Hardened explorers of developer Motion Twin's majestic rogue-like action-platformer Dead Cells will have new avenues for adventure on 26th January, now confirmed as the release date for second paid expansion Fatal Falls.

Fatal Falls, which follows on from last year's The Bad Seed paid DLC, throws open more doors of Dead Cells' ever-shifting castle to offer passage to two new biomes - Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores - as well as introducing new enemies, a new boss, and more.

Both biomes exist beyond the castles walls, with Fractured Shrines resembling a series of islands high in the clouds, occupied by pagan snake people and giant axe-wielding statues. The Undying Shores, meanwhile, unfolds against an imposing cliff face lashed by a perpetual storm; players can seek shelter from the rain in a connected cave system, although this is said to be home to "weird experiments and undead healers".

Read more

There's a new paid expansion coming for developer Motion Twin's majestic rogue-like action-platformer Dead Cells; it's called Fatal Falls and it's currently expected to arrive on PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One early next year.

Fatal Falls is Dead Cells' second paid expansion, following on from January's The Bad Seed DLC, and introduces two new biomes, new enemies to occupy them, a new boss, plus new weapons.

Motion Twin - or rather, subsidiary Evil Empire, which now handles Dead Cells' development - is keeping some of the specifics under wraps for a later reveal, but has offered an early glimpse of Fatal Falls' new biomes, Fractured Shrines and The Undying Shores, in the teaser below.

Read more

Just when you think developer Motion Twin must surely be slowing down work on its wonderful action-platform rogue-like Dead Cells, along comes another massive free post-launch update - the 20th, for those counting - to prove you wrong. And this time it's the Barrels of Fun update, adding a new biome, new enemies, and more.

Dead Cells' new biome arrives in the form of The Derelict Distillery, a barrel-and-bottle-strewn area that serves as an alternative path to High Peak Castle and is intended to "add more spice to the late-game", according to Motion Twin in its Steam post.

A new biome, of course, means new enemies, and the Barrels of Fun update introduces two new foes unique to the distillery. There's a mimic that hides among the area's many barrels, for starters, who, while "not the toughest mob out there", is armed with a "pretty devastating self-destruct which can catch you out if you're not careful."

Read more

Developer Motion Twin has unveiled the first paid DLC expansion for its superb action-platform rogue-like Dead Cells. It's called The Bad Seed and it'll be making its way to PC, Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One early next year.

Bad Seed is more accurately the work of Evil Empire - the splinter studio formed by ex-Motion Twin staff specifically to continue work on Dead Cells - and its headline feature takes the form of two new biomes, intended to offer headless adventurers new path choices in the early game, "ensuring that all players, no matter their level, will be able to enjoy it".

There's the Arboretum, described as "a lush paradise to deceivingly adorable creatures", and an overgrown settlement known as The Swamp, inhabited by blow-gunners, spear-wielders, and massive purple ticks. There's also talk of a new "exceedingly creepy" boss battle.

Read more

It's been well over a year since Motion Twin's phenomenal platform-action rogue-like Dead Cells bounded into the
world, but the developer still isn't ready to call it a day. Instead, Dead Cells' 15th free update is here on PC, introducing a new biome, malevolant birds, and more.

Dead Cells' latest update, officially known as the Corrupted Update, is, according to Motion Twin, predominantly about balance. To that end, it makes significant changes to biome difficulty so that one path isn't objectively better than another, and fiddles around with cursed chests and colourless weapons in an attempt to make the latter more relevant.

But while balance might be the focus, there's still room in the Corrupted Update for more stuff. Chief of the new additions is the Corrupted Confinement biome, accessed via the Toxic Sewers and designed to mirror the Prison Depths. It's described as a "very short" area with a guaranteed cursed chest at the start, that will ultimately lead players to either the Ancient Sewers or the Ramparts.

Read more

If you're an Xbox Game Pass subscriber positively quivering with anticipation over what happens next, inner peace is about to be restored: Microsoft has revealed the full line-up of games coming to the service on PC and Xbox One in September.

