Heya friends,

Hope everything is going well for you! On our side, the first month of 2018 has been an opportunity to reflect on the past year and the crazy journey we began with you 8 months ago, when we launched Dead Cells into Early Access. It's definitely not the same game we started with, and we owe the community for many of the improvements we’ve implemented since then.

It's now time to lay out what's left to be done before coming out of Early Access. Of course, everything is subject to change, we're only humans in a world full of uncertainties, etc. etc. you know the usual disclaimers, but here is how the things are planned for now:

We're almost done with the development of the last level and the final boss of Dead Cells (before the release). We're reopening the Alpha Branch soon to let the most dedicated players take on the game breaking bugs and bring us the first batch of feedback we need to tweak these two majors additions. Then, the content will be made available on the Beta Branch, opening it to more players and letting us polish it until it’s up to our usual standard of completion.

From here the team will be breaking up into smaller tactical strike groups. We’re close to V1.0, but there are still stacks of things to do. Some of us will be working on the next “mini updates” that will be coming out between now and launch. Some of the devs will be completing the Mac and Linux versions of the game. Pretty much all of us will have a lot of QA work to do. Finally, there will still be some of us working on new content. Let’s take a look at the details.

After the 6th update goes live in March we’ll push 1 or two (depending on time) mini-updates that will contain some extra content that we’ve been working on; challenge room re-works, more tinkering with the Forge mechanic, UI and cosmetic changes, balancing, QA updates, bug fixes and all of that other good stuff that will help us move towards something that we can call “finished”.

This also when we will be looking to finally bring the game to the Linux and Mac communities, as promised. We hope you can forgive us for having to reschedule the release of these builds until much closer to the end of the early access, it was done to keep us from losing time maintaining multiple builds.

Some lucky beggars (next round is on you by the way) will be focused on finding clever ways of implementing the lore of Dead Cells for the 1.0 release. We're still experimenting in order to find the right process of telling the story without messing with the pacing of the game. This will probably take a while and is the last major missing piece of the puzzle.

But wait! It doesn’t end with 1.0. We think we’ve shown that we’re committed to doing Early Access right, but we’re also all about doing games right. So, as we approach the final release, we’ll have some of our guys hard at work thinking up our first free DLC content addition. And by content, we mean playable, explorable, fightable content. This will come soon after the V1.0 release of the game and did I mention that it’ll be free?

Here is a TLDR; version of the roadmap to make sure we're all on the same page. We’ll also mention some events we wish to attend, so you can come insult us or buy us a beer, or even both, depending on where you side on the whole "Dead Cells coming to console" deal.

February: Opening the Alpha branch (and then the Beta branch in the course of the month) to the player willing to test the 6th Update.

March: Release of the 6th Update. Team breaks up into tactical assault teams. Some take the plane for San Francisco where we will be attending the GDC.

Mid/Late April: Release of the first mini update. We will be in Boston for the Pax East and London for the Rezzed expo.

May/June: Linux and Mac builds available.

Q3/Q4 2018: Release out of Early Access.

2 to 4 months after the release: Content heavy Free DLC

Beyond: No idea, but if you got some, put it in the comments!

Finally, to address the concerns that porting the game to console will slow down the dev. We’ve always had a technical team here working behind the scenes on optimizing the game and making sure our tech works on all the different rigs out there. We’ve hired an extra technical developer, so he and another technical team member are responsible for making the console things work. This means that the gameplay guys, the team that has been building your levels/bosses, the same guys in charge of finishing the game, will be free to continue doing their thing without having to slow down for anything other than gameplay related issues (or life, one of them is expecting their first kid in March for example). Seeing the reactions… Well, it maaaaaay have been a good idea to mention that last week when announcing the console version, so apologies for the undue heart palpitations.

Now to finish up on a high note and draw attention to the great people out there who fill our days with cool drawings, funny memes and awesome comics.

Peace out,
The Motion Twin Team


Community Highlights

Dead Cells' icons for Twitch, done by Cyanmigou for our streamer friend
Peeve



An awesome comic by Life In Aggro!



