Potential concepts for future monsters

Hey there,

As we’ve announced, we’re hoping to get the fourth update ready to be deployed on the beta branch early November. Until that time, we’re going to show some of the incoming additions piece by piece in this “Coming Soon(™)” series. Of course, we’ll be keeping the best for last! So… if you would rather not be spoiled, this might be a good time to stop reading.


We mentioned last week that we consider removing placeholders and improving the aesthetics of current content an important part of the constant progress of the game toward completion. The fourth update comes with its own batch of this quality life improvements.

Remember this guy?



He used to hang out in the Graveyard biome and spawn annoying flies upon death (which I, by the way, think is totally fair - after all you just killed him without a thought, can’t blame the poor thing for wanting a bit of payback). Well, Gwen decided to give him the facelift he deserved all while giving the player a (not so) subtle hint about what’s hiding in its bowels.



The second host zombie, the one that spawns those adorable little brown worms, hasn’t been forgotten either!

Before




After


“Kill it! Kill it with fire before… Damn”

Both of them are now equally horrendous… which is... cool I guess! As you can see, we’ve also made the worms blue to make them stand out better from the background.

The Old Sewers themselves were also reworked a little bit to give theme a smidge more personality. A very sick, bubonic, bring-your-hand-sanitizer, type of personality...







We’ve been at it for a while. A DirectX version of the game should allow the players with Intel HD cards to play Dead Cells. Currently, the game requires OpenGL 3.2 which is unfortunately not supported by Intel HD cards. We’re also hoping to slightly improve the performances of the game on the whole.

Last week’s release (0.3.14) fixed a nasty bug which prevented users running anything other than Windows 10 from launching the DirectX build. There are still a couple of issue hanging around, but for the most part, you should be fine.

Since today (0.3.15), everyone on the beta branch will automatically launch into the DirectX version by default, unless you choose the OpenGL - Legacy version when the game starts.



We’ve opened a pinned thread in the Bug section of the forums. If you’re on the beta branch and the DirectX version does not work, please post the info there with your version of Windows, language, and graphics card model.

Well, that’s all for today! We should be back with the “Coming Soon(™)” part2 next week, so stay around or maybe hit that follow button if you wish to be warned when we do so.

Thank you all!

Potential concepts for future monsters

Hey there,

As we’ve announced, we’re hoping to get the fourth update ready to be deployed on the beta branch early November. Until that time, we’re going to show some of the incoming additions piece by piece in this “Coming Soon(™)” series. Of course, we’ll be keeping the best for last! So… if you would rather not be spoiled, this might be a good time to stop reading.


We mentioned last week that we consider removing placeholders and improving the aesthetics of current content an important part of the constant progress of the game toward completion. The fourth update comes with its own batch of this quality life improvements.

Remember this guy?



He used to hang out in the Graveyard biome and spawn annoying flies upon death (which I, by the way, think is totally fair - after all you just killed him without a thought, can’t blame the poor thing for wanting a bit of payback). Well, Gwen decided to give him the facelift he deserved all while giving the player a (not so) subtle hint about what’s hiding in its bowels.



The second host zombie, the one that spawns those adorable little brown worms, hasn’t been forgotten either!

Before




After


“Kill it! Kill it with fire before… Damn”

Both of them are now equally horrendous… which is... cool I guess! As you can see, we’ve also made the worms blue to make them stand out better from the background.

The Old Sewers themselves were also reworked a little bit to give theme a smidge more personality. A very sick, bubonic, bring-your-hand-sanitizer, type of personality...







We’ve been at it for a while. A DirectX version of the game should allow the players with Intel HD cards to play Dead Cells. Currently, the game requires OpenGL 3.2 which is unfortunately not supported by Intel HD cards. We’re also hoping to slightly improve the performances of the game on the whole.

Last week’s release (0.3.14) fixed a nasty bug which prevented users running anything other than Windows 10 from launching the DirectX build. There are still a couple of issue hanging around, but for the most part, you should be fine.

Since today (0.3.15), everyone on the beta branch will automatically launch into the DirectX version by default, unless you choose the OpenGL - Legacy version when the game starts.



We’ve opened a pinned thread in the Bug section of the forums. If you’re on the beta branch and the DirectX version does not work, please post the info there with your version of Windows, language, and graphics card model.

Well, that’s all for today! We should be back with the “Coming Soon(™)” part2 next week, so stay around or maybe hit that follow button if you wish to be warned when we do so.

Thank you all!

Hey there everyone!

