Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Endless Dungeon - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: November 27, 2023

Video Game hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan are headed to the saloon and fighting their way through the dungeon in this week’s Deep Dive of Endless Dungeon. Ryan was forced to play this video game by Legen...dary supporter Kiitaclyzm, and now it’s time to find out what he thought. Endless Dungeon mixes multiple gaming genres and mashes a twin stick shooter, tower defense and rogue-lite into one. Does this video game pull it off? We tell you in this awesome episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiiticlyzm and Morgau Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:22 Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow gaming fans. Welcome to another episode of the Video Gamers Podcast. Today we are going to be deep diving Endless Dungeon, which just released earlier this year on October 19th. Please make sure to rate our show five stars and leave a written review. You can also find us on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod. Josh is always busy making posts for us, so make sure to go
Starting point is 00:01:00 give him some love. I am your host, Paul, and I love tower defense games. And joining me, he's a huge fan of roguelikes. It's Josh. I love roguelikes. I love tower defense. I'm there's there's this game is an interesting game because it tries to combine everything. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:01:22 And then joining Josh and me, he's a huge fan of twin stick shooters guys i don't know how we're gonna pick a game that all three of us can play it's ryan all right i just finished this dungeon oh wait oh there's another level oh it's like this thing's endless oh there it is i knew at some point one of us would make a joke about this game being endless all right before we start our deep dive, we do have a couple of new supporters to thank. We had not just one, but two people sign up
Starting point is 00:01:52 on Patreon. They both signed up with legendary status. We owe two huge thank yous to users Yaya Arizona and Morgau. Whoa. Thank you. Both of you. Air Whoa. Thank you. Insert applause here. Both of you. Air horns.
Starting point is 00:02:06 Air horns. Remember me. Yeah! Oh, man. Morgau loves to post questions like every morning on Discord. He drives a lot of content on our discord.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Love it. So more guy, I know you are listening. You are an awesome member of the community. Absolutely love the questions and just the love for gaming that you have in that you share with everybody else. Thank you for supporting the podcast. Thank you for going legendary,
Starting point is 00:02:39 but we, we see you and we appreciate it for sure. Absolutely. And, uh, also I owe a very big thank you to yaya arizona not just because of patreon whoa whoa i think we we owe a thank you to yaya arizona because that's paul's mom that's my mom without yaya we would not even have a podcast that is 100 true uh yeah my mom was an epic supporter for a very long time
Starting point is 00:03:10 it was even an outdated epic tier that got phased out forever ago i think my mom finally logged in and it was making her pick a tier and she upgraded to legendary she picked the right tier yeah that is the best here so thank you so much to both of them that means that later on down the road both of them are able to hijack a host and pick a game that we're going to have to deep dive and so that'll be coming to you guys in the new year i did want to make a little bit of an announcement here that every year we always have a two-week break for the holidays so the last two weeks in december we'll just be rolling out some of our favorite episodes from 2023. And then we'll be able to start getting caught back
Starting point is 00:03:51 up and everything hitting the ground running in December, or I'm sorry, in January. All right. Now, if anyone wants to sign up on Patreon like Morgau and Yaya Arizona, you can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com. You get a shout out on the show regardless of what tier you sign up for. You also get bonus episodes twice a month. You get special perks in Discord. All kinds of stuff. And while we're on the topic, Ryan, why don't
Starting point is 00:04:16 you tell the people why it is that we're covering Endless Dungeon today? Well, we are covering Endless Dungeon because Cataclysm, our beautiful, beautiful amazing legendary supporter decided to sign up and pick me so i am here playing endless dungeon because of that you guys can sign up you get to hijack one of us we have to play a game of your choosing uh whether we like it or not and that's what we got to do so everyone if
Starting point is 00:04:47 you want to sign up uh pick a game it's it's uh you got a lot of other stuff with it but i'm sorry i'll cut all that out that was really bad you only had to bring it home it was like you had it and then you just like no, my line broke. I'm not a smart man. You got 99% there, Ryan. You can leave this in if you want. Do you just want to move on? Or do you want to redo it? Let's move on.
Starting point is 00:05:14 Let's move on. All right. Yeah, you did great, Ryan. Don't worry about it. Oh, man. All right. So if anyone wants to go back a couple of Mondays, that's when we announced we were going to be covering this.
Starting point is 00:05:24 We always do a little bit of a pre-dive before we do the full deep dive here. We got to learn that Kidaclysm chose Ryan because Ryan might've celebrated a little bit too early when he said that he did not have to play any games and kind of reveled in that apparently a little bit too much. So with a little bit of fun, kid, a clism chose Ryan. Now, Josh, you already had picked up endless dungeon and put yourself on hold because kid, a clism let you know,
Starting point is 00:05:53 Hey, I'm going to pick endless dungeon for Ryan. So you intentionally waited until Ryan found out that way. You guys would be able to play a little bit together. What a guy. What a guy. I'm just the best man. And so modest. The best Josh a guy ever had. And so the two of you have both played this game quite a bit. I have not.