Dead Cells Fanart, by daemonstar

Heya friends,

Hope everything is going well for you! On our side, the first month of 2018 has been an opportunity to reflect on the past year and the crazy journey we began with you 8 months ago, when we launched Dead Cells into Early Access. It's definitely not the same game we started with, and we owe the community for many of the improvements we’ve implemented since then.

It's now time to lay out what's left to be done before coming out of Early Access. Of course, everything is subject to change, we're only humans in a world full of uncertainties, etc. etc. you know the usual disclaimers, but here is how the things are planned for now:

We're almost done with the development of the last level and the final boss of Dead Cells (before the release). We're reopening the Alpha Branch soon to let the most dedicated players take on the game breaking bugs and bring us the first batch of feedback we need to tweak these two majors additions. Then, the content will be made available on the Beta Branch, opening it to more players and letting us polish it until it’s up to our usual standard of completion.

From here the team will be breaking up into smaller tactical strike groups. We’re close to V1.0, but there are still stacks of things to do. Some of us will be working on the next “mini updates” that will be coming out between now and launch. Some of the devs will be completing the Mac and Linux versions of the game. Pretty much all of us will have a lot of QA work to do. Finally, there will still be some of us working on new content. Let’s take a look at the details.

After the 6th update goes live in March we’ll push 1 or two (depending on time) mini-updates that will contain some extra content that we’ve been working on; challenge room re-works, more tinkering with the Forge mechanic, UI and cosmetic changes, balancing, QA updates, bug fixes and all of that other good stuff that will help us move towards something that we can call “finished”.

This also when we will be looking to finally bring the game to the Linux and Mac communities, as promised. We hope you can forgive us for having to reschedule the release of these builds until much closer to the end of the early access, it was done to keep us from losing time maintaining multiple builds.

Some lucky beggars (next round is on you by the way) will be focused on finding clever ways of implementing the lore of Dead Cells for the 1.0 release. We're still experimenting in order to find the right process of telling the story without messing with the pacing of the game. This will probably take a while and is the last major missing piece of the puzzle.

But wait! It doesn’t end with 1.0. We think we’ve shown that we’re committed to doing Early Access right, but we’re also all about doing games right. So, as we approach the final release, we’ll have some of our guys hard at work thinking up our first free DLC content addition. And by content, we mean playable, explorable, fightable content. This will come soon after the V1.0 release of the game and did I mention that it’ll be free?

Here is a TLDR; version of the roadmap to make sure we're all on the same page. We’ll also mention some events we wish to attend, so you can come insult us or buy us a beer, or even both, depending on where you side on the whole "Dead Cells coming to console" deal.

February: Opening the Alpha branch (and then the Beta branch in the course of the month) to the player willing to test the 6th Update.

March: Release of the 6th Update. Team breaks up into tactical assault teams. Some take the plane for San Francisco where we will be attending the GDC.

Mid/Late April: Release of the first mini update. We will be in Boston for the Pax East and London for the Rezzed expo.

May/June: Linux and Mac builds available.

Q3/Q4 2018: Release out of Early Access.

2 to 4 months after the release: Content heavy Free DLC

Beyond: No idea, but if you got some, put it in the comments!

Finally, to address the concerns that porting the game to console will slow down the dev. We’ve always had a technical team here working behind the scenes on optimizing the game and making sure our tech works on all the different rigs out there. We’ve hired an extra technical developer, so he and another technical team member are responsible for making the console things work. This means that the gameplay guys, the team that has been building your levels/bosses, the same guys in charge of finishing the game, will be free to continue doing their thing without having to slow down for anything other than gameplay related issues (or life, one of them is expecting their first kid in March for example). Seeing the reactions… Well, it maaaaaay have been a good idea to mention that last week when announcing the console version, so apologies for the undue heart palpitations.

Now to finish up on a high note and draw attention to the great people out there who fill our days with cool drawings, funny memes and awesome comics.

