This is what modern roguelikes should be.

Before playing Dungeon of the Endless, I've played a HUGE host of roguelikes from Angband to Tales of Maj'Eyal to Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. If anything, these roguelikes have one thing in common - as you get more and more powerful, the game tries to match you with tougher challenges, even up to the point where the game simply is unfair. This is not necessarily a bad thing - it gives a sense of challenge and adventure with every playthrough.

Dungeon of the Endless, however, breaks from that mold. The concepts and challenges are simple: find the exit, bring the Crystal to the exit, defend the crystal carrier against waves of enemies. There are no unexpected traps or portals (that I've seen yet); there are no gimmicks that destroy your Crystal or your characters without any warning. If you lose, it's not the fault of the game as it usually is in roguelikes - it's all yours. Maybe you didn't think about watching your carrier's back; maybe you neglected defending a certain chokepoint, leading to your party getting flanked and killed.

Since you know it's your mistake, you can determine what you did wrong and how you can prevent it next time. Not only is it a new game every single time, but you learn and refine your strategy, and you buckle down and see if you can make it to a deeper floor with your experience this time.

Dungeon of the Endless represents what a modern roguelike should aspire to be: a highly replayable game that provides a genuine, fair challenge that you can climb through and improve your skill in every playthrough.

10/10

If you don't feel like reading the entire things here's the summary:
As with any game, keep in mind that this may not be the right combination of elements for you. I'd say if you enjoy tower defense games, roguelike mechanics, science fiction settings, and a subtle sense of humour, there is a high probability that you will enjoy this one. If you get easily frustrated or like strategy based only on skill, without an element of luck, perhaps this is not the game for you.

Personally, I love this game. It has all the right ingredients for me, and it's quickly become a favourite. I can't praise it enough.

Good points:

+Solid design and game mechanics.
+Beautiful pixel art.
+Immersive soundtrack and sound effects.
+Great characters and subtle humour.
+Endless replayability. Every game is different, and every combination of heroes and items will make you rethink your approach.
+Good time versatility: you can either pick it up for half an hour or half a day. Though a complete run will require several hours to complete, once you know the game mechanics it's relatively easy to pick up a game partway through.
+Relatively frequent updates. In a time where far too many games get abandoned in Early Access stage, finding developers that actually listen to the players and release updates seems such a rarity!

Possible caveats:

-I have not tested the multiplayer

(The general consensus seems to be that it still needs some work. Same with some crashing issues. The developers seem to be aware and working on it.)

-Difficulty spike towards the later levels. Even the easiest settings can be very, very challenging. This may make the game feel unbalanced.
-On that same note, bear in mind that you require both skill and luck to win the game.

These points are not a problem for me, I've played old school roguelikes and this one feels pretty forgiving in comparison, but it may not be everyone's cup of tea. A bad combination of items, heroes or rooms, and your late game may become nearly impossible. A good one, and you can win with much less effort (though a certaion degree of skill is a must, and you will still be punished quite severely for acting foolishly or carelessly).

I do like that element of luck, and find that any frustration vanishes fairly quickly in the face of the next challenge (a rarity for me these days, as I don't have much free time and seem to have grown old and grumpy when it comes to frustrating games). I find luck a perk, rather, something that distinguishes this game from other roguelikes, and I think the immersion really helps, in my case.

-Some extra content is unlocked separately

I'm making a note of this because I've seen some nasty comments around. There is a special edition of the game (crystal pack) that unlocks an extra character and ship, but if you want the other extra character and ship you have to buy the special edition of Endless Legend, as well. I believe that the developers plan to later unlock this content, but are giving this option now for early supporters of their games, which I think is a fair strategy. I think this is much preferable to standard DLC, in any case. Your opinion may differ, so I think it is fair to give a warning.

OPEN THE DOOR
GET ON THE FLOOR
ALL YOUR HEROES DIED SO CRY SOME MORE

With the only starting difficulties being Easy and Too Easy you can also look stupid when you tell your friends that game is too hard on easy difficulty.

Just one more room... (10 hours later) crap.

Fantastic game with some very very clever mechanics A mix of dungeon crawler, tower defence, rogue, rpg, and 4x. It sounds like a mess but works really well. It reminds me a lot of FTL, highly recommended.

