Endless Dungeon builds on over a decade of lore built within the Endless franchise.
In Endless Dungeon, developer Amplitude Studios returns to its primarily 4X strategy franchise.
The game sees you play as one of many survivors trapped on a seemingly inescapable space station.
The only way out is in the furthest depths of the station.
What has it been like exploring a different corner of a familiar universe?
Spock: This is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
I mean, I love this.
I get paid to do this; it’s unbelievable.
That’s really gratifying.
So who can we have in the game?"
So we’ve been working on the universe long enough.
Spock: I mean, there are definitely constraints, and there kind of have to be constraints.
And then it sort of loses its consistency and its character and its coherence.
So yeah, that’s just something we accept.
I really want to have control over what is magic.
How is Endless Dungeon’s story told?
How do players discover or unlock more of each individual character’s story?
Spock: Yeah, well, that’s a challenge we’d had since the first.
We did Endless Space, and the narrative was pretty light in there.
So we’re a little bit used to trying to tell standard traditional stories in a procedurally generated game.
So expertise is a strong word to use, but we have the scars for trying it.
And so part of it is trying to figure out how you structure that.
“Go look for this over there, go see the landmark that’s in this district.
Kill this boss,” that kind of thing.
So it’s very collaborative.
I don’t know if we got an album that you’ve got the option to check.
Spock: There’s a lot of backstory in there and you go through districts.
There’s a lot of little things like that we put in there.
How does the game incentivize the player to keep going and try one more time after a failed run?
Are there smaller goals for the player to chase beyond the overarching goal of escaping the station?
Prudent: Yeah, definitely.
I think it’s one of the most important things that we wanted to add to this game.
We really wanted to add something more rewarding and lots of short and medium-term goals.
You also have all these meta provision monies.
We have two currencies.
And that’s really the spirit of that.
So even after a terrible run you still have something to do.
I can put this on the wall."
So yeah, I think that’s good.
Without spoiling the game’s ending, will players be able to reach a definitive narrative conclusion at launch?
How much of the story is being saved for post-launch?
And I think when the players get to the end, they’ll start to realize that.
So yeah, there are possible extensions and that kind of thing, it could come afterward.
This interview was edited for brevity and readability.
Got a news tip or want to contact us directly?
