Let me put you comfortable. Limitless Dungeon is a really splashy, confidently intelligent roguelike about spannering turrets, hosing bullets, and popping bugs like indignant little pimples. It sounds disgusting once I kind it out loud like that, so let’s pivot to the dependable meals analogy. It’s a scrumptious recreation, a hearty stew. A tasty one-more-go-er, completely suited to serving up in these dreary autumn months. There. Now that you have been pacified by the imagery of a steaming bowl of pleasing dungeon gumbo, you’ll forgive the 400 phrases I’ve written beneath about doorways.
Earlier than that, the fundamentals. You play a posse of spacefolk stranded on a monolithic house station, titanic each in dimension and wreckishness. You need to discover a method off, however the reply lies deep within the station’s bowels, and inevitable dying awaits. Fortunately, there is a system, the “reloader” which zaps your revived corpse again to a pleasant saloon, full with bar and stage band, the place you spend “cells” and “scraps” on upgrades to characters and weapons, making your subsequent delve a bit of simpler.
A well-known loop, however the dungeon’s within the element. Every run sees you (and as much as two pals in co-op, if you happen to like) guiding a small, spidery robotic, the Crystalbot, between glowing sockets as you search for a viable path by way of locked rooms. On the hoof you will additionally construct defensive turrets within the energy retailers that litter the ground of every chamber. The studio behind the sport established this neat system of defensive dungeon dipping with the inversely named Dungeon of the Limitless again in 2014, so that is type of a religious successor. However if you happen to missed that, simply think about escorting the mulebot from Deep Rock Galactic by way of a sci-fi Hades. With tower defence.
I make the comparability to everybody’s favorite Greecelike as a result of Hades-heads will in all probability really feel at house with the fight right here. The disco of assault shapes lighting up the ground, the chests permitting for mid-run weapon swaps, the post-death chit-chat with a solid of likeable misfits. Like Hades it’s, at instances, a “busy” recreation. But additionally a extra tactical one. Determination-making throughout a run comes not from boon a la carte, however in deciding the place to position your helpful turrets earlier than a giant wave of nasty drones seems. Or extra importantly, in deciding which door you’ll subsequent crack open like a chilly and typically deadly beer. As a result of, let me let you know, this recreation does the common-or-garden door absurdly effectively.
Opening doorways provides you money. This sounds very boring and simple. However it’s a remarkably elegant design choice. You want money to construct turrets (and do different issues) and though you possibly can construct turbines to extend your earnings, you do not really set off these earnings till you crack open a door. This provides each single door intrinsic worth, regardless of how plain-looking or suspicious. A door is not inviting thanks solely to what the ensuing room could comprise (upgrades, loot, the zone’s exit…) but in addition as a result of it’s a bloody door, cha-ching. Limitless Dungeon takes one factor all recreation designers instinctively hate (doorways – do not ask) and turns them into treasure chests. I like this. It means exploring is tied on to your energy in a essentially encouraging method.
It is not simply the turrets you are saving your sci-fi money for. On high of tech factors (the foreign money used to construct turrets) you additionally get meals factors and science factors. Science bucks will unlock cool new turrets, like flamethrowers, acid weapons, vary amplifiers, tesla coils, and so forth. You additionally want it to purchase highly effective elemental weapons (rail weapons, acid peashooters) from a shady service provider. In the meantime, meals quids are dumped into improve consoles for character bonuses (a ten% hearth fee improve, a 20% defence enhance, and so forth). However no matter you are shopping for, the impetus is evident. Get opening these doorways! It is not like there will be a nest of otherworldly alien beings that may part out and in of actuality behind that large house hatch.
Oh.
Oh, I seeeeee. Do you see?
All of it comes collectively to create a frequently pleasing risk-reward bullet wander. There are just a few quirks of the style, in fact. For instance, because the maps get extra advanced, a lot of the eyegame is performed your radar, since it’s so worthwhile for monitoring incoming packs of baddies. In a method this fits the fight. An Aliens-style movement detector displaying swarms of crimson dots approaching is just about anticipated for any such setting. However it may be distracting to understand you’re specializing in a cleaner model of the precise recreation you’re already taking part in, scrunched right into a small circle within the nook of your display.