A turn-based tower defense-ish game that seems fairly easy on the surface but actually has a lot going on in terms of strategy and skill.

Pros:
- Lots of strategy and skill needed, especially as you progress to higher levels
- The random-ish maps mean you are always playing a new game, bad luck with dungeon composition will force you to make hard decisions.
- Unlocking characters and ships is fun and challenging
- Playing with friends can be a fun experience (good coop)
- Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Unique version of each item
- Characters play off each other so each team has it's own style and strategy

Cons:
- No save feature in multiplayer (Though this is supposedly getting addressed)
- Players can't share items in multiplayer.
- The UI can be a bit tricky for new players, not very intuative

Overall:
More to come...

This is a unique cross between tower defense, 4X, and rogue-like game.

You have 1 to 4 heroes that explore a random dungeon consisting of rooms separated by doors. Every time you open a door, monsters spawn in all the unlit areas of the dungeon and try to attack your heroes and reach your base. You can stop them by attacking with your heroes or building defenses.

After the wave of monsters is done, you are safe and may build or upgrade your structures. This phase plays a lot like a 4X game where you must manage food, research, and industry. Each room can a certain number of structures of various types, and some rooms contain existing structures.

Your heroes themselves level up and gain skills as they would in an RPG. Death is permanent and when all your heroes die, you must restart the game from scratch.

There is a huge amount of replayability here due to the random elements and number of ships and characters you can choose. A typical game can take 3-4 hours.

As with roguelikes this is fairly difficult game, particularly if you play it on the harder difficulty (there are two difficilties, mislabelled "easy" and "very easy"). If you enjoy difficult games, you should like this a lot.

Another game from 'Endless' trilogy, combining dungeon crawler and tower defence this time. Stylish pixel graphics, nice humor and addictive gameplay. Totally loved it.

Terrific tower defense/RPG/dungeon crawler/rogue-like/strategy game set in a pixelated sci-fi universe. Tons to unlock and it's amazing how quickly minutes turn to hours with this one. One of few early access games to actually finish without any hiccups.

First off, I highly recommend this game for anyone that is looking to kill some time. It's definitely worth the money. I bought this during early access, and am usually hesitant of buying unfinished titles, due to some scoundrel developers taking the money and running with it, leaving gamers with a half-finished product. But Amplitude has a very good track record of not only finishing what they started, but also continuing with support well after the title has been released. This game is no exception. Just when I thought the game was finished, I stopped playing for a bit. I came back to this a week ago, only to find they added a bunch more characters, and new options when starting a new game. So a big kudos to them for being a developer that really puts the work into their games.


Now on to the game.

It's simple, yet complex. Keep your guys alive, get out of the dungeon in one piece. But you can't just rush every level, or else you will skip out on collecting a lot of much needed resources and research opportunities. Opportunities you will desperately need later on. Open too many doors at once, or have a lot of unpowered rooms, and a swarm of enemies will come your way and end your game quick.

Since dungeons are randomly generated, and so are things like weapons/armor/item/artifact locations, there is an element of luck to it. But once you get the hang of it, you can make it through most playthroughs even with some bad luck.

There is quite a bit of lighthearted humour from the characters in-game, which is right up my alley. From a woman who thinks she's a spider, to an overcompensating midget with a huge sword. They all have their quirks. It's not so much a band of heroes, as it is a group of unlikely misfits. You might even recognize characters from other games, such as Samus Aran..... errrr... I mean Sara Namus...

The game plays a lot like a turn-based tower defense. First you decide how to set up your defenses and production, then you begin the action phase by opening a door. That's when it goes from "Okay, everything seems to be coming along fine, all hallways seem to be covered" to "CRAP! DON'T ATTACK THERE! THAT WAS MY FREAKING GENERATOR YOU JUST TRASHED YOU ♥♥♥♥♥!!!!"

All in all, as far as bang for your buck goes, I'd rate this title a 10/10. If you like cheesy humour and tower defense, don't hesitate to buy this game. You won't regret it.

I died in 49 seconds in my first playthrough...... 10/10

Bought this early access, played 15 minutes and put it away, hoping that the release would be better. Hot diggity ♥♥♥♥, is it ever. 4x, tower defence, rpg, dungeon crawler, rogue like, and somehow, it works like a mother fudger. Most fun I have had since endless space.