We’re back from the EGX which was fantastic as usual! A great big thanks and congratulations to the organisers, particularly Matt Lambert for getting behind the indies and pushing them to the forefront of the show! Next year we’ll try and bring some goodies (t-shirts, posters and other merch) to reward anyone who can beat the boss in 3 attempts or less!

By the way what do you guys think about the idea of some Dead Cells merch? Would you buy a t-shirt or a poster with DC on it? Feedback very welcome.

We cloned ourselves and were simultaneously at the Tokyo Games Show to exhibit the game, and people really seemed to like it, so that’s definitely a good start for our plan of taking over Japan... Or maybe just having a Dead Cells mecha, depending on how things pan out… Baby steps...

That being said, let’s talk a bit about the development of the game until the final release.


We currently see Dead Cells as a fun, epic and enjoyable roguelite experience - with some welcomed elements generally associated with the metroidvania genre i.e, a handcrafted, fixed world layout with parallel paths to journey through which are progressively unlocked.
As we expand on the game, the incoming additions we have in mind will greatly benefit to the Metroidvania feel of the game, as the roguelite part is pretty much done.

Since the Early Access release, we’ve focused on progressively adding content. the Elemental update brought new weapons and the new gameplay that came with them, the Darkness update a new biome, the stress inducing Forgotten Sepulchre, and the Daily update added a new mode, the Daily Run, on which we can now iterate and improve with your help.

We’ve also tried to be very attentive to community feedback, making multiple modifications to elements that didn’t work as well as we had hoped. Adding content is great, but it felt equally important to us to keep adding quality life improvements and polish on current features. Or even totally rework it if that’s what it needed.

With almost five months of Early Access development behind us and hindsight on our side, we’re now better equipped to offer a realistic vision of what Dead Cells 1.0 will be and how the ride through the rest of the Early Access gauntlet is going to go down.

We see the fourth update as the turning point in the development of Dead Cells. Your feedback and suggestions have been an invaluable resource with experimenting on and making the core game great. Not only does the next update bring stacks of new content, but we’re also looking to remove or improve on the remaining mechanics that we consider lackluster while cementing their successors. From there, we can finish building the game on solid and stable foundations. Well… At least that’s the plan!

Last but not least, we wanted to keep you in the loop about the final release timeline. When we launched Dead Cells into Early Access we were aiming to stay there for 8 to 12 months or more if needed. The aim is not to rush but to deliver a polished game that doesn’t compromise our quality standards and meets the expectations of the community.

On that note we may have marginally underestimated the time needed to develop new features while still iterating on the core experience and making sure we don’t break everything while we’re at it… Therefore the scale now tips in the balance of a 12 month early access period rather than 8, so don’t expect to see us slow down on updates, bugfixes and the war on stuttering for a while.

Thanks again to all of you for your trust and continuous support! As a little token of our gratitude, here’s a little teasing of what’s coming with the fourth update... It’s a totally innovative feature that no game before ours ever imagined!!!



(And you better like it, because now we need to rework the level design of 500000000+ rooms and we’re already bored out of our minds!).

Hey there everyone!

We’re back from the EGX which was fantastic as usual! A great big thanks and congratulations to the organisers, particularly Matt Lambert for getting behind the indies and pushing them to the forefront of the show! Next year we’ll try and bring some goodies (t-shirts, posters and other merch) to reward anyone who can beat the boss in 3 attempts or less!

By the way what do you guys think about the idea of some Dead Cells merch? Would you buy a t-shirt or a poster with DC on it? Feedback very welcome.

We cloned ourselves and were simultaneously at the Tokyo Games Show to exhibit the game, and people really seemed to like it, so that’s definitely a good start for our plan of taking over Japan... Or maybe just having a Dead Cells mecha, depending on how things pan out… Baby steps...

That being said, let’s talk a bit about the development of the game until the final release.


We currently see Dead Cells as a fun, epic and enjoyable roguelite experience - with some welcomed elements generally associated with the metroidvania genre i.e, a handcrafted, fixed world layout with parallel paths to journey through which are progressively unlocked.
As we expand on the game, the incoming additions we have in mind will greatly benefit to the Metroidvania feel of the game, as the roguelite part is pretty much done.

Since the Early Access release, we’ve focused on progressively adding content. the Elemental update brought new weapons and the new gameplay that came with them, the Darkness update a new biome, the stress inducing Forgotten Sepulchre, and the Daily update added a new mode, the Daily Run, on which we can now iterate and improve with your help.

We’ve also tried to be very attentive to community feedback, making multiple modifications to elements that didn’t work as well as we had hoped. Adding content is great, but it felt equally important to us to keep adding quality life improvements and polish on current features. Or even totally rework it if that’s what it needed.

