick up the Crystal, enemies will start attacking in small groups more than they did before, so be careful.
A certain mystique in the air
The game is accompanied by background music that has a very mystical sound to it, but never really feels intrusive. There’s a good deal of variety, and all the pieces help to underscore the mystical atmosphere that you’d expect there to be on a strange and unknown planet. This is all complemented by some really well-done sound effects that are well-timed with the game’s visuals. Some examples might include gunfire effects and the sounds made by exploding enemies.
Retro with a charm all its own
The designers of Dungeon of the Endless opted to give the game an old-school/retro look. Rooms are designed in a variety of ways – some are made up of steel plating, some have puddles of water on the floor or nasty-looking pipes hanging from the walls, and there are also clone rooms and mess halls. Everything comes off in sharp detail, even though it’s actually all pixelated old-school graphics. All in all, the game’s visual style harmonizes well with the atmosphere they’re trying to get across.
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