How to win/lose?

[Sarangeti]

I finished my first cycle and now i´m curious: is there an ultimative goal to achieve and/or can i lose a run somehow? Or is it just a endless turns of cycles?

[Alexander]

Your "run", in roguelite terms, is your settlement. Everything outside of it is metaprogression. At least for now there's no global goal.

[el Darkness]

You are a Viceroy of the Scorched Queen, every settlement you manage to bring to stability is a victory. Your job is to follow your queen, and she sends you to establish new settlements that will provide resources for the Smoldering City to survive another storm. The cycle repeats seemingly without an end. You live to make sure people in the city will survive another storm. Every storm survivedd by the city is also your victory. To wish for more is selfish (and probably heresy if it was WH 40k).

Apart from my poor joke, no there is no Victory condition. Every settlement is your run. Every success is a victory.

[Samseng Yik]

Everything outside of your settlement is just a lore friendly method of handwave gameplay justification.
You just run your settlement, just like how you play
- Into The Breach, i beat the game is there a way to end the cycle? Is there an "ultimate goal"?
- FTL, i beat the rebel flagship, is there a way to end the cycle? Is there an "ultimate goal"?
- Binding Of Isaac, I beat Satan, is there a way to to end the cycle? Is there an "ultimate goal"?
- Slay The Spire, I beat the heart, is there a way to end the cycle? Is there an "ultimate goal"?

You are playing a rogue-ish game which means to replay endlessly until your satisfaction before moving on to the next game

[inzirom]

The lack of any explicit purpose makes the game repetitive and after some time, boring. A pity, because of the interesting mechanics, aesthetics and interesting idea.

[Spacesuit Spiff]

Originally posted by inzirom:

The lack of any explicit purpose makes the game repetitive and after some time, boring. A pity, because of the interesting mechanics, aesthetics and interesting idea.

Look at what they're working on in the dev branch right now

[Samseng Yik]

When you play FTL, Monster Train, Slay The Spire, Into The Breach,
Will you ask yourself "when will the cycle end ? "

You are playing rogue-ish game, by nature the replayability is the true value.
But of course some games add some meta challenge outside out of the loop, which is a bonus, not a necessity.

Thank fully, this is what developer currently implementing, but it require very high difficulty setting just to qualify to face it

[Ragnaman]

Try the experimental branch, theres a slightly different strategic map there. With, what seems like, a long term victory condition. Ofc its just an experiment on dev part.

[Kyresti]

Nothing... yet. But as Ragnaman alluded to, the devs are playing with special challenge settlements at the end of cycles. Beating them is intended to lengthen storm cycles and eventually advance world lore. They said they're not intending to do a full-on plot, however. It will remain endless cycles.

For now, you "win" by unlocking everything in the citadel. It just doesn't do anything but give you the unlocks.