With almost five months of Early Access development behind us and hindsight on our side, we’re now better equipped to offer a realistic vision of what Dead Cells 1.0 will be and how the ride through the rest of the Early Access gauntlet is going to go down.

We see the fourth update as the turning point in the development of Dead Cells. Your feedback and suggestions have been an invaluable resource with experimenting on and making the core game great. Not only does the next update bring stacks of new content, but we’re also looking to remove or improve on the remaining mechanics that we consider lackluster while cementing their successors. From there, we can finish building the game on solid and stable foundations. Well… At least that’s the plan!

Last but not least, we wanted to keep you in the loop about the final release timeline. When we launched Dead Cells into Early Access we were aiming to stay there for 8 to 12 months or more if needed. The aim is not to rush but to deliver a polished game that doesn’t compromise our quality standards and meets the expectations of the community.

On that note we may have marginally underestimated the time needed to develop new features while still iterating on the core experience and making sure we don’t break everything while we’re at it… Therefore the scale now tips in the balance of a 12 month early access period rather than 8, so don’t expect to see us slow down on updates, bugfixes and the war on stuttering for a while.

Thanks again to all of you for your trust and continuous support! As a little token of our gratitude, here’s a little teasing of what’s coming with the fourth update... It’s a totally innovative feature that no game before ours ever imagined!!!



(And you better like it, because now we need to rework the level design of 500000000+ rooms and we’re already bored out of our minds!).

Damn zombies staying alive...always ruining my moves...anyway...

Hey there!

The last few weeks have been quite busy for us, as we traveled in Cologne and Seattle for the Gamescom and PAX events. It was amazing meeting Dead Cells players and showing our game off to a bunch of new people. Fortunately, it’s not over! This week we’re now heading to the EGX in Birmingham AND to Tokyo for the TGS. See ya there!

Now, let’s talk about the schedule for the next patch. We’re aiming to open the beta to the fourth update around the end of October. There is a stack of interdependent content in there that we can’t split into smaller updates which is why we need to take the time to do it right. But we promise the wait will be worth it!

The fourth installment will see the addition of new gameplay features, major content updates and the reworking of existing mechanics. As soon as we come back from the UK we’ll begin revealing the things you can expect to see in the update, so stick around or hit the “Follow” button on the store page so you know what we’re up to!

On a side note, we’ve been doing a lot of optimization lately to improve your in-game experience. The DirectX support isn’t ready to come out of Beta yet, but a better build should be out soon (hopefully… hehe nervous laughter...). Ah… And we’ve since unlocked the all of the items in the Daily Run mode of the game! So get in and see how you stack up against your friends.

Last but not least, we would like to begin showing you guys some of the awesome and/or whacky art coming out of the community. We think it’s amazing what you guys have been creating and we’d like to see more, so the least we can do is share it around and try hope you’ll keep this stuff coming!

Today’s community’s highlights:

This was gifted to us during the recent PAX West by PacoLtd, and it looks even better in real life.




The cutest ugly worm ever done, by @meanweaviously:








We're proud to have been chosen by Przemysław decided to go with the Headless One (or Blobspierre, as some of its friends call him) for his cosplay:




Credits for the photos go to Ijidofoty.

Damn zombies staying alive...always ruining my moves...anyway...

Hey there!

The last few weeks have been quite busy for us, as we traveled in Cologne and Seattle for the Gamescom and PAX events. It was amazing meeting Dead Cells players and showing our game off to a bunch of new people. Fortunately, it’s not over! This week we’re now heading to the EGX in Birmingham AND to Tokyo for the TGS. See ya there!

Now, let’s talk about the schedule for the next patch. We’re aiming to open the beta to the fourth update around the end of October. There is a stack of interdependent content in there that we can’t split into smaller updates which is why we need to take the time to do it right. But we promise the wait will be worth it!

The fourth installment will see the addition of new gameplay features, major content updates and the reworking of existing mechanics. As soon as we come back from the UK we’ll begin revealing the things you can expect to see in the update, so stick around or hit the “Follow” button on the store page so you know what we’re up to!

On a side note, we’ve been doing a lot of optimization lately to improve your in-game experience. The DirectX support isn’t ready to come out of Beta yet, but a better build should be out soon (hopefully… hehe nervous laughter...). Ah… And we’ve since unlocked the all of the items in the Daily Run mode of the game! So get in and see how you stack up against your friends.

