First, praise where it's due: The game isn't even done, yet I've already sunk a lot of time into playing it. I didn't know what to expect from a Tower Defense/ Roguelike/ RPG hybrid, but Dungeon of the Endless seems to be on to something good. I have a couple observations and a handful of suggestions.



Food is Everything:

In version 0.6.10, Dungeon of the Endless is a game about

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Maximizing food production, while

Minimizing consumption of resources for any purpose other than leveling heroes

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Now, I don’t mean that the player can ignore industry or dust. I also don’t mean to downplay the importance of smart tactics. It’s just that those are all short-term priorities (incidentally, having about 50 Industry at the end of a floor is a good idea). In the long term, the big priority is getting heroes maxed. The other two long-term priorities are getting a few key technology upgrades (I'm looking at generators, Tesla or Claymoar, and HUD for floor 8) and, once heroes are maxed, building up a reserve of industry for floor 8. The thing is, industry and tech both of those seem to fall into place naturally if I’ve been focusing on hero levels.

I’m hoping that this will change as Research and Relics are given their full planned functionality; make it a legitimate dilemma how much to invest in hero A versus hero B versus technology C versus technology D, for example.



Incidentally, I find this fact gives an advantage to the opening team Troe + any high wit operator. Troe makes up for the combat shortcomings of the operator, and by floor 3, that operator's boost to food has pumped everyone's level so much, it doesn't matter how lousy their base combat stats were.



Aftershave:

On my most recent playthrough, by sheer luck I pulled Zone Device (armor; slows enemies in the same room as the hero) and two Aftershaves (device; makes mobs ignore the hero who has it equipped) before I reached floor 5. This combination made for an interesting tactic: Park two Aftershave-wearing heroes with a Zone Device just outside my heavily-defended room to soften up mobs BEFORE they could smash anything valuable.

This is a sufficiently interesting tactic that I’d like to see it be available in a larger fraction of playthroughs—but for a high price. One way to do this would be to make Aftershave a more common Merchant item, BUT make it 1) cost a boatload of Food and Dust, and 2) carry harsher DPS penalties, to the point where players would make the investment only sometimes.

Length/Difficulty of the Game:

At the end of Floor 4, I had :

• Hero levels 8, 7, 5, 5
• Claymoar mine IV
• Prisoner Prod IV
• Industry Generator III
• Food Generator II
• The Zone Device/Aftershave combo described above
• 147 Industry, 117 food

At the end of Floor 4, I was more than ready for Floor 7, and I had approximately 105 doors remaining to get ready for Floor 8. I’m hoping that, as higher difficulty levels are added to the game, we’ll see game mechanics that make it harder to farm as much as I’ve been farming (many of the following suggestions are in line with this idea).



Suggestions: (Particularly for higher difficulty levels)



Give some “Boss Rooms” Infinite Spawners:

The game now has “Boss Rooms”—stationary monsters that grow in power if they aren’t killed quickly. Right now, they pose little threat.

• They appear only late in the game.
• Even if you ignore them until mob waves are cleared, at max level the boss monsters are too weak to pose a threat to four heroes.
  
  

To make them a proper threat—and to give players a reason to take the risk of sending an expedition while their base is under attack—have some of the boss monsters spawn an increasingly-dangerous wave of mobs every 15-30 seconds. These extra waves should give no dust (to prevent players from farming them). They should stop spawning only when the boss monster is killed. The first couple waves of these spawned monsters should be weaker than regular mobs; however, if the boss is ignored for several minutes, the spawned mobs should reach the point of being able to one-shot kill minor modules (particularly on higher difficulty settings, where the player really should have reason to panic during the fighting phase).



Add Zero-Resource Doors:

Right now, I have reason to open every door before leaving a floor. After all, I’ve already got my generators and defenses laid out, so why not farm food? Farming extra food doesn’t seem in line with the “Get me out of this scary dungeon quickly” theme of the game, though.

Here’s my suggestion: Mark some doors as Non-Beneficial. They’re like normal doors, except that when they’re opened, they don’t make you gain resources, and they don’t decrement ability cooldowns. Make these doors rare close to the power crystal, but increasingly common farther and farther away. This would also let you make each floor MUCH bigger: Yes, you CAN keep farming doors after you’ve found the exit, but as you get farther from the crystal, you’ll find an ever-smaller fraction of doors actually give you any resources.

Note that this would be a property of the door, NOT a property of the room behind the door; the room can still contain random resources, monsters, or whatever.



Add a Pursuit Counter:

The more doors I have opened on a given floor, the more/stronger mobs I should have to deal with, to encourage me to try to find the exit and move on.



Add “Lingering Effect” Events:

Right now, when I’m about to open a door, my heart rate is about the same as when I was about to open the previous door. I don’t know what is behind the door, but I know my team is ready.



Suppose, though, that an occasional room locked construction and repairs: for the next 1-3 doors, you’re stuck surviving with whatever you already have built. Opening a door during that kind of lockdown would be a higher stress moment, and surviving to the end of the lockdown would be a source of relief. I think that would be fun. The flip side, of course, would be beneficial lingering doors (extra resources, weaker monsters, etc.).



There could be other lingering effects, too:

• For the next 1-3 doors, resource generation AND monsters are doubled
• For the next 1-3 doors, monsters have half hit points but double damage
• For the next 1-3 doors, all minor modules deal double damage (or half damage)
  
  

And, yes, it would be brutally unfair to get Double Monsters and Half Module Damage back-to-back. On higher difficulties, that’s how the game should be; farm resources when the random number generator favors you, and do the best you can at damage control when your luck goes bad.



Add Danger Rooms:

“You find a large, mysterious portal...” Right now, as far as I can tell, mobs are equally likely to spawn in any unlit room. Suppose a handful of rooms on each floor, though, were guaranteed (unless lit) to spawn an extra wave of mobs during every mob spawn event. Do you go to the extra trouble of getting it lit? Or do you build stronger defenses and hope for the best? It would be another nuance in the game’s tactics.



Add Disabler Monsters:

I'm halfway through what will probably be my third "Easy" win, and the only thing that can go REALLY wrong is if I stop paying attention and lose a hero. Poor strategy might cost me a module here or there (and I KNOW I'll run an Industry deficit on Floor 8-- I always do), but it won't be enough to add up and make me lose in the long term.



But why don't those smashed modules add up to make me lose? I think it's in part because the game plays fair. If the mobs are too strong, they won't just set me back economically; they'll make me lose the game outright, despite the fact that I've been playing so well-- and that would just be frustrating.



Suppose, though, that you sent an impossibly strong wave of disabling monsters-- that is, monsters that did not *destroy*, but that *disabled* generators from producing resources for the next three doors. Yes, they WILL break through and disable generators *sometimes*, no matter how well the player plays. The key to victory is minimizing how often the disablers break through, since too many economic delays mark a slow path to defeat.





Anyway, those are my thoughts. Again, thanks for all the hard work on what's shaping up to be a really freaking cool game.