Endless Dark

The easiest way I can describe this game is as being a bit like a single-player Space Station 13. As one of three robot custodians, each with their own personality, you have to manage an increasingly menacing stack of spinning plates as you look after the good ship Endless Dark and its cryo-frozen passengers on its journey to...somewhere. Robbie is a perfectionist, driven to fix everything, even if it kills (deactivates?) him. Annie mainly lives in an internal world, not worrying so much about broken systems thanks to permanent insanities, Frank begrudges having to keep meatbag humans alive and fix their ship, and is much happier leaving everything in a giant mess. All of them have to manage their fatigue, stress and psychosis, because if all the passengers die or your neural net reaches maximum psychosis, it's the end of the line. This leads to lots of interesting decisions, both on a turn-to-turn and macro level, like "is it worth trying to overclock the replicator to stock up on parts, even though it'll increase my stress level to the point where I risk a breakdown?". There's a long list of potential insanities that can affect you as the journey progresses, which range from the funny (you see yourself as a door, you are being followed by a door, you see illusory doors everywhere), through annoying (your HUD gets scrambled so you can't see what space hazards are coming up or what faults are affecting ship systems) to the potentially devastating (every turn until you kill a passenger, you incur a large chunk of fatigue damage). Special mention as well to the writing, which tells an absorbing story with a large amount of reactivity, having different events for different characters and different endings depending on what you do.

A nicely written game that is suitable for role-playing. "Made with love". Mechanics are not complicated, and allow to focus on the immersion. Graphics are fairly simple but on point. A lot of the situations are relatable to some people, from perspectives of - someone who uses computers on an advanced level, someone who goes through hardships in life, someone who is going insane. I suggest to at least try out the game, and quickly you should be able to determine if it is your "cup of tea" or not.

Taking care of my depressed robots was a delight.

[strike]Note: I have 100% achievements.[/strike] [5 April 2026 edit: they added more achievements so this is no longer the case] Endless Dark is a pretty cool game. The gameplay itself is OK and kind of monotonous at times (but that feeds into the atmosphere, it reminds me a bit of Papers Please in that sense) but I was surprised by how good the story was when it was mostly only delivered through event descriptions. The different custodians provide different twists on the gameplay but ANNIE is by far the best since their psychosis gain from stress seems to be after all stress reduction factors are applied, so you just stack stress down effects and become functionally immortal. Plus after the achievement modules you can pretty much completely mitigate insanities. I actually think you could become functionally immortal and I got like four hours into an Endless mode run doing this before getting bored. Endless Dark is an excellently written game that uses its atmosphere to great effect and I thoroughly enjoyed the exploration of its themes.

This game is awesome, very stressful, but very fun. The old graphics and some of that high stress running around, actually reminded me of like older SS13, which I loved, the new graphics look great but I hope they add an option to revert to the old tileset. Either way I definitely recommend it, you'll find yourself getting lost in some of the runs and then realize afterwards just how long you were playing for.

This entire game was an experience. The final mission was as tough as nails, but I achieved the best possible ending by the skin of my teeth. It felt good. Deserved, even. Few games nowadays give me that sense of satisfaction. But anyways, I played on and off across several months. It's really easy to get back into. There's many settings to fiddle with to make it easier or harder, but I never touched them for the 'campaign'.

as of writing this, i've only completed the story with robbie, and i don't even think i won the final story arc (as it says i haven't completed it with robbie? i'll be trying it again after this review). but i have to say, as i got more familiar with the mechanics of the game and as i played through and read the story arcs, the more charmed i became by the game overall. in regards to the mechanics of the game, i had fun discovering what "mattered" and "didnt matter" and balancing my resources, especially as the ship decayed and resources became more scarce and i had to fight against insanities and other negative events. it made each run interesting, alongside learning more about the story. the story is definitely what kept me playing the game as i learned more and more about the custodians, the ship, and its crew. and while sometimes i would skip through some "non-important" dialogue/event descriptions, i did think the writing for each event and story had a lot of heart, fun, and passion put into them. i look forward to playing the story again with the other custodians and getting all the achievements. I am The Custodian. :)

Definitely one of the most interesting roguelites out there. The premise of playing a lonely robot slowly going insane is unique, and the writing certainly does it justice. While the game is not "scary" in a general sense, the more you pay attention to the story and let yourself get immersed in this world, the bleaker and more horrifying it becomes. The game doesn't *force* you to engage with the story, but if you don't care about it then there isn't much reason to play. Despite the depressing atmosphere, this game is still very funny. There is a mix of dread and comedy which will often make you pause for a moment to decide how to feel. In the span of 10 seconds you'll go from laughing at your little robot's woeful misunderstanding of basic human biology to lamenting its situation and cursing the bastards who put it there. There is NOTHING like this game out there. I've instantly become a fan of the developers.