Endless Dungeon
Endless Dungeon is a roguelite tactical action video game with tower defense elements, developed by French studio Amplitude Studios and published by Sega.[1][2] Released on October 19, 2023, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch, the game is set in the science fiction ENDLESS Universe and serves as a spiritual successor to the developer's 2014 title Dungeon of the Endless.[3][4] In Endless Dungeon, players assemble a team of up to three shipwrecked heroes—each with unique abilities and weapons—and navigate a procedurally generated, top-down abandoned space station filled with monsters.[1] The core objective is to escort and protect a luminous crystal core to the extraction point while fending off waves of enemies using twin-stick shooter controls, resource management for building defenses like turrets and traps, and strategic door-by-door exploration that reveals rooms with loot, upgrades, and hazards.[5] Death results in a reload from a checkpoint, emphasizing roguelite progression through persistent unlocks and team customization across runs.[6] The game supports both single-player and cooperative multiplayer for up to three players.[1] Following its launch, Endless Dungeon received mixed reviews, praised for its innovative genre blend and tactical depth but criticized for repetitive gameplay and technical issues at release.[7] In June 2025, Amplitude Studios released the Definitive Edition, which includes all post-launch updates, bundled DLC such as the Die-Hard Elite Skin Pack, digital art book, and soundtrack, quality-of-life improvements, and is available as a free upgrade for existing owners at a base price of $14.99.[8] This edition aims to refine the experience, incorporating community feedback to enhance replayability within the ENDLESS Universe, known for titles like Endless Space and Endless Legend.[9]Setting and story
The Endless universe
The Endless universe is a science fiction setting developed by Amplitude Studios, forming the shared lore across their strategy game series that began with Endless Space, a turn-based 4X space colonization game released in 2012. This universe expands through subsequent titles, including Endless Legend (2014), a 4X fantasy strategy game set on the dying planet Auriga; Dungeon of the Endless (2014), a roguelike dungeon-defense hybrid; Endless Space 2 (2017), which deepens the galactic empire-building mechanics; and Endless Dungeon (2023), a cooperative roguelite tactical action title.[10] These games collectively explore themes of exploration, survival, and conflict in a vast, interconnected cosmos where ancient mysteries drive modern civilizations.[11] At the core of the lore lies the Endless, an advanced alien civilization that dominated the galaxy billions of years ago before vanishing without explanation, leaving behind ruins, artifacts, and the pervasive substance known as Dust.[12] Dust functions as a multifaceted resource—serving as fuel for interstellar travel, a medium for genetic and technological enhancement, and a potential source of sentience—profoundly influencing all life forms and societies that encounter it.[12] The disappearance of the Endless sparked ongoing interstellar conflicts, as emerging factions compete to harness Dust and uncover the secrets of their predecessors, often leading to wars, alliances, and existential threats across planetary systems and star clusters.[13] Key factions embody these struggles: the United Empire, a resilient human federation focused on expansion and unity; the Academy, a scholarly collective of humans and artificial intelligences dedicated to unraveling cosmic knowledge; and the Cravers, a bio-engineered insectoid swarm compelled by an unending drive to consume resources and propagate.[13] These groups, among others, navigate a galaxy scarred by the Endless's legacy, where Dust-fueled innovations coexist with horrors born from unchecked experimentation.[11] The lore is further explored in the 2024 novel Shadow of the Endless, delving into Dust and faction dynamics.[14] Endless Dungeon integrates into this framework by unfolding on the Station, a massive derelict space station orbiting a Dust-abundant planet, positioned chronologically between Dungeon of the Endless—which depicts early crash-landing survivors—and the expansive galactic era of Endless Space 2.[15] This setting amplifies the universe's themes of isolation and dread, as players confront the eerie remnants of Endless technology in a confined, monster-infested environment far from broader factional wars.[15]Plot and characters