Peace out,
The Motion Twin Team


Community Highlights

Dead Cells' icons for Twitch, done by Cyanmigou for our streamer friend
Peeve



An awesome comic by Life In Aggro!



Dead Cells Fanart, by daemonstar

( "No thanks", courtesy of steam user Kyrozen)

Heya friends!

Long time no see. We're sorry for the recent lack of communication, we've been swamped preparing the console announcement. Speaking of which…

… We're damn thrilled to let you know that we're bringing Dead Cells to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTmqSNCjgJE

Who cares!?! This is the fricken PC man!

Alright, but you may know someone who only owns a console or something… Okay, who I am I kidding? We're just super happy and can't keep ourselves from telling the world about it. So there. I said it.

What about, ya know… Updates?

We have a few thing to figure out, but more info will be coming next week on our current plans for the following months.

Also if you're interested in some more technical details on how we get that fluid pixel art animation going on... Our talented Art Director Thomas Vasseur put together this blog post on the process.

Signing off on some awesome artworks done by the community!

Dead Cells Fan Art, by @mknol.



A badass PixelArt tribute, by @PencayFome



Dead Cells' meme (<3) by Reddit user Roguelikegall



A great phone wallpaper, by Elkopolo (again). Take also a look at his profile to see awesome weapon concepts!



See ya next week!

( "No thanks", courtesy of steam user Kyrozen)

Heya friends!

Long time no see. We're sorry for the recent lack of communication, we've been swamped preparing the console announcement. Speaking of which…

… We're damn thrilled to let you know that we're bringing Dead Cells to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTmqSNCjgJE

Who cares!?! This is the fricken PC man!

Alright, but you may know someone who only owns a console or something… Okay, who I am I kidding? We're just super happy and can't keep ourselves from telling the world about it. So there. I said it.

What about, ya know… Updates?

We have a few thing to figure out, but more info will be coming next week on our current plans for the following months.

Also if you're interested in some more technical details on how we get that fluid pixel art animation going on... Our talented Art Director Thomas Vasseur put together this blog post on the process.

Signing off on some awesome artworks done by the community!

Dead Cells Fan Art, by @mknol.



A badass PixelArt tribute, by @PencayFome



Dead Cells' meme (<3) by Reddit user Roguelikegall



A great phone wallpaper, by Elkopolo (again). Take also a look at his profile to see awesome weapon concepts!



See ya next week!

Hey there all,

We hope that you’ve had a great Christmas period and that you had the chance to take some time off to relax with family, eat a bunch of food and generally recover from 2017, another year filled with wild events and some really great games.

We couldn’t be happier to finish the year off at the top of RPS’ Advent Calendar and we’re really proud that we’ve come so far with all your help. Here’s a little of what the people across the pond had to say about Dead Cells.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/12/25/best-pc-games-of-2017/25/


We just wanted to stop by and reiterate that Dead Cells will be increasing in price early in the new year. We think that we’ve done the bulk of the risky part of the development now and that the trust so many of you have put in our team has paid off.

While we’re far from finishing the game and realizing our complete vision, anyone who jumps onboard now is going to be playing a very polished game with hours and hours of fun. For those of you who did take the plunge and put your faith in a first time Steam game team… Thank you!

We’d like to thank you guys for your ideas, your complaints, your rage, hell even your negative reviews in Chinese. We do our best to listen to each and every bit of feedback, and while there’s not a lot we can do to help the people leaving reviews like “For some reason, I keep coming back to life. Fradulent title. - Painkillers”, we do try to deal with the more reasonable complaints by making concrete changes to the game.

As we made clear right from the beginning, the price might rise and it’s time for that to happen. So let your friends know! Once the winter sale is over the game will jump up to 19.99USD/EUR and corresponding regional prices.