Starting point is 00:06:14 I did not pick it up. I watched a few reviews and some video footage. That way I would be a little bit familiar with it. I've been too busy with Alan Wake 2, pouring my time into that. And so you guys are going to be the resident experts. I'm going too busy with Alan Wake 2, pouring my time into that, and so you guys are going to be the resident experts. I'm going to hit you guys with questions, try to figure out what you guys thought about Endless Dungeon, who this game might be for, maybe even if it's something I should look into picking up, even though I'd be a little bit late. So for anyone who's not already familiar with Endless Dungeon, here's the description from Steam. Endless Dungeon is a roguelite tactical action game set in
Starting point is 00:06:46 the award-winning Endless Universe. Recruit a team of shipwrecked heroes, plunge into a long-abandoned space station, and protect your crystal against never-ending waves of monsters. Or die trying, get reloaded, and try again. All right, so I hinted at it here in the intro. The pitch that I keep hearing from everyone with Endless Dungeon is that it is a roguelite, it is a twin stick shooter, and it is a tower defense all rolled into one. I have seen many games that are two of those put together. I don't know that I've ever quite seen a game that tries to have all three. I'm curious to hear from you guys, how does this work? How do they mesh these three genres together? And does it work? Or is this a case of too many cooks in
Starting point is 00:07:30 the kitchen trying to do too much? Ryan, what do you think, man? Because I mean, I personally love all of these genres individually, but I'm really curious what your impression or initial impression was of like this mix of like three different genres it's something that's hard it's like you you you like one thing and you like another together they may not always meld I know we always talk about food especially me and Paul sometimes some things are good on their own together they don't go together so well i think they did a absolutely brilliant job mixing all three of these game types together i think the playability the flow of the game the the way everything goes you know just goes through uh kind of this sequence of of the start the chaos the calm the start the chaos the calm it just kind of is like
Starting point is 00:08:28 this kind of go thing and then you go back to the saloon and then you can hang out there and it's there's just so many factors to it i think they did all of it very very well um i don't know what you think josh i'm with you man honestly i was very curious because I do like all of these genres. And I've played a game in each of these genres that really focused on each one. Like Twin Stick Shooter, I was big on The Ascent for a little while. I've always liked small news that I love roguelike games as well. I like the challenge of those and the progression and stuff like that as well. I think Endless Dungeon did a really good job. And I think the reason that it works for this game is they kind of just went a little light on all of it. And what I mean by that is I've know, I've played some serious tower defense games where it's like, you have to route everything through this maze so that, you know, you get full optimization of your towers and slowing everything down. And, you know, there's strategy built into
Starting point is 00:09:35 that. In Endless Dungeon, you definitely need your towers, you need your turrets, and you do have to think about where to put them sometimes, but it's like a light version of that. You know, the twin stick shooter aspect, it's fun. The combat is, is chaotic and engaging, but it's not as in-depth as a game like the ascent would be. Um, and the roguelike nature that they, they, you know, it's kind of hard to mess that up, to be honest. So I feel like that is probably the strongest aspect of this game. But I think it all works because they didn't try to make any one genre stand out above the others, if that makes sense. That was exactly what I was going to ask, because that's my worry when you try to mix genres like this. For example, Josh, you and I play Dungeon Defenders, and that has tower defense mechanics, and it has third
Starting point is 00:10:25 person shooter mechanics. And it would be very easy to see where if you find one to be very boring, it might almost like sabotage the game. So I was curious if like one of those elements particularly stands out or if one particularly sucks compared to the others. It sounds like you guys are saying by themselves, none them are spectacular but when you put all three together it's just kind of like a brand new experience you don't quite see in anything else and it works really well is that fair yeah yeah i mean honestly like what happens when you take milk and sugar and ice and put it together and churn it yeah it's it's incredible right but like milk by itself is okay.
Starting point is 00:11:05 I mean, sugar is pretty good. We all like sugar. But something special happens when you mix them. That's so funny. In my head, I thought a pizza dough, pizza sauce, and cheese. I'm like, I'm thinking pizza. I like sugar. Ryan likes salty.
Starting point is 00:11:21 But I mean, that is a really good example of how it just kind of comes together to say, Hey, this is, this is greater than its individual parts because it does mesh them together very, very well. All right. I'm very curious to hear like a breakdown of how all this stuff works. Now, being a twin stick shooter, does that mean that you guys both played on controller or did either of you play on keyboard and mouse? I play keyboard it works oh okay yeah it really works really well wasd to control your character mouse to aim the direction you want to shoot it's very intuitive so it works really well although shout out to any and all game developers please please please allow people to change their cursor color oh yes that's all these games all these games i i can't i i get lost so many times trying and especially in game like this you know
Starting point is 00:12:14 with all these monsters coming in the chaos not having the ability to have a cursor that's just like neon whatever color that you can see. It's so hard. It's just kind of a pale gray or whatever. And then you just get lost. You're like, wait, where am I? And you got to wiggle it around before you can find it. And then you can go around. Yeah, it's...
Starting point is 00:12:33 Please, please, please. That's honestly a really good point because it is one of the criticisms for this game is you're moving around. There's chaos on the screen. If you lose your mouse cursor for a second, your only indication is like the direction that your character is facing but there's so much going on that i mean
Starting point is 00:12:50 ryan's just shooting at a wall you know i'm shooting at the wrong direction it was only one time you know and then we're both like why is nothing dying and then it's like oh well i can't find my cursor so but yeah yeah hot pink or neon yellow or something just it can't be that hard right no so it's like blair witch project ryan's just staring in the corner while everything's going on around him nice all right now this is a multiplayer game that you can play either solo or up to three right that's the party size now did either of you guys get any solo time in or did you only play when you were both online for multiplayer oh i got lots of solo time and i got a lot more once i realized that i could uh because at first because josh was gracious enough to wait for me so
Starting point is 00:13:37 we played a ton in the very beginning together which everybody knows i love co-op games especially online together. Absolute blast. I wasn't as drawn to it thinking that I'd have to play just solo as a single character, but I hopped on and then I realized, oh, you get extra characters and you can also unlock a third as well. So that made it a lot more enticing to play. But yeah, I played a ton solo. You get a character that can
Starting point is 00:14:06 join you in your battle you can pick which one um try to each one has different um support attack yeah roles there there's different ways they can help you so try to pair them accordingly um but yeah i i got a good good good bit of solo time, but obviously a ton of time in with Josh, which is a blast. Yeah, I actually, I was going to say, I played solo a good bit waiting for Ryan when he, because that's when he was out hunting and like I wanted to play a little bit, but then then Kidaclysm reached out and said, hey, I'm going to make Ryan play this with you. And then that's when I just stopped. So I've actually, like Ryan, I've got a fairly even mix of like
Starting point is 00:14:45 playing with friends and then playing solo as well. Are there any pros or cons to playing solo or in a group? Like generally playing with your buddies is always going to beat solo play. Is that the same with this? I mean, I think so because it's just the social nature and like, you know, communicating with Ryan and like, hey man, you want to guard this room? I'll guard this room. Or I'm getting overrun. Ryan, I need you. Ryan, get in here now. I'm about to die. Stop staring at the corner. Exactly. So those moments I really enjoy. So I'll always take playing with people over playing solo. The game does a good job of being good solo. The ai is decent um you get to pick the ai and
Starting point is 00:15:29 you can swap characters and stuff like that it's i mean it's nice that that's an option sometimes you don't want to talk to people and you just want to chill and so it's nice that the game is still a good game even if that's your mood yeah okay. Oh, okay. Totally agree. Yeah, there's some cool factors too as far as the game because I got a ton of time in solo and then a ton of time in with Josh. I noticed as well that the gameplay, I was getting a lot more materials,
Starting point is 00:15:58 but obviously I don't have that other character. It's just an AI character, so I'm having to put a lot more turrets. I'm having to be more lot more turrets i'm having to be uh more generous with how i spend my money you know because with me and josh we were we were holding on to our our money every time we're like oh we gotta save it we gotta that was probably more josh than me but he's like we gotta save it for the next level so i i did notice a little bit of a difference between that the characters weren't as hard to kill you know but then you get to some levels and they are a little more difficult so yeah it was a good uh
Starting point is 00:16:29 mess to where it's still very very much enjoyable solo as well as you know co-op i might be remembering this wrong but i think when we did the pre-dive josh you said this game doesn't really have much story is that correct Is this game mostly just gameplay? I mean, it tells you why you're in this big space station and why you're going down these levels in this dungeon. In a nutshell, you basically get stranded on this space station. There's weird ancient technology going on. Nobody can escape, so people just started living here.
