Given that this is a beta update, we’re not going to make a big song and dance of it, most of you probably just read the patch notes when you want to know something anyway… Instead, below you’ll find the link to said patch notes and a brief overview of what you can expect to find if you have followed the instructions on how to access the beta here.
Check out the patch notes here.

So what’s going on here anyway?

The world has changed:
We’ve moved the bosses around and added in a new one! There are still more changes to come, so the final showdown will come later.

On top of that there are now two new levels for you to explore and take on.

New tier system:
We’ve updated the tier system to make your build choices more interesting. We’re trying to give you a real sense of control and strategy when you choose the tier that you want to upgrade. Each category; Brutality, Tactic and Survival will impact a different and disparate set of items. Some weapons and skills will cross both groups, this is where we hope things will get interesting.

As usual we’ll be counting on your feedback to help us balance out the new system. Bring us your ideas, you criticisms and don’t hesitate to let us know what you like.

Stats and affixes have been tweaked:
Now when you pick up items there will be a real choice for you to make instead of just taking the one that gives you +1 to Strength or whatever. Those kind of items will be much rarer, you’ll have to earn them and amulets will become much more powerful.

The Collector:
The upgrade system has been an issue for a while, so we’re canning it. The collector is now only there to unlock items. Something or someone new and more interesting will follow along real soon.

New way to unlock rare items:
It’s a process that you might be familiar with, but it will allow you to catch ’em all when it comes to those pesky hard to find blueprints. No more wading through long grass getting ticks and sacrificing your time to the grind obsessed gods of RNG.

Shield rework!
This has been on the cards for a while. You’ve been letting us know that the shields are a cool idea, but that we can do better… So here’s round two… Fight!

All right that’ll do for the big stuff. Check out the full details here.

To access the beta follow these instructions:
Go to your Steam game library
Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties"
Select the tab "Betas"
In the first dropdown box select "beta - "
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading
Start playing.

WARNING:
If you play with your save files in the beta version, you will not be able to use them in the stable version, until we push the beta branch out to the public.

If you are worried about losing you save then head over here: "steam\userdata\<ID>\588650\remote" and copy the files somewhere safe.

You can have one save slot dedicated to the beta branch and one to the old branch simultaneously, but you must revert to the stable branch to be able to use it.
Thanks!

Given that this is a beta update, we’re not going to make a big song and dance of it, most of you probably just read the patch notes when you want to know something anyway… Instead, below you’ll find the link to said patch notes and a brief overview of what you can expect to find if you have followed the instructions on how to access the beta here.
Check out the patch notes here.

So what’s going on here anyway?

The world has changed:
We’ve moved the bosses around and added in a new one! There are still more changes to come, so the final showdown will come later.

On top of that there are now two new levels for you to explore and take on.

New tier system:
We’ve updated the tier system to make your build choices more interesting. We’re trying to give you a real sense of control and strategy when you choose the tier that you want to upgrade. Each category; Brutality, Tactic and Survival will impact a different and disparate set of items. Some weapons and skills will cross both groups, this is where we hope things will get interesting.

As usual we’ll be counting on your feedback to help us balance out the new system. Bring us your ideas, you criticisms and don’t hesitate to let us know what you like.

Stats and affixes have been tweaked:
Now when you pick up items there will be a real choice for you to make instead of just taking the one that gives you +1 to Strength or whatever. Those kind of items will be much rarer, you’ll have to earn them and amulets will become much more powerful.

The Collector:
The upgrade system has been an issue for a while, so we’re canning it. The collector is now only there to unlock items. Something or someone new and more interesting will follow along real soon.

New way to unlock rare items:
It’s a process that you might be familiar with, but it will allow you to catch ’em all when it comes to those pesky hard to find blueprints. No more wading through long grass getting ticks and sacrificing your time to the grind obsessed gods of RNG.

Shield rework!
This has been on the cards for a while. You’ve been letting us know that the shields are a cool idea, but that we can do better… So here’s round two… Fight!

All right that’ll do for the big stuff. Check out the full details here.

To access the beta follow these instructions:
Go to your Steam game library
Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties"
Select the tab "Betas"
In the first dropdown box select "beta - "
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading
Start playing.

WARNING:
If you play with your save files in the beta version, you will not be able to use them in the stable version, until we push the beta branch out to the public.

If you are worried about losing you save then head over here: "steam\userdata\<ID>\588650\remote" and copy the files somewhere safe.

You can have one save slot dedicated to the beta branch and one to the old branch simultaneously, but you must revert to the stable branch to be able to use it.
Thanks!

Hey there,

Welcome back to our (almost) regular series about what’s coming in the next update. Today we tackle the revamp of the whole scroll system!

We’ve been thinking about tweaking this for a while now, but there are 3 main ideas behind the revamped mechanic:

• Making builds other than "STRENGTH EVERYWHERE" more viable.
  
• Ensuring that the tanky builds are more interesting and enjoyable to play.
  
• Bringing in a tad more reflection to your choice of scroll, instead of it just being "GIMME STRENGTH".

