While, strategically speaking, managing these characters will take up the bulk of a player’s attention (with opening doors, tracking their health pools, using abilities, and making sure they aren’t getting swarmed), they are actually only the second most important part of most strategies. Some prisoners are great fighters, ranged or melee, while others are much more suited to assisting from the back with group buffs, or simply boosting resource production. Mixing and matching prisoner skillsets, figuring out how to maximise their effect, as well as managing resources-industry, science, food, as well as dust (power)-are the fundamentals of climbing floors. In addition (as if that wasn’t enough), the prisoners themselves are quite capable fighters, and some are even able to operate or repair the buildings as well. Fortunately, in some glimmer of insight, someone designed the escape pods to include blueprints for both resource generators and turrets, and a mobile power supply to get ’em running. Players choose a team of two prisoners and an escape pod, and must ascend through twelve floors of a dungeon filled with a variety of overly enthusiastic defense forces, as well as other prisoners (who can be recruited), and merchants (who have a variety of goods to trade). Now, to backtrack, Dungeon of the Endless, if this is the first you’ve heard of it, is a roguelike tower defense. So what is it? Why, despite owning the game on three different platforms and trying to get into it dozens of times, does it consistently fail to draw me in, push me to really dig in to strategies, and finally beat the game? The answer, I’ve come to find, is simple: The post-run reward loop that gets you to come back for one more floor, to experiment with that thing you just unlocked, or to see if tweaking your strategy just so makes the difference, just… isn’t there. It’s not immediately obvious why, either-the art is gorgeous, the soundtrack is good, and the minute to minute gameplay is quite enjoyable too. Not because it’s bad, but because it just… doesn’t capture my attention, can’t keep me coming back for run after run, even after months of not playing. Dungeon of the Endless ($1.99) is one of those. Then there are some games I really want to love and enjoy and recommend but, for one reason or another, I just… can’t. Other games maybe need a bit of work, a bit of spit & polish, and they could be good. Really good, even, and you know you’ll play them for hours and hours.
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