In Endless Dungeon, a group of scavengers aboard a spaceship are pulled from their warp jump by an unknown gravitational force, causing them to crash-land inside the long-abandoned space station known as the Station, a relic of the ancient Endless civilization's technological prowess.[16] The survivors must then escort a volatile Crystal Bot—a mobile energy core containing immense power—through the Station's procedurally generated districts toward its central core, where they hope to activate an escape mechanism and flee the infested structure.[17] As they progress through multiple districts across four floors filled with environmental hazards like leaking pipes and collapsing corridors, they battle waves of hostile creatures while repairing and upgrading the Crystal Bot to prevent its destruction, which would force a reload and restart of the run. Throughout the expedition, the scavengers discover scattered audio logs, holographic projections, and data terminals that gradually unveil the Station's dark history: it was originally a research outpost for harnessing Dust, the enigmatic substance central to the Endless universe's lore, but a catastrophic event involving the Endless' experimental technologies led to the facility's downfall, transforming inhabitants and spawning monstrous abominations.[18] This outbreak transformed the Station into a nightmarish trap, with ghostly holograms of former crew members replaying final moments of desperation and malfunctioning automated systems contributing to the eerie atmosphere through distorted warnings and defenses.[19] The primary antagonists are non-playable infected creatures, including swarms of aggressive, mutated Bugs that burrow and overwhelm in numbers; amorphous Blobs that dissolve organic matter; rogue Bots corrupted into mechanical threats; and spectral Blurs that phase through obstacles to ambush intruders.[20] These foes represent the outbreak's lingering legacy, driven by primal instincts rather than intelligence, and their encounters heighten the thematic emphasis on survival amid greed-fueled exploitation of forbidden knowledge.[21] The narrative culminates in multiple endings determined by the Crystal Bot's integrity and resources gathered, ranging from successful evacuation to total annihilation, underscoring the perils of tampering with the Endless' cosmic horrors.[22]Gameplay
Core mechanics
Endless Dungeon blends twin-stick shooter and tower defense genres through real-time squad-based combat and strategic fortification. Players control a team of heroes in top-down view, using the left analog stick for movement and the right analog stick for independent aiming and firing of weapons, allowing for fluid navigation and targeting of enemies from any angle.[23] Each hero possesses special abilities and an ultimate skill, activated via buttons and subject to cooldown timers, enabling tactical bursts of crowd control, damage, or support during intense encounters.[23] This control scheme emphasizes positioning and awareness, as heroes must dodge projectiles while maintaining fire on approaching monsters. The tower defense elements integrate seamlessly by allowing players to pause combat momentarily to place defensive structures using gathered resources. Automated turrets, which fire at enemies automatically, can be deployed alongside doors to block paths and traps like mines or slowing fields to hinder monster advances, particularly during escalating waves that spawn from secured entry points.[23] These fortifications require strategic placement around key objectives, such as resource generators or chokepoints, to create layered defenses; for instance, combining damage-dealing turrets with shielding variants protects vulnerable areas from overwhelming hordes.[24] Industry serves as the primary resource for construction, drawn directly from in-game stockpiles, ensuring players balance offensive mobility with defensive preparation.[23] Resource management forms the backbone of survival, with Food, Industry, and Science harvested primarily by commanding the Crystal Bot—a fragile, slow-moving unit—to extract them from generators hidden in unexplored rooms or dropped by defeated enemies. Food restores hero health via medkits crafted at terminals, Industry enables the aforementioned building of turrets and traps, and Science facilitates research at stations to unlock advanced turret types or temporary upgrades like increased fire rate.[24] Dust, a rarer commodity obtained by having the Crystal Bot mine glowing crystal shards in specific rooms or pedestals, powers dark areas to reveal interactables and neutralizes hazardous steles that impose debuffs or spawn extra foes.