Last but not least, we would like to begin showing you guys some of the awesome and/or whacky art coming out of the community. We think it’s amazing what you guys have been creating and we’d like to see more, so the least we can do is share it around and try hope you’ll keep this stuff coming!

Today’s community’s highlights:

This was gifted to us during the recent PAX West by PacoLtd, and it looks even better in real life.




The cutest ugly worm ever done, by @meanweaviously:








We're proud to have been chosen by Przemysław decided to go with the Headless One (or Blobspierre, as some of its friends call him) for his cosplay:




Credits for the photos go to Ijidofoty.

Howdy ha!

We're at Pax West right now as part of the Indie MegaBooth, so come past and say hi! We'll be hanging around Seattle until Tuesday next week, so you might even find us in a bar somewhere...

We're running a little promo to celebrate the launch of our Daily Run challenge mode and the fact that we're finally attending Pax West!

Basically there's a little 15% discount for anyone who's been following along and hasn't been able to get there hands on the game yet. We're also accepting beer in exchange for a key at an undisclosed location around town. 3 beers bought = 1 key... :kappa:

For those awesome souls who have been supporting us throughout our Early Access experiment, here's a first draft of the Direct X version... It's available on the Beta Branch, which you can access by doing this:

• Right click on the Dead Cells entry in your Steam Library and select 'properties'.
  
• In the properties dialogue, go to the 'Betas' tab (top right).
  
• Select the 'beta - Public beta branch' option in the dropdown.
  
• Watch it install the changes.
  
• Play.

When you load up now you will see a pop up that will allow you to choose the direct X version. DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK!

This is a beta, we've tested it a bit, but not much, so it might wipe out your save, blow up your computer, or climb out of your screen like that creepy lady from The Ring and try to mess up your day...

You've been warned.

Dire warnings of doom and ruin aside, we'd love to have your feedback in the forums! It might lag like hell on your computer, or it might REDUCE THE STUTTERING to a distant nightmare... Let us know!

As usual the patch notes can be found here or over on our site here.

Howdy ha!

We're at Pax West right now as part of the Indie MegaBooth, so come past and say hi! We'll be hanging around Seattle until Tuesday next week, so you might even find us in a bar somewhere...

We're running a little promo to celebrate the launch of our Daily Run challenge mode and the fact that we're finally attending Pax West!

Basically there's a little 15% discount for anyone who's been following along and hasn't been able to get there hands on the game yet. We're also accepting beer in exchange for a key at an undisclosed location around town. 3 beers bought = 1 key... :kappa:

For those awesome souls who have been supporting us throughout our Early Access experiment, here's a first draft of the Direct X version... It's available on the Beta Branch, which you can access by doing this:

• Right click on the Dead Cells entry in your Steam Library and select 'properties'.
  
• In the properties dialogue, go to the 'Betas' tab (top right).
  
• Select the 'beta - Public beta branch' option in the dropdown.
  
• Watch it install the changes.
  
• Play.

When you load up now you will see a pop up that will allow you to choose the direct X version. DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK!

This is a beta, we've tested it a bit, but not much, so it might wipe out your save, blow up your computer, or climb out of your screen like that creepy lady from The Ring and try to mess up your day...

You've been warned.

Dire warnings of doom and ruin aside, we'd love to have your feedback in the forums! It might lag like hell on your computer, or it might REDUCE THE STUTTERING to a distant nightmare... Let us know!

As usual the patch notes can be found here or over on our site here.

Spoiler:It's the cheaters.



Hello everyone,

We've just pushed the latest major update to the live branch for everyone to enjoy, without fearing the relentless horde of game-breaking bugs... Again, thanks to each and every beta testers for their feedback and their help in the bloody war against bad code and sleep deprivation.


The Daily Run!
Compete with others players to make the best score you can in a fixed level with identical loot! The Daily Run will change every day (who would have thunk it?) to keep you on your toes and up against a new level that just wants to kick your ass. You can try as many times as you want to improve your ranking and only your best score is kept in the leaderboard.

But be careful, the Daily Run is intrinsically linked to the standard mode of Dead Cells. You will unlock access to this new mode when you reach a certain milestone in the game (we'll let you figure out what). On top of that, you'll only have access to the items that you have unlocked in the base mode of the game.

• Altars: You will notice a new structure floating around in the daily run dungeons. Two items will be attached to it, choose one and the other will disappear.
  
• Rewards for 1, 5 et 10 Daily Runs succeeded: 3 blueprints (2 weapons, one skill). It doesn’t have to be consecutive runs, we're sadistic, but not that sadistic...