Starting point is 00:17:00 But you're like the determined hero that's going to get off this space station. So it's like, oh, well, if you really want to get out of here, but you're like the determined hero that's going to get off this space station. So it's like, oh, well, if you really want to get out of here, you got to make it down to the core and like blow up the core. So that'll then release the tractor beam that's holding everybody in here. I don't know if that's a hundred percent right, but it's like 95% right. And that's all the story. Something like that. All right. I hear you. Actually, I just made up all of that because I don't know what the story in this. No, it really is the story. Yeah. One of the reviews I saw did not mention story whatsoever. And it was from like a major publication. I'm like, I feel like they would normally talk about story in this review and they didn't even touch on it. So I figured
Starting point is 00:17:40 it must be pretty minimal. All right. Tell me a little bit about the character or class system, because I saw online you can basically play as a total of eight characters. How does all that stuff work? Give me that sweeper, baby. The sweeper is fun, man. I actually took a big liking to Blaze after we got off the other day. The forearm guy? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:03 With the mines? Yeah, Blaze is pretty fun. Yep, yep. So for me, I love games where you can play different characters. If you start getting tired of the game, you can just pick up a different character, learn that character, changes the play style, you know, all that.
Starting point is 00:18:17 So I'm a big fan. Like Specialists and Battlefield 2042. Oh, don't you dare, Paul. Don't you dare. On sale right now with the Autumn Sale on Steam. Yeah, 85% off. You can pick it up for under $10 now, guys.
Starting point is 00:18:29 What a bargain. It should be free to play at this point, but we're still going to try to soak you for $10. Yeah, I paid $60 for that thing. I did too. The characters are interesting too
Starting point is 00:18:40 because with the roguelike nature of this game, you have to unlock them. So you get three that you can start with, but then as you play the game and you make it to certain milestones, you unlock a new character that kind of makes you excited. And you go, Ooh, let me try this guy. Some, some resonates, some don't. There were definitely some, I just didn't like at all. But then there were others where I really liked them. My favorite part of the character system is it is set up as DPS tank and support,
Starting point is 00:19:06 even though there's really only kind of like one real tank in the game. But I like the idea of being able to play with Ryan. Ryan is going turret focused because some characters focus on the actual tower defense part, right? Which is really cool. ryan's playing a turret focused character so i'm gonna go tank or i'm gonna go dps to compliment ryan playing that particular character and i love that man like we definitely messed around with like hey why don't we both try dps let's see if we can just murk everything really fast or ryan you go dps i go support, I'll keep you alive. When you die, I'll blame it on you. You know, as far as that goes. Stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:19:49 Yeah. So the characters in this game are very unique. I really liked it. I thought it was fun to unlock them. I liked the way that they played. I like that they have different abilities and different roles. Yeah. I think it was great how the characters would play off each other. And we would try other ones, different roles. Yeah, I think it was great how the characters would play off each other.
Starting point is 00:20:05 And we would try other ones, different things. Like you said, even with me, I loved playing the sweeper. I had some attack abilities, but I was mainly focused on crowd control and the turrets. So I could go one hit, boom. I bring that turret back to life, full health, good to go. Can run around, kick a couple turrets and then use a little um suds attack you know they have different attacks so you could use a suds attack slows the characters down josh could you know hit them with whatever gun he has and then the turrets would hit
Starting point is 00:20:37 them and we could just control those areas so how they play off each other was really really neat i know that when i was playing solo i kept um I was messing around with different pairings and I was going with blaze. And then, um, what was the, uh, the healer one? I'm trying to think of her,
Starting point is 00:20:53 uh, shroom shroom. Oh yeah. Shroom. Which was great. Cause I, I would, I would go around and I was just always at full health.
Starting point is 00:21:02 I would cruise around. I had mega attack. I would set up my turrets accordingly. And then I just always had health because Shroom was healing me nonstop. So the way the pairings work, I think they vibe well if you match up accordingly. So I think they did a good job with how they set it all up. Okay. Now I don't know if you can share this without going into spoilers, but can you give me an example of how you unlock characters? Is it just reaching a certain level,
Starting point is 00:21:30 or is it doing certain achievements? I always love when roguelikes include clever ways of unlocking a character, like kill 30 characters within five seconds and unlock the berserker class or something like that. How does it work in this one? Pretty much that way, to be honest way to be honest oh really yeah it really i mean some of it's just you have to make it to like the second floor right and then it's like okay we unlock this character um other ones 100 blobs or yeah other ones might be make it to the third floor without anybody dying and so that's like that so there are like triggers that say like, you have to do these specific things to unlock this character. And then when you go back to the space station, they'll have a little exclamation over their head, right? And they'll be like,
Starting point is 00:22:15 hey, I heard you made it to the third floor. And everybody was safe. That sounds like a party I want to join. And then it'll be like, you know, Cardi has joined you or something like that. So, but yeah, there, there are, that's exactly it, Paul,
Starting point is 00:22:27 you have to kind of earn them. Oh, I think that's really cool. All right, well, we're going to go ahead and take a short break and we'll be right back. All right. Last question for you guys in regards to the different characters.