[25] For meta-progression, Cells and Scrap—permanent currencies found in chests during exploration or earned via hero quests—allow unlocks back at the Saloon hub upon run failure or completion, such as expanded chip slots for ability enhancements.[26] Levels unfold across procedurally generated floors of an abandoned space station, structured as interconnected rooms accessed by opening locked doors that reveal resources, enemies, or hazards. Progression involves room-to-room exploration to gather supplies and secure spawners, culminating in objective phases where players escort the Crystal Bot to the exit elevator while defending it from waves; failure to protect the Bot results in mission collapse.[23] Each floor escalates in difficulty with biome-specific threats, ending in boss encounters—such as the massive "Bug Momma"—that demand coordinated shooting, ability usage, and turret setups to exploit weaknesses before advancing deeper.[24] This structure promotes adaptive strategies, as random layouts force constant reassessment of defenses and routes.[27]Heroes and abilities
Endless Dungeon features eight playable heroes at launch, each with distinct roles that emphasize tactical squad composition in defending the crystal and exploring the station. These heroes fall into two primary weapon classes—handgun users for mobility and precision, and heavy gun users for sustained firepower—and their kits include a passive ability always active, a basic active ability on a short cooldown, and an ultimate ability with a longer charge time. Heroes are unlocked progressively through gameplay by reaching new districts and interacting with them in the saloon, starting with Sweeper, Zed, and Bunker available initially.[28] The hero roster includes a mix of damage dealers, tanks, and supports to complement the game's core mechanics of shooting, building defenses, and resource management. For instance, Bunker serves as a tank with high durability, utilizing her passive "Triggering" to increase attack damage after taking hits, an active "Back Off" shield deployment for stunning nearby enemies, and an ultimate that enhances her defensive posture. Zed, a damage-focused handgun hero, employs sonic waves for area control, with her active ability firing a debilitating blast and her passive boosting mobility for aggressive scouting. Support heroes like Shroom provide healing through her "Wincense" passive that generates souls from defeated monsters, "Soul Patch" active to heal allies, and "Special Mix" ultimate for team-wide regeneration and death prevention.[29][30][31] Other heroes offer specialized synergies when combined in squads of up to three, such as Comrade's turret deployment for automated defense—active "Comrade Turret" summons an ally bot, and ultimate "Revolution" transforms him into a stationary turret—pairing well with operators like Sweeper, whose crowd-control slows and turret repairs aid wave management. Blaze excels in explosive damage with "Hive Mine" placement and "Afterburn" passive for critical enhancements, while Fassie buffs teammates via spicy beverage throws that scale with his unique "Spiciness" mechanic, enabling adaptive roles from support to melee. Cartie rounds out the supports with trap-based stuns in "Publish and Perish" and room-wide buffs via her passive, fostering coordinated plays in multiplayer where one hero can revive downed teammates using food resources.[32][33][34] Customization allows role adaptation through Dust-earned weapon mods and branching perk trees, which upgrade stats like health, defense, or wit to influence turret efficiency and ability potency—for example, enhancing Bunker's shove damage for tanking or Zed's fire rate for DPS. All heroes share balanced health pools scaled to their roles, with revival mechanics enabling squad mates to resuscitate fallen allies during runs, promoting teamwork over solo viability. Post-launch updates, such as the addition of Viggie as a free locksmith hero, have expanded options without altering core balance.[35]| Hero | Role | Key Passive | Example Active/Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bunker | Tank | Triggering (damage ramps on hits) | Back Off (stun shield) / Defensive ultimate |
| Sweeper | Support | Turret repair boost | Slow cone / Area crowd control |
| Zed | Damage | Mobility enhancement | Sonic wave / Debuff blast |
| Cartie | Support | Room-wide buffs | Trap stun / Crowd disable |
| Blaze | Damage | Critical explosion amp | Hive Mine / Homing missiles |
| Fassie | Support | Spiciness scaling | Beverage buff / Disable ultimate |
| Comrade | Support/Damage | Turret synergy | Deploy turret / Transform to turret |
| Shroom | Support | Soul generation from kills | Soul heal / Team regen aura |