Dungeon of the Endless

[Wyatan]

http://store.steampowered.com/app/249050

Anyone tried it ?
Seems pretty interesting. Getting an "FTL vibe" from the reviews and comments, although the gameplay's in its own category.

Will definitely have a go at it at some point, but in the meantime, it seems the kind of game this crowd could have some fun with.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the recommendation, Wyatan. I purchased the game yesterday and it looks to be worth the minimum asking price if you enjoy the FTL or Rogue Legacy style of gameplay. I don't think that this game is quite as good as FTL; the balancing can be a little off in some areas, and the gameplay was dragging and becoming a bit repetitive at the end of my successful run. (You must pass through 12 floors in this game, and I felt that 10 would have been a better number. The last few floors felt unnecessary, since I had long since finished researching everything useful.) That said, there should be enough here for quite a few different runs testing different stuff, and the possibility for some variants too.

Technical issues willing, I'll be Livestreaming some of this in a few hours if anyone wants to take a look.

[Gustaran]

Technical issues willing, I'll be Livestreaming some of this in a few hours if anyone wants to take a look.

Great!

May I ask what you think about the UI? I checked some recent "Let's Play..." Videos on Youtube in HD, but at least on my laptop screen the font was very tiny and hard to read which put me off purchasing the game so far.

Is there an option to change the font size?

[Sullla]

I don't know if there's an option to change the font sizes, and yes, they are unnecessarily small for no real reason. Although it looks fine on my desktop, I can definitely see it being an issue on a laptop or tablet screen. This game runs at a very large resolution (1440x900) and there's no option to resize when playing in windowed mode. I guess the designers just decided everyone would be playing on a large desktop screen?

Going to get some lunch now and hopefully set up the stream in an hour or so.

[Gustaran]

Now I understand why this game is called "Dungeon of the Endless".
12 floors? Seriously? I would go as far as saying 7 floors + one "boss sector" like it is in FTL would have been plenty considering ~25 minutes per floor.

Who really enjoys playing 5 hour sessions in a game with permadeath? One big mistake->restart.

[antisocialmunky]

Dude, Sots: The Pit is like ~30 hours permadeath.

[Gustaran]

Dude, Sots: The Pit is like ~30 hours permadeath.

Indeed, and how popular is this game compared to Rogue Legacy or FTL ?

But I will admit you have a point, a better example would probably something like the hardcore mode of Diablo. I still think the main difference is that in Diablo there is some sort of progress by advancing through the areas and levelling up, even if you die at some point you can claim a certain character level, etc. Who cares if you die on floor 8, 9 or 10 of DOTE?

I personally think think the permadeath needs to fit the game instead of just being thrown in there. That being said, I think a single run of the game would be too long for a non-permadeath game as well. If FTL had 15 sectors I would say the same thing.

[antisocialmunky]

Indeed, and how popular is this game compared to Rogue Legacy or FTL ?

How do you intend for me to take that comment since our powers of sarcasm don't work well here? 0_o

It seems pretty popular, they keep releasing expansions for it. I think the comparison is quite apt except its a more traditional rogue like.

[Gustaran]

How do you intend for me to take that comment since our powers of sarcasm don't work well here? 0_o

I meant to express my opinion that I think FTL and Rogue Legacy are superior and more popular games with a better handling of the permadeath mechanic and especially much shorter "session" times.

To put the general quality in Metacritic review scores:

SOTS-The Pit: 68%
FTL: 84%
Rogue Legacy: 85%

Now these numbers might or might not be influenced by the handling of permadeath, but I think it is a valid question how a game handles the relation between permadeath/session length/progress.

[antisocialmunky]

? Is this discussion really becoming an off topic game X is better than game Y even though they are not directly comparable and reeks of elitism? Because that's the vibe I'm getting. All I wanted to say is that other permadeath games make the amount of hours lost in a failed session of this game look like nothing.

I'm also not sure why reviewer metacritic score implies any strong correlation between permadeath/session length/progress. The non-reviewer scores are 7.6 for Sots: the Pit (no idea what it should be for all the expansions) and 7.9 for everything else anyway so they seem pretty close is customer satisfaction.

I'd also recommend Sots: The Pit for anyone looking for a more traditional dungeon crawler with crafting, permadeath, and a sci-fi setting. Its quite pleasant for the low price though quite frustrating when you get to the point where all your equipment is breaking and you just run out of resources. It is a ~30 hour grind with the free DLC that increases dungeon size by 20% but its pretty easy to break into sessions (every 5 floors I believe).