Starting point is 00:22:42 Does this game have skill trees at all? Nope. No skill trees. Alas, can you like swap weapons or like what what choice do you have within each character i guess it's kind of what i was curious to know so you can you you basically you have two attacks you have your regular attack and then your ultimate and then you have your weapon basically you can you can carry two weapons at a time and each character can only carry a certain type so there's like heavy weapons light weapons things like that so um for example like blaze carries a heavy you know hunting rifle and he can always carry also carry a gatling gun and then sweeper can only carry like a little sweeper pistol so each one
Starting point is 00:23:22 has different types of uh weapons they can carry and then the abilities each one has an ultimate that recharges for i for i don't know how do you josh you know how long it takes it's different but they the ultimates take a while yeah i want to say it's like a solid five plus minutes for your ult to come back geez yeah yeah and then they have their regular their regular attacks which for certain characters are you know support or aid or their actual attack ability like with uh blaze he could put down landmines or um the uh the the healer shroom she would she could heal you know whoever was around uh so yeah it's pretty neat how they kind of did it with all the characters as far as their abilities.
Starting point is 00:24:06 Yeah, there's no skill tree, but you do get ways to upgrade your characters. So one is, like Ryan said, you will come across different weapons as you're just playing the game. Like maybe you find a treasure chest and some weapons pop out. And now instead of your Gatling gun, you've got this big electric gun that just shoots out lightning. Or if your character is a pistol user, maybe you get a flaming magnum that shoots fireballs and things like that. So elements come into the picture a lot. You have your ability, but it's usually just one ability that you can use. And then you have your ultimate, but again, long cooldown on that. Where some of the customization comes in is as you are playing this character, you get these sub quests.
Starting point is 00:24:49 So once you unlock a character, then you'll get a quest for that character that says, hey, you need to find this note that's in the airlock of level two of this specific zone. So then you're like, okay, well, let me play that guy. Now we're going to go to the specific zone. Hey, Ryan, I need to find the airlock. So maybe we could have beat this level, but let's explore a little bit more. And then it's like, oh, great. I found the note. You find the note, your character's quest is complete. When you go back to the station, you now get an upgrade slot where you can purchase and then slot in something like 10% extra damage. You run faster. You have a higher crit chance,
Starting point is 00:25:26 but you're slower. And that's where you can kind of customize the character the way that you want. Oh, gotcha. So let's talk a little bit about the roguelike elements of Endless Dungeon. How does that work in this game? What happens when you die? Do you just go back to some central screen and just start a new run? You die, over you gotta buy another game over man one attempt hardcore mode yeah i assume you're dying a lot so like what how do you get like overall progression because every roguelike does that a little bit different well they they have this beautiful place called The Saloon, which I grew to actually love. It's really the environment and the area is so cool in there. They have a band playing.
Starting point is 00:26:13 Dude, that band rocks, dude. Yeah, that band rocks. You walk up, for people who don't know, if you're going to pick up this game, you can walk up. If you just leave your cursor idle or whatever, after a couple seconds, it'll pan down and you can just literally watch the band. And I think, Josh, you were saying that that music was made specifically for this game. Dude, I'm chilling. I'm vibing in the station.
Starting point is 00:26:34 I'm hearing this band. I'm looking around. I'm kind of checking stuff out. There is progression. We'll get to that in just a second, Paul. And I'm like, this song is really good. Yeah. And I'm like, what is this song?
Starting point is 00:26:46 I really... And so I Shazam the song and it pops up Endless Dungeon theme song or saloon song or something like that. So I was like, number one, I don't know how Shazam knew that. But number two, that song is great. So there is... I'm with Ryan, man. The saloon is just a cool place to be.
Starting point is 00:27:05 I love the fact that there's this band playing that you can watch and it's legit, really good music going on. You can run around and talk to the characters. But in regards to the roguelite nature, yes. When you play the game, you're going to get a currency. It's just scrap, I think. You spend the scrap to buy weapons, to buy upgrades. You also will find these things called chips, which are your character upgrades. Those are what you spend to unlock the permanent character slots and perks for the class or the character that you're playing.
Starting point is 00:27:38 You can unlock things in the saloon. So now you get 10% more scrap per run, or you fix the drum set for the band. Those sorts of things. So yes, that's where the roguelike nature comes in, is when you're done with a run, you spend your scrap, you can upgrade all the weapons that you find. So you can have a favorite weapon, and then you can unlock perks for that specific weapon. Your character stuff, you have this crystal bot. That's the whole point of this entire game is to protect the crystal bot as it's moving through this dungeon. You can unlock upgrades for it. Again, new characters that you come across, new zones because you're constantly unlocking new zones that you can go to. I mean, they did,
Starting point is 00:28:20 like I said, in the very beginning of the show, they did a really good job with the roguelike nature of this game. Okay. Yeah. I'm always curious to hear like I said, in the very beginning of the show, they did a really good job with the roguelike nature of this game. Okay. Yeah. I'm always curious to hear. It's interesting in playing a lot of roguelikes over the years where sometimes you have roguelikes like Hades, where a single character that you're playing goes through, they die, they're aware that they died, they talk to characters about dying, and there's some kind of mechanic to run it again.
Starting point is 00:28:42 That's this. And then there's other games where you just lose and then the game just says, you know, start over. And then there's no real recognition of that. It's always interesting when they find clever ways of building in gaming mechanics for why there's a roguelike mechanic in there. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:28:58 I will say I'm way more interested to hear about the tower defense. I am such a sucker for tower defense games. I still can't believe that, Josh,'ve never played balloons tower defense there's six of them i don't know how you've never played them i know especially as a fan of tower defense for me they they always play so well on mobile also but tell me a little bit about how the tower defense mechanics work uh they work as well as you make them work yeah pretty much so there's each each each monster or each uh character that's in the game that's a
Starting point is 00:29:33 you know trying to rip your guts out they all have a weakness you can play off that with your towers or you can just go straight shooters there's there's tons of different types you can just go straight shooters. There's tons of different types you can do. You can upgrade them so that you can unlock those other options. But the biggest thing in which I noticed playing solo, I had to use a lot more towers because I have an AI with me, not the glorious Josh. I had so much fun with the towers. Setting them up at choke points, picking the right ones,
Starting point is 00:30:06 picking the right, um, you have these little nodes and they're all throughout the area. You can only, you can only put a tower on that section. So in each room, some of the rooms are blacked out. You can't put anything in there.
