Dungeon of the Endless is one tough roguelike-like that you'll learn to love

Each week, we ask members of our App Army for their feedback on the latest and greatest releases on mobile.

One top pick this week was Amplitude Studios's seamless blend of roguelike-like and tower defence, Dungeon of the Endless.

Let's see what our App Army had to say...

So I've been playing this for quite a while now, and I have to say, I'm really enjoying it.

When you first start your selection is limited but you will get to unlock more pods and heroes during your playthrough. Be prepared to die a lot in this game until you get your personal strategy down.

While you have an economy and characters to manage, the point of the game is to find the exit to each level all while protecting your main crystal from enemy attacks.

You do this by setting up attack, defence, and utility modules. When you find the exit you need to traverse back to pick up your crystal and carry it to the exit, all while enemies pursue you relentlessly through randomly generated dungeons.

I find Dungeon of the Endless to be very strategic. Go slow, plan your rooms, and when you find the escape room, try to power every room from your crystal to the exit so you don't get ganked on your way out.

This game is a jack of all trades! While it's mainly a roguelike-like, it also has elements of many other genres.

It is a roguelike-like, an RPG, a tower defence, an RTS, and a survival game all mixed together in a unique package!

You need to manage up to four characters, each of which each have special abilities. They all have both active and passive abilities.

Tanks with high fire power I leave behind to defend key structures since they have slow movement, while I take the faster runners on scouting missions to try and find the exit.

When I need more heroes to help defend, my fast runners can quickly run back on time to defend in the case of an overwhelming enemy force.

You can heal manually by spending food resources in the case some of your heroes are on the verge of dying.

These are all very much core RTS elements, and the game requires you to strategise effectively when things go sour and you have to quickly change your game plan.

This game is tough, but once you get the hang of it, progressing through each floor is a lot of fun. It looks awesome, and it's made a great transition across from PC.

Yup, really enjoying Dungeon of the Endless too. It's tough, but still very fun. The music's great too, I just want to kick back and listen me to it - it's beautiful.

I can't get past level 5 at the moment... every time I try to make my way through the corridors are full of aliens. Argh!

I think Dungeon of the Endless really needs a better tutorial. It's another staple of PC ports, with tons of of text instead of clear guidance.

When they present me with text tutorials to play their game, I find it a roadblock that prevents me from playing the rest of the game.

Mobile games have adapted to helping players understand how to play. From inventive tutorials, or simple ways to guide players around instead of leaving them confused.

That said, after the first 20 minutes the game's a rewarding experience, focusing on combat, resource management, and procedurally generated elements.

The core experience is solid, the art style is detailed, and the environments are lush. It's a great game, I just wish developers would understand their audience for once and develop for it.

Personally I liked the tutorial. It was short and straight to the point. It was only 11 slides long and each was a short read.

It did its job by teaching you the essentials and basics of the game. You learn the rest through trial and error, which is one of the staples the roguelike-like genre.

It reminded me a lot of FTL's tutorial in that it was brief, but sufficient.

Strangely enough, I'm enjoying this more on iPad than PC.

The game kind of feels like what would happen if you crash landed on a planet in the FTL universe.

You explore rooms, put up resource modules, then defend them from waves of enemies triggered by exploring other rooms or finding treasure.

This game is now one of my favorite iOS games of all time... I'm enjoying it immensely!

I finally beat it on Too Easy mode. I feel I've perfected my playing style, so I'm ready to take on Easy mode now.

I almost beat Dungeon of the Endless on Easy, but a lot of it depends on the luck you have with the floor you're on.

Sometimes I find I don't have enough dust to light, which means enemies end up spawning where I need to go.

It's all very tactical. I find myself thinking hard about where I'll put my turrets, and who will carry the energy source so that I can make it to each exit as quickly as possible.

I almost beat it on Easy too, but I died due to some poor decisions like not healing at critical moments.

Sometimes I get greedy by not wanting to spend resources at the cost of risking it all.

I've lost high-level characters in the some of the dumbest ways possible, like being greedy with food.

Yeah, same here. I didn't put down enough defences and lost my guys when a simple wave of enemies stormed through.

In my opinion, Dungeon of the Endless has just dethroned FTL as the greatest roguelike-like in existence.

I think I may be the only one, but I'm not really getting Dungeon of the Endless yet.

Probably because I'm not particularly good at it... I can barely get past one level on Super Easy mode!

I'm enjoying this a lot more than I expected. Any time I see the word "roguelike" I grimace, but this game has a whole lot going for it.

I love that you get a little guidance at the start since some of these games just toss you into the deep end, hoping you figure out how to fend for yourself.

There's still a lot of feeling around in the dark, trying to figure out what works, but you'll get better after failing time and time again.

After a while things will start to make sense, so planning and strategy will become second nature as you make your way through each level.

If you manage your resources properly you'll do well, but you need to decide between defences, food, and power; what to put where, and how much.

It's this bit of tactical gameplay that I really love and the fact that I can discover more characters with different skills and abilities is awesome .

Yup, finding and trying to unlock every character is tons of fun. They're all so different.

Their uniqueness grows even more as you level them up, because you will slowly add more passive and active abilities to each character.

It seems like Level 16 is where characters max out.

This game always puts me on edge. I'm often wondering if I've prepared myself to make my way to the exit without dying... sometimes I just barely make it!

I'm not sure why this game calls the difficulty settings "Too Easy" and "Easy." They should be "Normal" and "Hard". Surely this is some kind of joke from the devs!?

I love the look of Dungeon of the Endless. It's not too in your face, but still lovely to look at.

Gorgeous, wonderful awesome. I don't know what more to say about Dungeon of the Endless. Since I've had it on my iPad, I've slept less, and I keep wondering what's behind each of the doors in my house.

This game is an excellent blend of tower defence, RTS, and roguelike without any one component being more important than another.

My only gripe is that the tutorial is dull - it could really use a sprucing up!

The art style is kinda cool, but also gets a bit annoying as I can't always see what's in each room.

I know it's a roguelike-like, so it's meant to be difficult, but I still really suck at it. I'm pretty sure I'm meant to get a bit further each time, but I just can't.

I can see why people love this, but it's just not for me.

I love Dungeon of the Endless. At first I found it really challenging, but once I got into the game and died a few times, I was more aware of what I needed to do to progress. I now understand which characters work well together.

I like the way you only have to tap a room and your characters know exactly what they need to do in there, it allows me to focus on healing and placing turrets instead.

FTL has got nothing on Dungeon of the Endless. Neither does Kingdom Rush! This is the best roguelike-like and tower defence game on iOS for my money.

This could be a contender for Game of the Year on mobile.

Dungeon of the Endless is simply a great game. It is hard even to know what parts of it to highlight. It has deep, well thought out gameplay that requires a well thought out strategy to progress to later floors.

The atmosphere is dark and bleak, but it's beautiful as well. The music really adds to the experience by being a little offbeat and strange. The sound design is spot on.

In fact, the whole experience is spot on. There's tons of replay value, lots of ships and characters to unlock, and (despite being a PC port) it controls perfectly.

I can't speak highly enough of this game. It may cost $4.99, but you can easily sink more than 50 hours into it. That's one heck of a deal.

Check this out if roguelikes are your thing. There is much more to it than the standard roguelike-like. Dungeon of the Endless is easily in my top 3 best roguelike-likes, just under The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and Sproggiwood.