We found the time over the last few weeks to work across time zones and cobble together a little VLOG post for you to check out. It’s filled with stuffy nosed rambling about what we’ve done throughout 2017 as well as some info about what we’re planning for 2018. Check it out and feel free to ridicule the hopeless voiceover attempts. I was sick alright… ;p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiA1RVoIXm0


We really feel like we should do more of these, so here’s a couple of good ones from the talented people that like our hodgepodge mashup of a game:





Happy New Year everyone!

Hey there all,

We hope that you’ve had a great Christmas period and that you had the chance to take some time off to relax with family, eat a bunch of food and generally recover from 2017, another year filled with wild events and some really great games.

We couldn’t be happier to finish the year off at the top of RPS’ Advent Calendar and we’re really proud that we’ve come so far with all your help. Here’s a little of what the people across the pond had to say about Dead Cells.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/12/25/best-pc-games-of-2017/25/


We just wanted to stop by and reiterate that Dead Cells will be increasing in price early in the new year. We think that we’ve done the bulk of the risky part of the development now and that the trust so many of you have put in our team has paid off.

While we’re far from finishing the game and realizing our complete vision, anyone who jumps onboard now is going to be playing a very polished game with hours and hours of fun. For those of you who did take the plunge and put your faith in a first time Steam game team… Thank you!

We’d like to thank you guys for your ideas, your complaints, your rage, hell even your negative reviews in Chinese. We do our best to listen to each and every bit of feedback, and while there’s not a lot we can do to help the people leaving reviews like “For some reason, I keep coming back to life. Fradulent title. - Painkillers”, we do try to deal with the more reasonable complaints by making concrete changes to the game.

As we made clear right from the beginning, the price might rise and it’s time for that to happen. So let your friends know! Once the winter sale is over the game will jump up to 19.99USD/EUR and corresponding regional prices.


We found the time over the last few weeks to work across time zones and cobble together a little VLOG post for you to check out. It’s filled with stuffy nosed rambling about what we’ve done throughout 2017 as well as some info about what we’re planning for 2018. Check it out and feel free to ridicule the hopeless voiceover attempts. I was sick alright… ;p

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiA1RVoIXm0


We really feel like we should do more of these, so here’s a couple of good ones from the talented people that like our hodgepodge mashup of a game:





Happy New Year everyone!

Happy Holidays all!

We hope that you’re enjoying some time off with family if you’re celebrating Christmas, or just taking advantage of the time off to relax and catch up as we hurtle towards a new year and a stack more deaths against all the new death traps we’re preparing for you…



Download the HD version here


We’ve been crowing about it on the forums (over here and here) but we’re very pleased to announce that the last part of our major game rebalance and overall changefest, is here! The Foundry Update brings the remaining core features we absolutely wanted to implement in Dead Cells.

First, the addition of Mutations will let you choose between several contextual advantages while scaling on your level of Strength, Tactic, or Survival. Some provide flat bonuses which don’t scale. The point is to let you customize your progression to your playstyle and to your gear. Or strategically choose a set of mutations to help you overcome a specific challenge. As the idea is to leave you room to adapt, you can re-spec between each level… if you don’t mind spending some of your hard earned coin, of course.



The Custom Difficulty goes hand in hand with the new Weapon Upgrade system now available. Once you’ve beaten the game for the first time, you will be able to increase the difficulty up to three times, which will allow you to continue upgrading your favorite weapons. With tougher enemies and no health fountains, the hardest difficulty should provide a decent challenge for everyone, including the most skilled players. Improving your weapons is highly advised before diving in.



You can find out about everything that we’ve changed in the patchnotes here.


After a stack (and I do mean a stack) of demand we’ve finally gotten around to putting Steam trading cards and whatnot into the game. The ever adaptable Gwenichou put his head down and his bum up to not only bring you a stack of new levels, skins, and backgrounds, but 15 trading cards, a couple of different backgrounds, emoticons and badges!

We hope that you have fun collecting them and selling them to your friends for outrageous sums of money… Or you know.. A few cents.


As you may have noticed Dead Cells is on sale! We’ll be at -25% off until the end of the winter sales, so tell a friend or just buy them a copy and send it off with a “ho ho ho, prepare to die” message of festiveness.

