It wasn’t until I gave it a second chance after Christmas and accepted it on its own merits - rather than cramming it into a niche where it didn’t fit - that Dungeon of the Endless really clicked for me. I certainly bounced off the surface the first time I played it because it wasn’t what I’d been led to expect – playing it like a roguelike simply didn’t work, and it didn’t seem quite tower-defencey enough (you start off with a grand total of one offensive tower, which doesn’t exactly promote strategy) to engage the strategy part of my brain. That it’s picked up those labels in spite of its unique qualities indicates that it’s been pigeonholed nevertheless, however, and I think that to describe it as a “roguelike tower defence” could end up misleading people.

This is partially a reflection of DotE’s refusal to be pigeonholed while it does indeed smoosh together some elements from both genres (you build towers to hold off waves of advancing baddies, but you also have a party of four characters who you outfit in looted equipment and level up as the dungeon progresses) into a single game, it also has some very interesting mechanics that have nothing to do with it being either a tower defence or a roguelike, and which can only be found in DotE.

Chances are that if you load up a review of Dungeon of the Endless - any review, doesn’t really matter which one - you will see, at some point, the words “tower defence” and “roguelike” in very close proximity to one another 1.

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