Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee

Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee is a new edition of the game released in 2014. It is an RPG with rogulike and tower defense elements. In the Apogee edition we get both the main game and five DLC packs released for it: Deep Freeze , Death Gamble, Rescue Team, Organic Matters and Bookworm. It was developed by the developers from Amplitude Studios. The publisher is Playdigious.

Plot

The action of this game is set in a universe known from strategy games Endless Space and Endless Legend and is a kind of story link between them. Players take on the role of outcasts who, aboard the prison ship Success, have been sent to one of the uncolonised planets in the Auriga system. However, the ship is destroyed during a landing attempt and the would-be prisoners, encased in escape pods, end up in an underground facility created by an ancient race of Endless. The protagonists have to navigate through the dungeons, which are full of dangers and treasures.

Mechanics

In Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee we observe the action from the top-down perspective. We start the game by recruiting (or joining - in co-op mode) a team of heroes with different abilities and weaknesses. What's important, in the team there can be both guards and former prisoners (finding the right balance between them is very important here).

The actual game is about exploring the dungeon's chambers and defending a powerful crystal, recovered from a crashed ship, from successive waves of monsters. In the second task an army made up of a combined force of prisoners and guards, as well as various traps and defense towers help us.

As the game progresses we have to constantly train our army, take care of technology development and regular upgrades to the defence system, as well as the necessary food. The things we need and new opportunities are found by scouring the ruins - for example, we obtain resources from the treasures we discover along the way, or buy them from merchants we meet during our travels.

The key to success is tactical thinking and the right balance of actions taken. Because this is a roguelike, any serious mistake can lead to our death and the need to start the game from the beginning. It's also worth noting that the map is randomly generated, so it looks slightly different each time.

While working on the Apogee release, the developers redesigned the interface to be compatible with mobile devices. Thanks to the DLC included in this version we also get access to new heroes, technologies, artifacts, monsters and a few more game modes (more about them below).

Game modes

In Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee we can play alone or with others. The game offers a single player mode and an online co-op mode.

Thanks to the included DLC in the Apogee edition we will find three additional game modes, which are connected with other ship variants. In the game mode introduced in Organic Matters, monsters are faster, we cannot carry out repairs, and there is no possibility to turn off the power in rooms that have access to energy. In the mode linked to the ship The Refreezerator, we control a single, but stronger hero throughout the game, who can be "resurrected" by eating. We don't have access to fast healing and the science module at the beginning of the game (but we do have a larger assortment of immediately available resources, items and modules). The Library mode weakens the heroes, forcing players to rely more on the tower defense element and modules / technology development.

Technical aspects

Dungeon of the Endless: Apogee has a rather simple, 2D pixel-art style graphics, which uses vivid colours. In terms of graphics, the production does not stand out anything special, but despite the fact that it is not technologically advanced, you can not deny it a consistent, interesting presentation.