Incoming changes for the pool table and drop rates

We're in the process of making sure that insanely rare drops are no longer a thing in Dead Cells. We’re planning to provide you with a way to lock a certain number of items that you previously unlocked, essentially allowing you to influence the drop of items in your standard games. The Daily Run will always provide the same drops for everyone no matter what.

We’re hoping to bring you this whole drop system balance with the next update.


Gold Perks:

The gold system has seen some adjustments to its functionality

• Flat amount of gold given at the beginning of a new run instead of a percentage of the remaining gold of the previous one. We don’t want you to wasting runs just to have an advantage in the next one, hoarding is really bad for the economy you know...
  
• Recycling ability: It always sucks when you loot a treasure only to find an unwanted weapon and are forced to leave it laying on the ground. Plus, we’re dedicated ecologists, so waste isn’t our thing. Anyway, you can now get the recycling ability from The Collector, allowing you to transmute anything you find and don’t want into sweet sweet gold.

Improved performance!

• Fog rendering has been improved.
  
• Camera zooms has been improved (The Watcher is still giving us some troubles though)
  
• New option to run the game in borderless or proper fullscreen.

If you're experiencing performance issues, please try again after updating the game and tell us if it helped. We would be grateful if you tried both modes (Fullscreen and Borderless) and send us a bit of feedback on how each one impacts the game on your rig.

Also in this episode of Dead Cells:

• Guillain, the new NPC, join the crew of merchants. Well, at least he hopes to be one of the big guys one day.
  
• New Achievements
  
• Kill fast, run fast.
  
• Heaps of changes to make the gameplay more intuitive
  
• New skins for a new life: the runner and the grenadier get a well-deserved lifting.
  
• And as usual here are the patchnotes with all the nitty gritty of each and every update!

Spoiler:It's the cheaters.



Hello everyone,

We've just pushed the latest major update to the live branch for everyone to enjoy, without fearing the relentless horde of game-breaking bugs... Again, thanks to each and every beta testers for their feedback and their help in the bloody war against bad code and sleep deprivation.


The Daily Run!
Compete with others players to make the best score you can in a fixed level with identical loot! The Daily Run will change every day (who would have thunk it?) to keep you on your toes and up against a new level that just wants to kick your ass. You can try as many times as you want to improve your ranking and only your best score is kept in the leaderboard.

But be careful, the Daily Run is intrinsically linked to the standard mode of Dead Cells. You will unlock access to this new mode when you reach a certain milestone in the game (we'll let you figure out what). On top of that, you'll only have access to the items that you have unlocked in the base mode of the game.

• Altars: You will notice a new structure floating around in the daily run dungeons. Two items will be attached to it, choose one and the other will disappear.
  
• Rewards for 1, 5 et 10 Daily Runs succeeded: 3 blueprints (2 weapons, one skill). It doesn’t have to be consecutive runs, we're sadistic, but not that sadistic...

Incoming changes for the pool table and drop rates

We're in the process of making sure that insanely rare drops are no longer a thing in Dead Cells. We’re planning to provide you with a way to lock a certain number of items that you previously unlocked, essentially allowing you to influence the drop of items in your standard games. The Daily Run will always provide the same drops for everyone no matter what.

We’re hoping to bring you this whole drop system balance with the next update.


Gold Perks:

The gold system has seen some adjustments to its functionality

• Flat amount of gold given at the beginning of a new run instead of a percentage of the remaining gold of the previous one. We don’t want you to wasting runs just to have an advantage in the next one, hoarding is really bad for the economy you know...
  
• Recycling ability: It always sucks when you loot a treasure only to find an unwanted weapon and are forced to leave it laying on the ground. Plus, we’re dedicated ecologists, so waste isn’t our thing. Anyway, you can now get the recycling ability from The Collector, allowing you to transmute anything you find and don’t want into sweet sweet gold.

Improved performance!

• Fog rendering has been improved.
  
• Camera zooms has been improved (The Watcher is still giving us some troubles though)
  
• New option to run the game in borderless or proper fullscreen.

If you're experiencing performance issues, please try again after updating the game and tell us if it helped. We would be grateful if you tried both modes (Fullscreen and Borderless) and send us a bit of feedback on how each one impacts the game on your rig.

Also in this episode of Dead Cells:

• Guillain, the new NPC, join the crew of merchants. Well, at least he hopes to be one of the big guys one day.
  
• New Achievements
  
• Kill fast, run fast.
  
• Heaps of changes to make the gameplay more intuitive
  
• New skins for a new life: the runner and the grenadier get a well-deserved lifting.
  
• And as usual here are the patchnotes with all the nitty gritty of each and every update!