it starts as just another shift at The Nine Lives. Then time stops.

A mysterious lottery representative arrives with an announcement that will change the workers' lives forever: they've won a place in The End Games, the galaxy's biggest televised dungeon crawl.

With five minutes to say goodbye, the contestants leave Vega behind and discover just how big — and how strange — their new reality really is.

The cameras are on. The Games are about to begin.

The Games have begun.

Armed with little more than torches, questionable equipment and a rapidly growing collection of bad decisions, the contestants enter the first level of the Crawl.

Traps. Skeletons. Rats. A cursed sword. And somewhere in the darkness, something is waiting.

But the dungeon isn't the only thing watching them.

The cameras are rolling. The audience is waiting. And the contestants are beginning to realise that getting out alive may be harder than getting in.

The End Games is a darkly comic actual-play podcast where ordinary tavern workers win a workplace lottery and are drafted into the biggest televised death game in the universe. Trapped inside a corporate-owned megadungeon, they must survive monsters, rival contestants and the increasingly bizarre demands of Hyperion Leisure Industries for the chance to win one reality-altering wish.

They've barely begun the Crawl when the contestants discover there's more to the End Games than the dungeon in front of them.

A strange doorway leads them to the Diner, where they meet contestants from other dungeons, learn more about the scale of the competition, and discover that Hyperion is watching their every move. Then a message from Barb forces them to confront the real reason they're in the Crawl.

Kaleb gets his first taste of Hyperion’s psychological wellness programme as Professor Cornelius Huxley engages in an uncomfortable line of questioning.

Free association. Uncomfortable questions. And the risk of revealing something Kaleb has spent years trying to put behind him.

The contestants finally get a chance to catch their breath in the Diner. Unfortunately, being off the dungeon floor doesn't mean they're off the clock.

As Bella struggles with her increasingly inconvenient cursed sword, the group discovers that the Diner is shared by contestants from other Crawls — and that their own dungeon is only one of many End Games running across the universe. Some contestants are fighting monsters. Others are negotiating treaties. Everyone is being watched.

Then the party heads back into the dungeon, where they encounter a very different kind of threat: the mysterious Veyr family.

With the route to the next level blocked, the contestants have to decide whether to pay for safe passage, risk the mysterious "Certain Death," or find another way forward.

The Crawl continues. The audience is watching. And apparently, premium subscribers get to watch even when you're eating.

Welcome back to The End Games.

https://linktr.ee/hyperionpod

The contestants have a plan.

It’s a terrible plan.

Having survived long enough to discover that The Crawl is considerably more dangerous than anyone was expecting, the group makes the bold decision to head directly towards certain death™

Because what’s the worst that could happen?

As they push deeper into the dungeon, the contestants are forced to deal with increasingly strange encounters, questionable decisions and the growing realisation that Hyperion is watching their every move. Somewhere ahead lies the next challenge. Somewhere beyond that lies another chance to die horribly on live television.

Welcome to The End Games.

Four contestants. One impossible dungeon. And absolutely no sensible reason to keep going.