Therefore, the old tier system (ie. Strength/Skills/Health) has been replaced by a newer more interesting successor, that is: Brutality / Tactics / Survival. These tiers are represented by colors:

• Brutality - Red (includes all weapons except shields): Raises all red items' damage, reduces all red items' cooldowns, adds +10% life.
  
• Tactic - Purple: (includes all active skills): Raises all purple items' damage, reduces all purple items' cooldowns, adds +10% life.
  
• Survival Green: (includes all shields): Raises all green items' damage, reduces all green items' cooldowns, adds +30% life.

As you can see, each item in the game now belongs to a color. Some items (weapons or skills) might even have *dual colors*, which means they will be impacted by 2 different stats, and use the highest value. You may also find random Colorless items which will always use your best stat. The colorless items are currently only available through loot boxes cursed chests!

We can’t wait to hear what you think of it controller in hands!

In other news, we're in China! Or at least our chief bullsheet artist is... We're down there participating in the WePlay event in Shanghai, so come say 你好 if you're in the neighbourhood, it's a great chance to let us know what you think we can do better, or just what you like about the game.

We know you're probably sick of hearing about it, but if your friends haven't got the game yet we'll be -15% of for the duration of the Halloween sale!

Hey there,

Welcome back to our (almost) regular series about what’s coming in the next update. Today we tackle the revamp of the whole scroll system!

We’ve been thinking about tweaking this for a while now, but there are 3 main ideas behind the revamped mechanic:

• Making builds other than "STRENGTH EVERYWHERE" more viable.
  
• Ensuring that the tanky builds are more interesting and enjoyable to play.
  
• Bringing in a tad more reflection to your choice of scroll, instead of it just being "GIMME STRENGTH".

Therefore, the old tier system (ie. Strength/Skills/Health) has been replaced by a newer more interesting successor, that is: Brutality / Tactics / Survival. These tiers are represented by colors:

• Brutality - Red (includes all weapons except shields): Raises all red items' damage, reduces all red items' cooldowns, adds +10% life.
  
• Tactic - Purple: (includes all active skills): Raises all purple items' damage, reduces all purple items' cooldowns, adds +10% life.
  
• Survival Green: (includes all shields): Raises all green items' damage, reduces all green items' cooldowns, adds +30% life.

As you can see, each item in the game now belongs to a color. Some items (weapons or skills) might even have *dual colors*, which means they will be impacted by 2 different stats, and use the highest value. You may also find random Colorless items which will always use your best stat. The colorless items are currently only available through loot boxes cursed chests!

We can’t wait to hear what you think of it controller in hands!

In other news, we're in China! Or at least our chief bullsheet artist is... We're down there participating in the WePlay event in Shanghai, so come say 你好 if you're in the neighbourhood, it's a great chance to let us know what you think we can do better, or just what you like about the game.

We know you're probably sick of hearing about it, but if your friends haven't got the game yet we'll be -15% of for the duration of the Halloween sale!

Hello friends,

Continuing with our ongoing series on the fourth update, we wanted to introduce the next biome to be implemented in the game.

The Awakening of the Dreamless...

Initial concept of the new biome

The extraordinary composition of this place contrasts with all the rest of the Island… as it doesn’t pertain to this place or time. The combination of tight corridors and spacious, open sceneries, come together to form an unusual architecture, seemingly defying gravity itself.





(actual ingame screenshots)

Aesthetically, Gwen chose analogous tints for the palette of this level. Warm colours are omnipresent in the close quarters, while open areas, get some blueish nuances mixed in.

Ruin has come to this place but the ever-glowing engravings may well be the sign that there is still something left here, waiting to be found... or awoken.

(Wasn’t that end a bit, like, overdramatic?). Anyway, let’s move on to things actually happening soon.


We’re busy preparing for TwitchCon! We’ll be in Los Angeles showing off the game and hanging around, so feel free to let your favourite streamers know we’ll be there.

We’ll sign off with another little batch of monster concepts for your viewing pleasure. Thomas has been busy churning out ideas for the upcoming biomes. Stay tuned as we build towards our fourth major update to the game and come say hi if you’re in LA!

Hello friends,

Continuing with our ongoing series on the fourth update, we wanted to introduce the next biome to be implemented in the game.

The Awakening of the Dreamless...

Initial concept of the new biome

The extraordinary composition of this place contrasts with all the rest of the Island… as it doesn’t pertain to this place or time. The combination of tight corridors and spacious, open sceneries, come together to form an unusual architecture, seemingly defying gravity itself.





(actual ingame screenshots)

Aesthetically, Gwen chose analogous tints for the palette of this level. Warm colours are omnipresent in the close quarters, while open areas, get some blueish nuances mixed in.

Ruin has come to this place but the ever-glowing engravings may well be the sign that there is still something left here, waiting to be found... or awoken.

(Wasn’t that end a bit, like, overdramatic?). Anyway, let’s move on to things actually happening soon.


We’re busy preparing for TwitchCon! We’ll be in Los Angeles showing off the game and hanging around, so feel free to let your favourite streamers know we’ll be there.

We’ll sign off with another little batch of monster concepts for your viewing pleasure. Thomas has been busy churning out ideas for the upcoming biomes. Stay tuned as we build towards our fourth major update to the game and come say hi if you’re in LA!

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!).