Starting point is 00:30:18 Some of the rooms are lit up, but they only have them four nodes or eight nodes or, you know, depends on how it is. So, but the, each one costs money. So you have to be sparing, but also you know depends on how it is so but they each one costs money so you have to be sparing but also you have to put them in the right spot so i had so much fun
Starting point is 00:30:31 setting everything up trying to be as strategically um advantageous as possible to make everything where it needs to be to to cut these choke points and upgrade the turrets as well. So yeah, it was tricky, but it's also very, very rewarding. I will say, initially, I thought the tower defense was the weakest part of the game because you can just kind of twin stick shooter it for a while, but you will fail. Like Ryan, I mean, he kind of mentioned that I was being really cheap in the beginning when we were first playing. No, Ryan, don't put no turrets down, man. We're good.
Starting point is 00:31:09 We're good. We got this. And then we died like two minutes later. And then I was like, I mean, it was our first run, man. All right, let's go back to it. And then second run. All right, let's put like one turret down
Starting point is 00:31:19 in this choke point, Ryan. Let's do that. And then, okay, but let's just save the rest of the money. And then sure enough, we died again. Third run, I'm like, maybe we should be a little bit more liberal with the turret usage.
Starting point is 00:31:30 And then all of a sudden, it's like we make it really far. And it was like, all right. Yeah, go figure. Well, I was going to say because playing solo, I developed a pretty good strategy to where, because I don't know if we explained this earlier, but the things come in waves. So we have waves
Starting point is 00:31:46 every so often. You get like a danger meter and then you have a wave once you unlock a room with characters in it that are, you know, the monsters that are going to come attack try to get your crystal bot. I would stack towers outside of that room and then I would sit back and let them
Starting point is 00:32:02 attack and upgrade and then I'd go charge them and upgrade them and upgrade them until, you know, after a couple waves. And then I would move my bot because then I had all these upgraded towers, you know. So it's just different things like that that you can use as, I guess, strategy to try to, you know, navigate trying to just have to shoot everything. Yeah. Where the tower defense portion comes into me is, yes, you need to... These choke points. So you come across these rooms when you're exploring these levels that are monster spawner rooms. And every time you find one of those, you kind of go like, ah, crap.
Starting point is 00:32:35 Right? Now it's another spawner. Monsters are going to come from this direction now too. And so as you're exploring, it's a risk reward process of, are you going to find a monster spawner room? And now that's going to come into the fray, or are you going to find a room with a treasure chest or maybe a room where there is a health pack dispenser or a vendor that you can come across and now you can buy gear or upgrades for your characters or something like that. So you build these turrets near these monster spawner rooms, but sometimes the monsters are too fast and they just run right past your turrets.
Starting point is 00:33:11 Sometimes you have to move your bot. And so now that your bot is moving, things are going to come. You can't control where things are going. So now you've got to prepare for that. As you're exploring, you start to realize, don't open this door. If we leave this door closed, monsters cannot come from this direction.
Starting point is 00:33:29 So now we only have to worry about what's above us. And so you start kind of learning that process. And that plays directly into the tower defense part. Because your turrets are important, but so is where you put them and where things are coming from and things like that. The other part of the turret system that I really like is you can them and where things are coming from and things like that the other part of the turret system that i really like is you can research and find new turret types and i mean there's a lot dude there's acid fire poison electrical uh light support turrets light turrets uh shield turrets turrets that'll repair other turrets that are in the room. I mean, there is a wide variety here, but every time you unlock a new type, you have to survive a wave. So, which is really cool
Starting point is 00:34:11 because, and you have to be able to afford it at the same time. So it's this neat, like you want new turrets, you're going to pay the price. Here comes a big wave of monsters. And then once you survive that wave, it's like, okay, well now the research is done. You now have this turret type for the run. So it's a pretty cool system. Yeah, it sounds like it would be fun to strategize like what turrets are going to synergize well for this level and what we're fighting. How does the economy for that work? Do you just start with a certain amount of money or do you gain money as you kill monsters? Or like, how do you like, how do you budget for that open doors open just go open doors reward baby it is really a risk reward system every time you open a door
Starting point is 00:34:53 you accrue resources and so sometimes in usually early on you will find a resource generator there's three resources in the game there There's science, there's industry, and there's food. And those all affect different things. You need industry to build turrets. So that's usually the main thing that you'll pick. But you'll find these resource units where you'll say, I dedicate this to industry. So now every time you open a door, instead of four, you generate eight. And then you might find another resource generator if you keep exploring to where it's like, okay, well, you know what? We're doing good on industry. Let's turn this one into life.
Starting point is 00:35:28 So now every time you open a door, you're getting eight life as well. So that's how you actually generate currency in the game is by exploring. But the more that you explore, the more detriment you might find as well. It's a neat system, man. Like I said, because you need to keep going to earn money, but the more you keep going, the more dangerous it gets. Yeah. The second you open that door and you just see red
Starting point is 00:35:51 and you see all the monsters come out, you're like, oh, man. It's in a bad spot. They're going to come from the other side and you're just like, oh. And I will say, if you open up, if you go into a room and there's three doors and you open up two and they're not a monster spawner room leave that last door because it is a monster spawner room and go open
Starting point is 00:36:12 some other stuff up see if you can explore around unless you just want you know hankering for punishment like it's gonna be a spawner room i guarantee it so it's just high stakes what's behind door yeah one or two. You walk in, because you have the visibility of the room you're in, and you can see the door, and you can see where that door leads, or whatever doors in the room lead to, but you can't see anything in it. It's all just kind of black and kind of dark. So you don't know until you open it.
