"Particularly in Endless Dungeon, you might set up this corridor where you hope the monsters will come down. You love that! And because Endless Dungeon is procedurally-generated, you never quite know what's going to happen and it's quite magical." "What we sometimes saw in our 4x games (Endless Space, Endless Legend, Humankind), we'd have four or five players getting together, playing a game, and then afterwards writing a full after-action report – you know, this is how our battle went, that kind of thing. "Seeing players pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the game makes it all worthwhile," Spock continues. It couldn't function nearly as well without it, but that's testament to its design: whereby players are given the tools and freedom to either thrive or die. Games of this ilk thrive in these circumstantial situations, granted, but the moment-to-moment action in Endless Dungeon is so fast and erratic, that's its scope to surprise and keep you on your toes – or, you know, balled up in a spider's web begging for mercy – is a joy. Miraculously, I actually made it out alive in the above ill-planned scenario (shout-out to my long suffering team-mates), but the ordeal underlines one of Endless Dungeon's redeeming features: its penchant to entertain during its unscripted, incidental moments. Endless Dungeon is a space western, so I have archetypes in my head from western movies." The artists say: 'Hey, look at this, look at that, look at this!' And it's about finding a balance. "The design says we need certain gameplay archetypes. "Bringing these characters to life is an interesting, very iterative process," says game director, Jeff Spock. Especially when Fassie's special abilities include using cocktails to boost allies, and starting bar fights whereby nearby monsters turn on each other to your advantage. Just like its esteemed forerunner, the procedurally-generated action here is fast and frantic, its enemies are unsightly and unpredictable, and its heroes are, clearly, hardly what you'd call orthodox. This is Endless Dungeon, remember, Amplitude's incoming tower defense twin-stick shooter and successor to 2014's Dungeon of the Endless. I'm filling the beer-soaked shoes of Fassie, a hybrid creature with the head of a bighorn sheep and a dragon's body, who's also a bartender and mixologist dressed in a tuxedo because, well, of course they are. With our team of three on the ropes, our defense turrets all but destroyed, and our morale at an all-time low, it's time for me to step up.
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