(Arthur Prudent I’m Arthur, the lead designer for Endless Dungeon.
(Jeff Spock) And I’m Jess Spock. My position on the team is Narrative Director, which sounds boring because I chose it myself. From the very beginning, I was one of the co-founders of the studio.
And then I, Tomasz Otajal, aka Gel, came here and got the unique opportunity to try out the upcoming Endless Dungeon from Amplitude Studios for a few hours and chat with two of its lead developers. Let’s first explain what Endless Dungeon is. On a sunken space station, a bunch of heroes are wrecked and want to get away, of course. So they have no choice but to explore the bowels of a long abandoned station and defend themselves from the hordes of monsters that settled in them. The key will be to guard the crystal, it is the only solid technology left for the heroes and serves as the power source for everything you can do on the station, among other things.
(Arthur Prudent We wanted to create a game that combined the roguelike genre with strategic elements, because that’s what we like to do in Amplitude. We try to add some strategy to every game we play. It probably occurred to us to combine these two genres when we were actively playing FTL. So the first shots were taken for our then Dungeon of the Endless game, where we first tried to add a Tower Defense add-on to a rogue-like game. In Endless Dungeon, we tried to keep both of these elements and enrich them with more dynamic passages and mechanical double-lever shooters.
(Jeff Spock) Now I really remember. how it really was. The boys just sat down for a beer and talked about how cool the rogue-like genre is. But then it occurred to them that the goal was not just to explore the dungeon, but to master it. Then they just added strategic elements to Dungeon Crawler like tower defense, resource management and more. But it’s all about beer.
WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT TODAY?
The main game mechanic works in such a way that you are in the same room with a crystal and two heroes. Each time you open the door, it will supply you with raw materials depending on how many production sites you can capture and also protect. Behind the door, in addition to the upgrade rack, there may be an enemy hatchery that you cannot completely destroy. However, you can surround it with offensive or support towers that will fire autonomously if there are enough of them. But in order to build towers, you need one of the game’s three main ingredients, Industrial Packs. It then balances you where to build towers, how many towers you need, and whether it would be better to collect more food to upgrade your heroes or science kits that will open the way to more advanced and powerful towers. While playing, I originally wanted to mint the turtle tactics and, most importantly, protect my crystal. So before I realized he couldn’t stay in one place. To get deeper into the bowels of the station, you will always have to move your energy crystal to the transition door. And, as you may have guessed, a fierce counterattack awaits you.
(Arthur Prudent Of course, we try to be able to approach the game in several different ways so that you can slowly hone your strategy, one try at a time. You will learn how to optimally place towers. For example, I often like to use slow jelly towers. Putting in place…
(Jeff Spock) Just where there is little space, their jellies will burst and then you can safely shoot.
AND AGAIN THE CYCLE
The developers often mentioned the rogue-like genre during interviews, but due to the fact that I was buffered from our video about game loops, I felt that they were chatting a little. Like most games of this type, Endless Dungeon uses rogue-lite elements rather than rogue-like elements. Your individual attempts to pass through the station will not always be a matter of pure chance. The center of your expeditions will be a pub or salon from which you will go on your expeditions and I was interested in what you can do there.
(Arthur Prudent This is a lot. First of all, here you will unlock new heroes that will greatly affect how your individual attempts go. The characters can complement each other well and by combining them you will gradually open other areas, new ways through the station, as well as other approaches to passing through the station to the very center, so that it is always different. You will be able to improve your crystal, your heroes, their weapons, as well as auxiliary equipment.
(Jeff Spock) And here you are also exploring a story that will soon swell.
(Arthur Prudent Tasks.
(Jeff Spock) That’s right, the climax of the missions will take place in the salon, because we don’t want players to have to stop while walking through the dungeon in the middle of a wave of bugs and say to themselves: “Ahh, the story is so coming.” Don’t, we don’t need stopwatches like that. Most important things will happen in the cabin, and it will also be possible to see how far we have actually come.
(Arthur Prudent Yes, and there will be a group that will reflect your passage. We try to make the salon your home, to which you will return with pleasure after individual attempts.
Perhaps this will actually be the case. In the preview version that I had a chance to try, these possibilities were limited so far, and I tried to survive at least in the first part of the station, which, in fact, almost failed me. For this, I was interested in how long the game actually is and if it really is infinite due to its name.
(Jeff Spock) You can play for a very long time and at the same time come up with something new, do not be shy for 20, 50, 80 hours of play. Even more if the players want. But don’t worry, game over. After all, you start from the position of one character and the main ideas will be “How to escape?”, “How to repair the entire station?”, “How can I leave it.” This is the main engine that will guide you through the story and a clear goal towards which you are moving. You will get there in about 20, 30 hours, maybe 40 or 50. It depends on the player.
(Arthur Prudent This really worries the player, because first you have to get to the center of the station and solve the whole mystery, which will be the first victory that you got in the game.
THE UNIVERSE IS JUST BEGINNING
Obviously, there will be a lot of content in the game, because this is not an isolated case. You probably know Studio Amplitude from the positively received Humankind strategy. However, before that they worked on a lot of games that have a certain similarity. After all, Infinite Space, Infinite Legend, Infinite Dungeon, Infinite Dungeon. It looks like most of their games are connected in some way.
(Jeff Spock) When we were preparing our first game, my colleague Mohammed started out as a creative director, and today he is the director of the entire studio. Together we came up with the idea that we want to build an entire universe. Usually, when you make a 4X sci-fi strategy game, you create the game and only then try to fit the story into it. And that doesn’t sound good, and never has. You can’t really involve the player, so I wanted to build my own universe and then just show: the action of the game takes place here. At present, our knowledge covers 50 to 60 thousand years of the entire galaxy, so it is already quite large. Because of this, we even had to create a separate site, things went awry, and we needed an internal wikipedia to keep track of everything that was happening in our universe.
I admit I can’t pick up on these subtle hints too much because I haven’t played the previous Amplitude games, but Endles veterans will certainly appreciate any references to previous games.
(Jeff Spock) I have a bad habit of throwing Easter eggs everywhere I work. So, to give you an idea… We have, for example, one of the game’s protagonists that Endless Legend players will recognize. So we have little connections here. Another of the heroes will please the Endless Space player. We like to do this for the community, so that players can say to themselves during the game: “Hey, this guy has this last name, wasn’t there a character with that name in that game?”
At the very least, I would like to know more about the bug guy because I enjoyed playing as him the most. Although it would have taken me longer to fully understand the game systems, and while I’ve only shown a large number of ways to get killed, the game still fascinated me. Endless Dungeon offers a very unconventional tower defense game concept, and if everything can be balanced properly, I’ll be looking forward to the game myself. Of course, we wish the developers good luck and perhaps they attracted not only me, but also you with their example. You can already find Endless Dungeon on Steam, but without an exact release date. So hopefully he will clarify this soon and hopefully you will let us know in the comments how you liked the game itself and our preview.
Read also: Why playing the same loop is still fun or how Roguelike works
Source :Indian TV