Starting point is 00:36:44 The second you open it, boom, you could have a bunch of monsters coming at you or you can have a treasure chest like josh said so it's it's yeah definitely risk reward you know and it's you know it gets crazy when you get to the weird positions where you don't want monsters coming from this area because then you have to build a bunch of turrets you have to waste a bunch of money or you have to watch that area so they don't sneak up behind you so yeah there's a there's yeah it's crazy i could see that being rough playing with someone who just wants to keep opening doors and you're like you have to do not that's how you generate money so there is that time where you're like dude we have got to be able to build turrets to survive this wave so just open doors you know and then it's like well
Starting point is 00:37:26 okay you got maybe you got lucky maybe you didn't yeah a little bit of that rng that's the scary thing too yeah you you you may be a little short on money to build more turrets or to to research something that you want you got to go open doors to get that money and you're you're risking coming into more monster spawners so So last question about tower defense. It sounds like you have to have turrets, but you also do a fair amount of damage yourself. Is it like close? Would you say to like a 50 50 mix between direct damage and tower damage?
Starting point is 00:37:57 Or does it skew more toward one or the other? I would say it's a go ahead. I was going to say in the beginning early levels it can be almost full twin stick shooter but as you go lower yeah as you go lower and the monsters get harder and they get tougher and you have a wider variety of them you better start learning how to use your turrets and how to use them effectively. And you better hope that you've unlocked one or two types in the run, because pretty soon the twin stick shooter part is really just try not to die or let things be aware. One of the things we didn't say is everything in this game is predicated on your crystal bot. Your crystal bot has a finite amount of health and it does not regenerate. So every little shred
Starting point is 00:38:46 of damage that your crystal bot takes is permanent for your run. And so that causes you to have to play very smart because one monster sneaks through and he's wailing on your crystal bot. There's a big alarm that goes off and you go and kill him, but that's 10% of your crystal bot's health that's gone forever until your run is over. And so that really makes you go and kill them but that's 10 of your crystal bots health that's gone forever until your run is over you know and so that really makes you think and be like okay like how do we survive not only how do we survive but how do we protect the crystal bot there were many times where ryan and i were kicking tail but things were slipping past us and then the crystal bot died while we were both full health and then it's like runs over you know and so splitters yeah things oh i hated those whatever and then i will yeah i was gonna say i will say that there's there is a couple upgrades you can do too that will um like every time you
Starting point is 00:39:36 finish a level or a way or not a wave but like a zone you get so many 10 to your crystal bot or whatever but it's very minimal so like josh said it's very important to protect your crystal bot they do a nice thing where you can just you just spam alt and uh you can just teleport right back to your crystal bot if he's getting attacked you can kill the stuff but you just gotta have your eyes on the crystal bot because that's that's the name of the game there you just gotta protect the bot so it's all one big escort quest see that's funny because a lot i've seen that asked and mentioned by people but it doesn't feel like an escort quest like everybody hates those in this case it doesn't feel that way so however they do it it works it just gives you that like reminder that
Starting point is 00:40:21 it's like this is not all about just murdering everything in sight like you actually do have an objective that you have to follow and that's where you can okay i kept all these doors closed before now i can open this one because i found the door i need to go to and i got a straight shot and that's gonna open everything up for me so i open this door call my crystal bot he's gonna go i'm gonna try to you'd let my turrets do what they need to do defend him as i can and he's gonna go straight through instead of having to go all the way around the map all the through these little rooms and stuff so oh gotcha all right well we're gonna take our last break and then we'll come back and finish this episode up all right so maybe just to like wrap a bow a little bit on combat you guys have kind of talked
Starting point is 00:41:06 about a certain level of chaos is the combat ultimately satisfying and then also part two does this game have boss fights like i'm assuming it does oh yeah oh baby and how chaotic do those get oh just ask us about bug mama oh ryan wants to talk about bug mama ask us about Bug Mama. Oh, Ryan wants to talk about Bug Mama. Ask us about Bug Mama. Yeah, ask us, Paul. What's the deal with Bug Mama? Oh, let me tell you about Bug Mama. I've never seen Ryan so excited. this stinking boss dude this was the craziest fight me and josh got into this was pretty quick
Starting point is 00:41:56 into like us playing together too we got pretty far after the first couple once josh opened up his pockets and stopped being a cheap ass you know it's true about the turrets there are bosses once you get to a certain stage kind of like halfway through like going down the levels and stuff there is a boss we fight we fought a boss named bug mama and
Starting point is 00:42:18 you come into a room there's nothing to do we're like alright where do we go and Josh is like I think this is a boss fight and I'm like okay I don't know I've never played this game so we're looking around we go into a room he's like what's that it's like an egg sack thing and he shoots it and it's like when all this music starts playing and i was like oh no have you ever seen alien josh hey man leave the eggs alone we run back down and then this giant bug mama comes up out the ground and we gotta fight her she's shooting acid all these spawns of bugs are still coming with us and there's different waves
Starting point is 00:42:54 and each wave you have to unlock another bug sack that opens it back up and and uh starts another wave so i will say as as um much as as much fun as i had with all the actual combat on the regular part of the game the boss fights were awesome i had so much fun we we played so much on this bug mama one and we got to a sliver a sliver of life and then josh is like i'm coming to get him was were you dead yeah i died okay yeah so josh was dead and i'm i'm running to res him he's like no no no just kill the back mama just kill the back mama and she was at a sliver of health and i was at a slither of health and i just went and i just railed her down shot her and uh she died and we passed the level and then josh rezzed back up and all was good but oh it was so much it was the closest boss fight you can imagine i mean we held out for so long we're we're protecting our bot we're killing the bugs we're shooting bug mama we're dodging acid
Starting point is 00:43:59 blast you have to hide behind like these barrels when she does this big aoe like there's actually boss fight mechanics to it which is really cool i eventually die we're like oh no this is the end i look in bug mama's health is at like two percent ryan's yelling me don't worry i'm gonna come get you and at that point i'm like it just try to kill her so just burn her down man that's our only hope i see ryan's health literally disappear go zero, but he had like one hit point left and then he shoots bug mama and bug mama just does like the death animation. And we both lost our minds, dude. We really did. We were just like, oh my goodness. Like, I can't believe we did it. Yeah. Oh, I love it there. Some of my favorite memories are like world of Warcraft raids when you're doing progression and you see that percentage of health left.
