Hello everyone,

We are very glad to make this announcement today: we have reached the Beta of Dungeon of the Endless! What does this mean? It means that we are pretty much “feature complete” for the final release of DotE, for the Single Player mode. Indeed, the current game experience should be similar to the one you will receive in the final version, but obviously more balanced and improved!

Please note that we intend to have a 4 player co-op Beta very soon. In the meantime, our VIP players already started testing it but it’s only a first version for now, so we would like to make sure we can improve it a little bit before making it available to all of you.

To celebrate the Beta of DotE, you will finally be able to purchase the Founder Pack Upgrade, that includes the unique Library ship and Josh 'Ntello hero, Endless Space coupons, and the Founder Pack badge for our forum. You will only be able to pick up the Founder Pack Upgrade during the Beta: once we announce and reach the final release, it will be too late! Also, the game (both editions: Pixel and Founder pack) will keep the 25% Alpha discount until the end of the Steam Summer Sales before changing into the usual 10% Beta discount.

Anyway, we’re really excited (and quite stressed out – if only you could see the shadows under our eyes) for this release: we are bringing some really cool additions and hope you will enjoy them. Besides other additions, improvements, some balancing and bug fixing, this new version includes the implementation of new game modes thanks to the spaceships you will be able to unlock through special achievements.


From Alpha to Beta: what have we achieved?
  • MORE OF EVERYTHING: more doors, floors, monsters, heroes, items, modules and surprises
  • HEROES: the ability to choose your starting heroes and use powerful skills to survive this hell
  • SCIENCE: use Science to build and level-up modules and make those monsters cry
  • NEW GAME MODES: you can now unlock new starting spaceships to discover completely new game modes
  • IMPROVED CONTROLS: we worked on a refined game system and controls requested by the community
  • NEW TRACKS: we have added two brand new awesome FlybyNo music tracks



The Spaceships

We implemented a new game option: the ability to choose the crashed spaceship you will start the game with. You can unlock a new spaceship by earning special achievements (two different possibilities for each spaceship – Steam achievements will be available later) and will be able to select it in the configuration panel at the start of a new game.

A Spaceship is not only a visual skin of the first room: indeed, it comes with special gameplay effects, a starting package (a defined number of heroes, resources, items, modules etc.), a new design of Crystal, and a new order of floor environments. Each spaceship is like a mode and should bring some diversity to your game experience!

Warnings:
  • The new spaceship balancing is still WIP
  • For technical and optimisations reasons, we have entirely recoded the sprites manager of the game (animation system): it was a very big task with a lot of repercussions. We think that we have fixed most of them, but there could still be some graphical issues, so please accept our apologies in advance.




Release Notes [0.8.4]

Content
  • Added 3 new spaceships / game modes:
    • The Armory (commando mode)
    • The Infirmary (lots of HP but no end turn health regeneration)
    • The Drill (endless mode)
  • Added 2 new heroes:
    • Chef Nanor, the “Kitchen Chemist”
    • Professor Josh 'Ntello nicknamed “Know-it-All”, exclusively for the Dungeon of the Endless Founder Pack owners
  • Added 3 new modules:
    • Emergency Generator [major] which can power a room without Dust
    • KIP Cannon [minor] with an attack power based on your stocked Science
    • Viral Injector [minor] which spreads a long-term virus
  • Added 1 new event: the auto-power which powers a room without Dust, even when disconnected from your network [G2G]
  • Added 7 new Stele types
  • Added 1 new mob: the Silics Zoner, now the only mob who attacks minor modules
  • Added 2 new elite mobs:
    • Hurna Hunter
    • Door Opener


Improvements
  • Added the spaceship system: unlock and selection panel
  • Improved the game configuration panel
  • Improved the hero targeting system (targets the most dangerous, difference between melee and distance heroes)
  • Improved first rooms with special floor and floor number
  • Improved the hit visual effect
  • Improved bump map
  • Updated some sprites and special effects (Stele, Artefact, etc.)
  • Added a checksum protection for the public directory to avoid cheating to unlock heroes, ships and achievements
  • Implemented new sprites manager (improved performance on lower end computers)


Balancing
  • Reduced number of waves in middle levels
  • Slightly reduced number of mobs by waves
  • Reduced the difficulty after the exit is found (was +25%, now +20%)
  • Reduced spawn of the most difficult mobs
  • Added a Keeper effect on the entire floor: until you kill it, the mobs have a small health regeneration, drop less Dust, and a better defence
  • Increased power of Keeper last form
  • Increased the Hurna cooldown
  • Reduced Defence buff of Silics Supporter
  • Increased Attack Power buff of Silics Supporter
  • Zombies no longer attack minor modules
  • Reduced Attack Radius of Claymoar module
  • Reduced Attack Power of Seblaster module
  • Increased the FIS basic income
  • Increased the hero level up cost (about 10%)
  • Reduced Max’s attack power
  • Increased the amount of Dust found per room to reduce number of rooms with Dust (total amount of Dust remains the same)
  • Increased the building and Science costs of production modules
  • Increased probability of finding new modules thanks to research


Bug fix
  • Fixed the Merchant bug related to the act of purchasing/selling if similar items are concerned, but with different rarities
  • Fixed the equip/unequip issue regarding similar items with different rarities
  • The Operating bonus is now saved and loaded
  • Fixed some Drakken and Laboratory tilesets issues
  • Improved the pathfinding system


Huge thanks to Lynx_gnt, CharlieWoo and melkathi for their module ideas and the community for their feedback.