Rock-solid rogue-like dungeon crawler with tower-defense element! I think a brief description of the game might be the best way to help you decide if it is for you:

In Dungeon of the Endless, your goal is to ultimately lead a band of unique characters out of a dungeon. To do so, you must open new doors in each floor to find the elevator that takes you to the next level. As a part of the game mechanic, the opening of each door counts as a turn. Similar to the beacon jumping in FTL, everything happens within the turn is executed in real-time.

The dungeon is dangerous and unforgiving place! Research and build towers to help you survive. Don't let the name fool you!! The dungeon itself is not endless; it only takes 3-4 hours to finish a successful run. However, finishing your first successful run can be a different story!! It took me more than 30 hour to get there, and I wish you better luck :-)

I'll keep this short, if you like 4x, tower defense, rogue, or other topdown genres of the sort you will enjoy this game alot, and its defiently worth what its asking for. Any flaws have been too minor for me to notice because I've been having so much fun with the game. I have yet to try multiplayer so you'll have to look at another review for that. Would suggest to anyone who enjoys top down of any sort.

Really on the fence with this one, but even the aesthetic can't sway me. The art design has a lot of subtle elements in it that are really on point that you may not even notice unless you think to look for them. I really don't care for the mechanics, but I can appreciate the rest of it. I'm on the fence because the mechanics are a huge part of the game.

Intersting concept, and really cool aesthetic. I like the idea of the mixed game elements, being some kind of mixed RTS game with tower defense elements and the roguelike elements to give it that sense of enduring replayability.

However, the actual gameplay is... There are numbers, but there is almost no context for what the numbers mean. You do X DPS but what does that mean? What is defense?

You carry on just trying to assume these numbers mean what they mean, and you learn the basic mechanics of the game.

And then rules that you have come to understand from the game, as it has presented itself to you thus far, no longer apply.

And so you press on anyway because, ♥♥♥♥ it, it's a roguelike, this is par for the course, right?

And then you die because the situation you found yourself in is literally unwinnable. Open 6 doors and get no dust and have to defend your crystal from all 5 room spawns? Cannot possible recommend this game with luck based algorithms.

I tried very hard to enjoy this
I bought it because it looked great and I got a FTL-y vibe and was interested in playing a more fleshed out tower defense game. However it has not grown on me after many hours.

-there is virtually no reward for defeating monsters, only a small chance to gain 1 dust which is not kept between floors. even the large special enemies in the last floors yield nothing at all. you have to spend science and/or food in combat and you risk damage to your structures/heroes, so combat quickly feels like an undesirable chore and even a risk that discourages exhaustive exploration later on.

-my first experience with the character story interactions was that the quick blue girl outright kills my fat rambo tank dude. This crippled my team in combat and the only thing I got from it was like +10% attack and -5% defense on the blue girl. I haven't seen any other interactions that are that bad, but the rewards are always something with almost no impact at all, which brings me to the next problem:

-everything is a drop in the bucket. leveling and equipping your team, improving structures and farming resources - all these things progress painfully slowly, the best you can hope for is to very slightly improve your crew on each floor and still break even on resources. only rarely do you get something satisfying like a new weapon or ability from a levelup that affects your game right away. everything else is just about very slowly accumulating tiny bonuses. they do add up eventually, but it takes hours to reach that point. Winning is slow, but losing is slower. when you lose something important like a character or resource structures, the game slows to a crawl. you'll have to spend more resources for cooldowns/heals in combat, you might lose structures, you might lose dust. much like the incremental progression, your defeat in this game will be excruciatingly drawn out - the more ♥♥♥♥ed you are the more ♥♥♥♥ed you get, you will scrape by with 2-3 characters and make it to the elevator but you know exactly that you have no chance to beat the game anymore. Genuine game overs don't happen because you will just throw the game and start over instead of wasting half an hour trying to get as far as possible.

-the tower defense aspect is very weak. there's only one turret available at the start, new ones must be researched with resources and cost 200-300% more to construct than the basic one. you will notice that it is not possible to "funnel" enemies the way I know I love to do in tower defense. if you get lucky with the layout you might be able to defend several paths to your core, but never all of them - the core itself cannot house any turrets, you would have to build turrets all around it which is just too expensive and not even reliable as they are quite weak and fragile when unattended (anything you build can be destroyed by enemies). overall turrets are expensive and unflexible, they will often be useless because half the enemies will use a path they don't cover.