This is a particularly important sale as we’ll be increasing the price of the game in the new year to 19.99 USD/EUR with corresponding prices in other regions. We think that given the amount of content in the game right now we can push up the price as we have announced we will do since the beginning of the early access.

We feel like the long list of additions and improvements we’ve made to Dead Cells since May have considerably improved the experience. And, buying the game now is far less risky than trusting and supporting us with your money was when we launched.

You got behind us and got involved in a big way and we couldn’t have made the game what it is without your feedback, ideas, complaints and encouragement. It’s been awesome and we’re going to work even harder to make sure that 2018 is bigger and better.

As usual we welcome your feedback on the subject and look forward to hearing what you think.


We should do it more often, you guys are awesome! Here are some recent artworks done by the community.

@Elkopolo reimagined Dead Cells as a first and third person game.. Seems awesome but a bit anxious with the like of the golems!






Elkopolo struck again with the help of redditor solsund for a dual monitor wallpaper. Get yours here!




The prisoners’cell by @EyeSiU



And finally, this beautiful piece by @Space_algae.



Merry Christmas!

The MT Team

Happy Holidays all!

We hope that you’re enjoying some time off with family if you’re celebrating Christmas, or just taking advantage of the time off to relax and catch up as we hurtle towards a new year and a stack more deaths against all the new death traps we’re preparing for you…



Download the HD version here


We’ve been crowing about it on the forums (over here and here) but we’re very pleased to announce that the last part of our major game rebalance and overall changefest, is here! The Foundry Update brings the remaining core features we absolutely wanted to implement in Dead Cells.

First, the addition of Mutations will let you choose between several contextual advantages while scaling on your level of Strength, Tactic, or Survival. Some provide flat bonuses which don’t scale. The point is to let you customize your progression to your playstyle and to your gear. Or strategically choose a set of mutations to help you overcome a specific challenge. As the idea is to leave you room to adapt, you can re-spec between each level… if you don’t mind spending some of your hard earned coin, of course.



The Custom Difficulty goes hand in hand with the new Weapon Upgrade system now available. Once you’ve beaten the game for the first time, you will be able to increase the difficulty up to three times, which will allow you to continue upgrading your favorite weapons. With tougher enemies and no health fountains, the hardest difficulty should provide a decent challenge for everyone, including the most skilled players. Improving your weapons is highly advised before diving in.



You can find out about everything that we’ve changed in the patchnotes here.


After a stack (and I do mean a stack) of demand we’ve finally gotten around to putting Steam trading cards and whatnot into the game. The ever adaptable Gwenichou put his head down and his bum up to not only bring you a stack of new levels, skins, and backgrounds, but 15 trading cards, a couple of different backgrounds, emoticons and badges!

We hope that you have fun collecting them and selling them to your friends for outrageous sums of money… Or you know.. A few cents.


As you may have noticed Dead Cells is on sale! We’ll be at -25% off until the end of the winter sales, so tell a friend or just buy them a copy and send it off with a “ho ho ho, prepare to die” message of festiveness.

This is a particularly important sale as we’ll be increasing the price of the game in the new year to 19.99 USD/EUR with corresponding prices in other regions. We think that given the amount of content in the game right now we can push up the price as we have announced we will do since the beginning of the early access.

We feel like the long list of additions and improvements we’ve made to Dead Cells since May have considerably improved the experience. And, buying the game now is far less risky than trusting and supporting us with your money was when we launched.

You got behind us and got involved in a big way and we couldn’t have made the game what it is without your feedback, ideas, complaints and encouragement. It’s been awesome and we’re going to work even harder to make sure that 2018 is bigger and better.

As usual we welcome your feedback on the subject and look forward to hearing what you think.


We should do it more often, you guys are awesome! Here are some recent artworks done by the community.

@Elkopolo reimagined Dead Cells as a first and third person game.. Seems awesome but a bit anxious with the like of the golems!