Starting point is 00:44:48 And as your raid is dying and there's just, you know, limited number of players left and you're just cheering and hoping that they get that final hit point. Yeah, I can imagine. All right. So any other memorable stories to tell? Anything that we've maybe left out? Any mechanics? Any silly encounters? Anything that we've maybe left out? Any mechanics? Any silly encounters? Anything else to talk about?
Starting point is 00:45:09 I mean, the combat is fun in this game. That is probably the part that gets the most routine because you're doing it the most. You're always coming across these waves. You have to slaughter these bugs. You've got to protect your bot. It is really nice when you can find a new gun and you can decide what you want to do. This game is very much rock, paper, scissors. One element is strong against another element. So you have to factor that in to both your turrets and the guns that you carry to deal with a wide variety of monsters and stuff like that. But I found the combat to be frantic, well done, enjoyable. It's just that as you progress into the harder difficulty, lower levels, that part takes a back
Starting point is 00:45:54 seat in the sense that you're not just going to gun down these giant creatures that are coming after you now all the time. You have to rely on your turrets at that point but they the combat's plenty good yeah it sounds like a lot of fun i i also love mixing where you're like building turrets strategizing running around and shooting stuff running back to your crystal bot you know i like when you have to pay attention to all those different things i think it always just makes gameplay more engrossing yeah oh it is because there'll be times where i'll run and i was just like oh i need to put a turret here and i'm like oh no i don't have any money i've i'm out of industry and so i had to go open a couple doors lo and behold i opened up a spawner and stuff i'm like oh dang it you know
Starting point is 00:46:37 so now i gotta watch this one but i did have a good story too about uh i i was messing around with the monsters and playing solo like i said you get a lot more money so i had over i think 200 industry because i had a really good run going and i was facing um the shell diver which is one of the bosses and i loaded it up the like it's like we said certain monsters are um you know uh susceptible to strong weak to certain uh types so i had uh the whatever that was uh the blobs that were weak to acid and i had the single shot acid guns and josh you'll appreciate this i loaded every single node with all the acid guns and then i put one in the very back where there was no spawners with the healer. And so I just sat in the back.
Starting point is 00:47:26 And then every time it was like just a laser show of green. Just shooting acid everywhere. And then you go and you throw your little crystal bot on there and he'd drill the boss. That's how you did the main damage. And then when the stuff got damaged, I'd just run to the top, hit it, hit it. And then it would heal everything. Heal all my turrets so there's a lot of cool ways to kind of go around things obviously i wasn't on the harvest hardest difficulty and stuff but um it just made it fun it was enjoyable i was cracking up just laughing watching all the green like light show i was like
Starting point is 00:47:59 a laser i was like a rave you know fighting a fighting a boss. Now, I could be wrong here. Maybe it's just my own personal bias, but I feel like roguelikes are the genre people tend to fizzle out on maybe faster than others. I feel like if you're playing a shooter campaign that has like a story or an RPG, you're probably more likely to see it through to the end. So what keeps you to keep
Starting point is 00:48:27 playing more runs and to keep playing this game? Is it just simply to unlock that next character? How long can you actually play this game before it starts to feel too repetitive? Because that's honestly my biggest concern about paying money for this game would just be the fizzle. That's fair. I mean, I like roguelites and you definitely hit the wall on those at some point. I just checked and I have 17.3 hours in Endless Dungeon and I would play in a heartbeat if you guys were like, do you want to play? I am starting to get a little familiar with the gameplay loop at this point. That doesn't feel as fresh to me anymore. So I mean, if I had to put a number on it, I'd say 25 hours. I'd probably be like, okay, I'd only play if people asked me to kind of thing at that point. But the game has
Starting point is 00:49:20 so many different elements that I think you can always focus on that. And then, like I said, if you find an element you like, like Ryan loves doing the turrets, there's a character that specializes in the turrets. There's a support character where, Paul, I know you like to heal a lot of times. So it's like you could play the support character. Ryan and I made it to the very end, which is in the core. It's the furthest we made it. And I'll tell you what, this game gets mean because they start really piling on the negative
Starting point is 00:49:51 effects and things like that on you. And Ryan are like, how the heck are we supposed to survive this? And I don't know if it was just a random, really, really bad luck draw or what, but even if we had beaten it and, and like won the game so to speak like it's a roguelike like you just you're playing for the fun of the game but there is definitely going to be a wall like even in this game but i feel like that wall for me probably wouldn't have been until 25 to 30 hours and everybody knows i tend to jump games pretty quick so i feel like endless dungeon could last you a long time that's not
Starting point is 00:50:25 bad at all because how much is this game 25 i think uh 25 bucks it is i'll tell you in just a it's already in my library uh i don't know uh yeah 25 bucks so i feel like that's not bad at all you know if you're paying about a dollar an hour for entertainment i think that's a pretty good deal oh would you say about the same ryan you feel like you can get 25 hours out of this pretty easily you could easily you know i'm i'm a little more easily entertained than josh is uh so um i i would i would definitely even still play this like he said i'd still play it today so um i was playing it honestly all day today so i uh i kind of gotten a little hooked on it i enjoyed the different aspects of how deep you can go into the different characters too like you unlock those chip slots and then okay now i got this upgrade sweet let me see how this does i got
Starting point is 00:51:20 15 percent um fire rate increase or 20 20 speed increase when running or 20 defense and you can see how these things and you can get that for every character so there's so many different factors there's so many different kind of ways you can put things together to try different um you know matchups and pairings on each level and there's different levels so yeah i definitely think you can get quite a bit hours i'm sure there's people that are play it for 20 30 hours and i'm sure there'll be people that play it for four or five six hundred hours so i think there's going to be a mix of both and slight correction it is 30 it's currently on steam sale and uh i'm old so my eyesight's going and i couldn't read it through the slash. So it
Starting point is 00:52:06 is $30 full price, although right now it's $23.99 as of the recording. Alright, so we always rate our deep dive games Make Love Marry or Murder. Since you both played this game, you'll both rate this according to your own individual rating.