That is additional noticeable throughout “blackouts”, moments of sudden energy loss the place all of your turrets go down and you need to discover some pc terminals to revive energy. In blackouts, enemies steadily trickle out of their hidey holes, fairly than swarming out in full-blown waves. They usually do not seem on radar in darkish rooms till you possibly can already see them immediately. But the necessity to shortly discover the fitting light-restoring Macbook Professionals has you trying predominantly on the radar. As an intentional second of heightened stress, it actually works. However I additionally typically groan when it occurs (typically a number of instances on the identical flooring…) as a result of it seems like an interruption to the door-by-door exploring and blasting, which I merely like an excessive amount of to need to cease.
It is a small criticism. A lot extra enjoyable issues come to pee in your power-up parade. Darkish rooms should be powered with a particular useful resource, “Mud”, earlier than you possibly can place turrets inside. Strategically cursed hall formations can randomly seem, inflicting you to rethink the perfect place to bottleneck enemies. Monoliths that buff monsters present up and demand a tithe to deactivate. Huge roly poly bugs roll off to hidden corners to spawn different monsters endlessly till you go cope with them. All of it builds on high of that central door-cracking premise in a really neat and balanced method.
Some flooring culminate in boss battles the place you need to shepherd your Crystalbot out of the boss’s brutal assault splashes, like some pet spider with no survival intuition, all of the whereas repair-donking your turrets, traps, and gizmos within the enviornment. On the identical time dozens of normal enemies will spawn and nibble at each you and your treasured robo pet. In a lesser recreation this could simply really feel like babysitting an egg throughout an earthquake in a warzone. However the Crystalbot is commonly the important thing to defeating stated bosses, whether or not that is so simple as ordering it to drill a gap within the cranium of an incapacitated tentacled beast, or plugging it into contaminated terminals to manage cyber antibiotics to a horrendous rogue AI. It seems like Crystalbot is a part of the squad.
And it is a good squad. Characters fall broadly into two large flavours: heavy weapons assassin and handgun-sporting supportbud. My favorite is the indignant Marxist engineer, “Comrade”, who has his personal stash of private mini-turrets, or maybe “Blaze”, the four-armed robotic cowboy with a pocket filled with proximity mines. There’s positively sufficient selection in talents to permit for good multiplayer synynynynergizing (sadly I did not get to check out the multiplayer, however if you happen to just like the twin-stick buddying-up of Helldivers, you will doubtless go ham for this). You’ll be able to unlock all eight characters simply inside ten hours, however all of them have private missions to fulfil that take many extra dives into the spacehells that reward them with additional buff slots.
There’s different issues I admire. The laser sight very subtly snaps to viable targets. The sci-fi lore is there in spades however is genially non-invasive (playable characters typically react with comical disinterest when studying lore diaries, saying “yada yada!” or “an excessive amount of to maintain observe of”). Except for just a few zealous blackouts and enemies typically getting caught, I’ve discovered absurdly little to dislike within the rampaging goodtimes of all of it. I nonetheless have not made my method into the deepest endguts of the house dungeon, although. Perhaps there is a 20-minute unskippable cutscene down there. However going by the extent of polish all over the place else, I doubt it.
So aye. Like several stew, there’s so much piled in. However the precept components are filling and easy. Limitless Dungeon’s core design, if we need to break it proper down, is product of the next stuffs: turret, door, nest, cash. There may be nothing in these parts, and even within the “verbs” of the sport, to make it distinctive. Lots of of video games use the identical components, even goal for a similar style (lighthearted Aliens). However Amplitude’s recipe right here, their selection of spices, ends in a uniquely pleasing dish. They sprinkle the turrets, they preserve the nests chunky, they bake the cash into the doorways. (God, I am hungry.) The result’s a completely stacked dish that roguelike-likers can be very joyful to gorge on.
This overview relies on a overview construct of the sport supplied by publishers Sega.