Elkopolo struck again with the help of redditor solsund for a dual monitor wallpaper. Get yours here!




The prisoners’cell by @EyeSiU



And finally, this beautiful piece by @Space_algae.



Merry Christmas!

The MT Team

Hey all!

As the new systems scheduled for our fifth update have been implemented in the game, the Foundry update is now available on the beta branch. This update focuses on adding core gameplay systems and mechanics, built on the base of the Brutal update:

• Custom difficulty: Find the game too easy for your god-like skills? Take the challenge to the next level with the Boss Source Cells, shiny, grimey cells you can activate and deactivate at will in the starting room. Will you live to strike doom on the Assassin without your precious health flasks being generously filled between each level?
  
• The Foundry has opened its doors again… Can you feel the warmth, hear the the hammer, the bellows? Only the brave will be deemed worthy of acquiring the blacksmith’s services. (Yes, the blacksmith is indeed an elitist prick). Jokes aside, this is the new endgame/meta progression system backing up the blueprint unlocks.Take a look and tell us what you think.
  
• Level up your character through Mutations: Guillain never really felt that he received the recognition he was due in his previous position, so he decided to try his hand running his own business. Mutations are perks that allow you to customize your strategy and play style depending on the gear you’ve found while exploring and murdering half the population of the island.

Also, heaps and heaps of UI changes, bug fixes, balancing, ya know the deal now.

Overall, the Alpha branch testers did a great job helping us out with big hunting and tracking down our various brain farts. It should hopefully reduce the time spent in beta and make the live release an even more stable and enjoyable experience from the get go. We might open it again for new features we feel could benefit from some early feedback, in any case we’ll keep you posted.

In other news, half the team is getting busy coughin’ n’ sneezin’ at home because it’s fricking cold and wet over here. PSA: if you can, stay inside playing video games, it’s actually good for your health.

As such we’ll be off drinking lemon teas and calling for the priest or unwrapping presents and drinking heavily over the holiday period, we’ll do our best to leave you with a bug free build for Christmas!

Happy Holiday season to everyone!


http://steamcommunity.com/app/588650/discussions/4/1474222595296562851/

Hey all!

As the new systems scheduled for our fifth update have been implemented in the game, the Foundry update is now available on the beta branch. This update focuses on adding core gameplay systems and mechanics, built on the base of the Brutal update:

• Custom difficulty: Find the game too easy for your god-like skills? Take the challenge to the next level with the Boss Source Cells, shiny, grimey cells you can activate and deactivate at will in the starting room. Will you live to strike doom on the Assassin without your precious health flasks being generously filled between each level?
  
• The Foundry has opened its doors again… Can you feel the warmth, hear the the hammer, the bellows? Only the brave will be deemed worthy of acquiring the blacksmith’s services. (Yes, the blacksmith is indeed an elitist prick). Jokes aside, this is the new endgame/meta progression system backing up the blueprint unlocks.Take a look and tell us what you think.
  
• Level up your character through Mutations: Guillain never really felt that he received the recognition he was due in his previous position, so he decided to try his hand running his own business. Mutations are perks that allow you to customize your strategy and play style depending on the gear you’ve found while exploring and murdering half the population of the island.

Also, heaps and heaps of UI changes, bug fixes, balancing, ya know the deal now.

Overall, the Alpha branch testers did a great job helping us out with big hunting and tracking down our various brain farts. It should hopefully reduce the time spent in beta and make the live release an even more stable and enjoyable experience from the get go. We might open it again for new features we feel could benefit from some early feedback, in any case we’ll keep you posted.

In other news, half the team is getting busy coughin’ n’ sneezin’ at home because it’s fricking cold and wet over here. PSA: if you can, stay inside playing video games, it’s actually good for your health.

As such we’ll be off drinking lemon teas and calling for the priest or unwrapping presents and drinking heavily over the holiday period, we’ll do our best to leave you with a bug free build for Christmas!

Happy Holiday season to everyone!


http://steamcommunity.com/app/588650/discussions/4/1474222595296562851/