Starting point is 00:52:22 Is this game marriage material? Highly recommended. Worth the price. Well worth anyone picking it up. this according to your own individual rating is this game marriage material highly recommended worth the price well worth anyone picking it up is it make love where maybe it's worth buying on sale or maybe playing it for a day or two and then dropping it or is it murder material i'm getting the sense you're both going to want to marry this game but what do you guys think ryan you're first this was was your forced game, man. Well, to not just be a throwback to Mr. Butler and just marry everything, I'm going to marry this game.
Starting point is 00:52:54 Are you kidding me? It's a multiplayer game. Ryan loves it. It's a multiplayer co-op where I just got to yell and scream with Josh. Of course I'm going to marry this game. Yeah. No, but in all seriousness
Starting point is 00:53:05 i had a absolute blast playing this i know i said insert you know insert here we're gonna we're off the hook dude we're off the hook but i am actually really glad i got to play this thank you kid um it it was a lot of fun it's opened up a new kind of i guess three-tier genre for me hopefully they make more of these types but but it was something that definitely uh i would not have bought otherwise but i thoroughly enjoyed oh very nice i would also like to say thank you to kidaclysm for making r Ryan play this so that Ryan and I could play it together. Dude, that was so fun. I was hyped about this game in the beginning. And I will say it is for good reason. It is a
Starting point is 00:53:54 lot of fun to play. I like just about everything about this game. Honestly, there's not a whole lot I can criticize. I'm going to tell everybody that's listening, because I know what happens is people go to Steam and they look at the review scores. This game has bad review scores. We talked about this in our pre-dive episode. It's people that wanted more of the original game called Dungeon of the Endless that weren't happy that they didn't get it. For me, it's tough because this is not a game that I will play four months from now. And usually when I say merry, it means I think this game has a ton of longevity to it. But it is a merry in the sense that for the price of the game, for the fun that you can have
Starting point is 00:54:38 with friends or solo, because some games just don't work one way or the other, this to me is a no-brainer. This to me is a no brainer. Like, I think it is a lot of fun. It's, you know, it's not going to win any game of the years or anything like that. But for $23 or $30 full price, it is well worth the amount of money that you're going to spend on this. It's a different experience. It does a phenomenal job of mixing three genres together. And it's polished's polished like we didn't run into any bugs did we ryan i had one where my crystal bot got stuck on a wall and the wave just kept going and going because we did have that one we ran into one where it was just a
Starting point is 00:55:18 never-ending wave and it just never stopped and then eventually we were like dude what's going on and we and then we eventually just got overrun well it is called endless yeah maybe it's a feature we were pretty far too though so we'd like that was like that was so bad we were like near the bottom yeah oh that'd be the worst all right so in our last segment here we have our leaderboards if our listeners want to check it out it's at video gamers, pod.com. And anytime we do a deep dive, those who play the game, put it on their leaderboard.
Starting point is 00:55:50 Josh, you and I have the longest leaderboard here since we've been doing this a little bit longer than Ryan. We've got 103 games on here. I think I actually didn't update this with our, our last deep dive, which was Paul, Paul,
Starting point is 00:56:04 Paul. Why is the name escaping me uh the one we just did that one paul yeah yeah that one the one we just the one we just did a week ago i can't even remember it's torchlight two torchlight two thank you there it is all right goodness gracious all right so josh you have 104 games uh mine is 103 because I did not play Torchlight 2. Ryan, yours is a little bit shorter at 32. Where do you guys want to put this where we are comparing very different genres?
Starting point is 00:56:34 You know, Josh, you've got games at the top like God of War, Red Dead Redemption 2, Rocket League. Down in the middle, you've got some stuff along the lines of Evil West, Fallout New Vegas, V Rising. The dregs, we're looking got some stuff along the lines of evil west fallout new vegas v rising the dregs we're looking at some stuff like elite dangerous for spoken battlefield 2042 josh let's do yours first where are you gonna put endless dungeon i'm gonna put this right at 43 so this time i'll
Starting point is 00:57:02 actually update the website sure paul um that is two below Vermintide and one above Dungeon Defenders, which are similar games in the sense that it's, you know, they're co-op, they're combat, you know, that kind of stuff. I like it a little tiny bit less than Vermintide, and I like it more than Dungeon Defenders. I have Rainbow Six Siege one spot above this. Rainbow Six Siege, that's a very popular game. We had a lot of fun with it for a while. And I just didn't want to butt it right up against Vermintide 2 either. So I'm going to put it at 43, which is high praise.
Starting point is 00:57:40 That is high praise. You're one of the biggest Vermintide fans that I know. I liked it a lot and you like it even more than me so that's not bad at all what about you ryan where are you putting it on your uh list of 0 to 32 it is it is a smaller that's not all the games i've ever played people it's just the deep dives just deep dives just deep dives uh so i i'm being that my list is a little smaller with what i have here i'm gonna throw it at 15 i'm gonna bump out fallout new vegas um and put it at 15 it's just just past um zelda and jedi survivor and before you know fallout new vegas and fall guys and deep rock galactic above deep rock galactic and you loved that one too.
Starting point is 00:58:26 I did love that one. You know how I am with multiplayer games. But this one just definitely, I don't know. I think all this strategery with setting up the towers and everything, it really hit with me. And I had so much fun with this game. Even solo. Even solo, it was such a blast.
Starting point is 00:58:44 Not bad. Pretty high praise all around. So yeah, for our listeners out there who haven't checked it out if it sounds like it's up your alley sounds like a pretty big recommendation from josh and ryan and uh that pretty much wraps everything up for this show we want to say thank you once again to kid ecclism for going legendary we really appreciate the support also from morgaau, Yaya, Arizona. Pretty much all of our support or vast majority of our support comes directly from listeners on Patreon. If you'd like to go join their ranks, you can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com. And then make sure to follow the podcast. We do release a lot of new stuff. Even when we do the
Starting point is 00:59:21 rewinds in December, those will be the episodes that we had the most fun recording. So make sure to check everything out here. And then I think that wraps everything up. So we just want to say thank you once again. And until next time, happy gaming. Josh, it's Buck Mama. Run! Kill it, Ryan!
Starting point is 00:59:40 Kill it! Just kill it! Yeah! Get the raid alright see you everybody

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