Countless Dungeon, the successor to 2014’s Dungeon of The Countless, is a tower protection twin-stick shooter created by French developer Amplitude Studios; and after my hands-on session at Gamescom 2022, it has the potential to be the following massive roguelite.
Curiously, this upcoming roguelite is extra a reimagining than a sequel. As an alternative of the point-and-click navigation and automatic fight featured within the first sport, gamers now straight management characters and weapons in real-time. Countless Dungeon reimagines its predecessor’s pixel artwork dungeons into bigger, gorgeously-lit 3D areas. Additionally, as much as three mates can play cooperatively.
You play as members of a shipwrecked crew, every representing a western cowboy trope, stranded on a mysterious area station. However in contrast to the opposite poor souls trapped amidst the celebs, your squad might need an opportunity to flee. To take action, you’ll must combat your method deeper into the terminal.
Countless Dungeon is as a lot a twin-stick shooter as it’s a dungeon crawler and tower protection sport. Each dungeon begins in a closed-off secure room with a crystal within the middle. It’s essential to shield the crystal in any respect prices as a result of if it breaks, you die. Your aim is to escort the crystal to an undisclosed exit someplace inside the zone. You don’t know what number of doorways are between you and the exit, so that you higher get to opening them.
However what lies past every door is a complete thriller – it may very well be new weapons, devices, or presumably a nest or swarm of enemies. The crystal can’t observe you, so you need to concurrently shield it whereas exploring new areas. One of the simplest ways to guard the crystal is to construct turrets.
Development nodes line each room, and you may place many turret varieties on prime. Some modules produce a slowing discipline, others defend every little thing of their respective space, and essentially the most primary ones mechanically shoot enemies. It is perhaps apparent, however the problem comes from a restricted pool of sources, requiring gamers to position turrets the place they provide essentially the most utility. You’ll find extra sources by exploring rooms or constructing extractors in distinctive areas, however every extractor can solely produce one kind at a time. In fact, every little thing you construct is prone to assault from hostile robots, aliens, and different enemies.
When you uncover the exit, the crystal will start its journey throughout the station. However the crystal uninstalls itself from the system to maneuver, triggering waves of enemies to spawn and hunt it down. Your job is to guard it, after all.
Each character in Countless Dungeon possesses distinctive passive and lively talents. Bunker, a robotic sheriff, stands in the best way of enemy hearth with its large defend, Blaze is an explosives-toating zoner, and the newly-revealed Shroom carries potent therapeutic elixirs to buff the workforce. You may swap between characters on a whim and order get together members to remain or observe. Once more, Countless Dungeon will provide multiplayer help at launch, so as much as three gamers can every decide their favourite character.
I’ve performed many wonderful video games at Gamescom this week, however Countless Dungeon is perhaps my favourite. Its twin-stick gunplay is polished, and its tower protection parts pair effectively with dungeon-crawling exploration to create tense eventualities. I see myself sinking dozens of hours into the ultimate launch – at any time when which may be.
However the studio solely just lately “discovered the enjoyable,” a phrase usually used to indicate a profitable prototype design. Earlier than that, the workforce was pulling their hair out in frustration.
“Up till two months in the past, I’ve to confess, Countless Dungeon was not that enjoyable,” says Artistic Director Jean-Maxime Moris. “We had been a bit cautious of straying too far-off from the unique.”
It wasn’t till roughly six months in the past that the workforce determined to manage characters and weapons in real-time. Moris continues, “Once we launched real-time, that made it, so that you had been in your toes the entire time. And even when you must traverse your entire stage, it would not really feel that lengthy since you’re at all times on the lookout for hazard.”
“We got here to a spot just some weeks in the past, the place now I can play the sport. And this was my imaginative and prescient for the sport: in the event you get good at it, you rigorously place your turrets and improve them after they should be repaired. I take nice pleasure in not having to fireplace a single bullet, simply watching the carnage unfold and going by means of the extent whereas watching the turrets do their jobs.”
Now that Amplitude has established a core gameplay loop, the studio focuses day by day on stage designs to fluctuate the sport’s tempo and quantity of problem. The undertaking doesn’t at the moment have a launch window, however Countless Dungeon may very well be a breakout hit if it continues alongside the identical trajectory.