TL; DR
combat is a chore, progression happens extremely slowly with barely noticeable unsatisfying increments, tower defense works out poorly due to the need to fight enemies in multiple rooms, setbacks like loss of a character or dust are a huge bummer you will not recover from and will snowball to kill you very slowly, RNG is mostly frustrating

these concepts and mechanics are the only things I have a problem with. the audio is ok, characters are cool, visuals are great. if you like spending hours slightly increasing and decreasing numbers, this game might be for you.

You like dungeon crawler games? You like to playtower defense? You like to be ♥♥♥♥ed in the ♥♥♥ by random mobs? Then this game is for you!

Decisions, decisions. Every one of which could put you in a slightly better position, dramatically worse position, or end your game completely.

DotE is a very unique experience that combines RPG-roguelike, tower defense, and resource management elementals into a single game - and somehow it manages to do so quite well. Every turn you have to weigh your options: Should you spend food to level up a team member? Should you hold on to it in case you need it for healing? Should you spend precious materials on defenses before you open the next door? Should you even open the next door at all? Maybe it's better to head for exit while things are relatively safe.. Research new defenses?.. Research better resource production? Maybe you should just hold on to those research points in case you happen to run across a merchant who uses them as currency.. Maybe you should head north.. maybe east.. Maybe you should cut the power to one room and risk monsters spawning there next turn in order to power another room and make that section safer.

This game is a constant struggle with choices.. and more often than not you don't know in advance which is the better option in the remote or even immediate future. But you'll have fun learning as you go and slowly ascending further and further up the levels with each game (Except for the ones where things just go horrible wrong - Which will probably be most of them)

An enjoyable RTS / Tower Defense / RPG hybrid with roguelike elements that will sink in your head for days. The gameplay is original, yet extremely challenging even on the lowest difficulty, the art-style is gorgeous and minimalistic, and there is tons of content just thrown at you at every turn. It's also story-lite so there's no walls of text thrown at you constantly.
The game has a steep enough learning curve, only giving you a short tutorial on the basics, requiring you to figure out things for yourself.
You start with two heroes, but eventually you will unlock up to two more hero slots as you find them in the dungeon, with a total of 16 different heroes available to choose from. Resource managing is key in Dungeon of the Endless.
If you want strong characters, you'll need to build food modules,
if you want tons of laser cannons to stop wave upon wave of enemies, you will need machinary resources.
And if you want access to additional modules ranging from decoys, lasers, bombs, then you'll need to gather science resources.

(Here is the part where I explain how to play this game, making it even more confusing.)

The game has a unique "turn" system, designated by a door, i.e. when you open a door, a turn will pass, giving you resources based on modules you have built. Anything can happen during these turns. A wave of monsters can surprise you, power can go out, you may uncover a buff crystal or a research post, or a shop where you can spend a specific randomly chosen resource on some neat stuff.
The objective of the game is to find the exit in the dungeon, allocate a hero to carry the crystal at the start of the level, and escort them to the exit, while of course, being bombarded by enemy waves.
Rooms can be lit up using "Dust", the primary resource in the game. It's collected from enemies and certain rooms when opened. Dust is also the crystal's health, so if attacked, you will lose dust, thus losing power in rooms.
Lighting up the rooms stops enemies from spawning during turns and the "final" phase, but also allows you to place modules on the dungeon floor at the cost of machinery resource.
The game is perma-death, so if your crystal is destroyed, if your heroes die, or if the hero carrying the crystal dies, then it's game over, and back to level 1 again. There is a number of different "pods" you can choose from, all with various difficulties and requirements, so there is plenty to mess around with here.
There is so much more to this game, including levelling up your heroes, learning new skills, abilities, picking up or buying/selling items, weapons, armour and accessories, triggering random events and most importantly, taking a whole bunch of risks.
It's one of the most perplexing and gripping games I've played in a long time and you should buy it when you can.

(There is multiplayer, however I haven't got around to taking a stab at it yet, but when I do, I'll update this review.)