The biggie, of course, is Gears 5, the latest instalment in Microsoft's long-running cover-shooter series. The 'of War' may be no more, but the thick necks and bug mangling are still present and correct - and Xbox One and PC Game Pass subscribers will be able to see how developer The Coalition has fared on Friday, 6th September.

Before that, however, Motion Twin's exquisite action-platform rogue-like Dead Cells joins the Game Pass library tomorrow, 5th September, on Xbox One. It's coming to PC this month too but - and you'll soon spot a theme here - there's no release date on the platform at present. Metal Gear Solid HD Edition: 2 & 3 also arrives on the 5th, but that's Xbox One only.

Read more

Dead Cells, developer Motion Twin's smashy, stompy action-platform rogue-like, is great. What's also great is the continued support it's received since leaving early access last year. And here we are again, with Dead Cells' 14th free update, the snappily titled Who's the Boss, now available on PC, with console versions to follow.

Who's the Boss exists, according to Motion Twin's latest dev video below, to fix a problem: the absolute, game-ending pummelling that players often receive on encountering one of Dead Cells' gargantuan bosses for the first time.

The issue, essentially, is that little in the game familiarises players with bosses' deadliest moves prior to a showdown, meaning that death can come within seconds - a frustrating proposition if you've just slogged an hour to get there, in classic rogue-like fashion.

Read more

UPDATE 13/3/19: Developer Motion Twin has announced that Dead Cells' big free DLC update, known as Rise of the Giant, will be coming to PC on March 28th.

Rise of the Giant, which has been available to foolhardy beta branch testers on Steam for some time, introduces two new areas and bosses, ten new enemies, new skills and weapons, plus a new Skinning system, adding 50 outfits (including one that looks like Christmas tree for some reason) with which to adorn the game's flame-headed lead.

A more thorough round-up of Rise of the Giant's additions (plus some tasteful animated gifs) can be found on the DLC's newly launched Steam page.

Read more

Developer Motion Twin's wonderfully crunchy rogue-like platformer Dead Cells has just received a massive new update on consoles, bringing, among an enormous list of other things, a stable 60FPS on Switch.

That's certainly an extremely welcome addition, given the sometimes unpleasantly wayward frame rate that plagued the Switch version at launch but, remarkably, it's far from the most significant element introduced in the new patch.

Pimp My Run, as the new console update is known (it's been available on PC for a while), ushers in a vast array of impactful balances and adjustments, touching everything from item drops to skills, and mutations. Enemy auto-scaling is a thing of the past too, meaning you'll actually feel more powerful as you progress through later levels, while Cooldown Reduction has been reworked, and Legendary weapon drops are no longer tied to boss encounters.

Read more

Not to brag, but I have one hell of a Biro on the go at the moment. You know the kind of thing, right? Cheap disposable pens tend to have their own characters - the grindy one, the gritty one, the one that you're forever trying to coax back to life with mad eddies and whorls. This one, though, this one is the one you dream about. Oh man, it is glorious. A thick black line that just flows out onto the page. So smooth! Strangely rich. I feel like I could take that line anywhere, even if I'm just writing a shopping list or a phone number. The line makes me feel like writing. I am already starting to mourn this Biro a little, because I know it cannot last forever.

And - grinding sound - this sort of puts me in mind of Dead Cells, which I have been playing, it seems, for a good half of my magical Biro's lifespan. Honestly, this is not the miserable reach that I have made it sound like. Dead Cells is a hard game. How hard? The main menu says "Continue", even when you have actually died in a run, because life and death is all the same in a game like this. You die, but hopefully you unlocked a few more permanent perks for your next life. You will die again, of course, the predictable enemies swarming and overwhelming, the procedural tunnels and ramparts forcing you to lose your bearings. No matter, the game says: the line, as it were, makes you feel like you can take it anywhere.

I felt it instantly, too. My first steps into this game's deeply inhospitable world. People - including the people who made it - would like you to believe that Dead Cells is a bit like Dark Souls, and it is, it is, in a hundred different ways. But there's one way it's very different. When I started Dark Souls, I found myself cringing, retreating into a more compact version of myself, weighed down by the sense of all the awful things that lay ahead and deeply aware - this is the thing of it - of my complete and obvious inadequacy when it came to dealing with them.

Read more…