The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice Bell)
The old quote is wrong: neither death nor taxes are, it seems to me, as terrifyingly certain as the Steam Summer Sale. Yes, once more we can add to the heap that is our backlog by buying games for, what, five quid, on average? But there are so many to choose from that it’s easy to get flustered, so who better than the staff of RPS to hand-pick the best ones for your consideration (rhetorical question; do not answer)?
Check out the full list below for a mix of games that should suit all pockets and tastes.
Hope your summer is starting well! On our side, everything is pretty crazy with the Steam summer sale, since we're trying to showcase how the game actually plays by live streaming ourselves and getting friends involved too.
That said, we've just pushed the 9th update out for everyone! It's great news for our Linux and Mac users out there, but also for those among you who might want to treat Dead Cells as a toolbox to getting creative and sharing their Dead Cells with the rest of the community.
We are indeed bringing basic, limited, partial mod support to the game. It's not in the beta branch, but we consider this to be in its first, very early, alpha state. Basically you will be able to tweak some gameplay and cosmetic stuff. But not everything. More details in the 20 page document in this folder written by our very own Quittouff, the dev who made it possible.
It should not impact many of you since you likely already own the game. However if you've got a friend who is on the fence about buying Dead Cells, please let them know that we're going to increase the price by $5 just after the end of the summer sale, in anticipation for the release out of early access in August. Thanks!
Dead Cells - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Fraser Brown)
Roguey romp Dead Cells – one of the best games of 2017 – is getting mod support, possibly as soon as this month. It s been requested frequently, so the announcement still comes as a pleasant surprise, mentioned at the end of a brief update post yesterday. The early access game is also now available on Linux and Mac – just pick those versions in the beta branch. (more…)
Dead Cells' vast array of weapons and catalogue of cool animations earned the genre hybrid a place on our list of the best metroidvania games on PC. Motion Twin has now revealed it's getting mod support. And I'm excited.
In a Steam Community update that first explores Mac and Linux support and a returning pixel art font, the developer explains Dead Cells has "limited, basic mod support working" internally. Once some compatibility issues are ironed out, modding tools will launch proper.
"Currently even very minor updates break compatibility instantly," says the dev. "Which is kind of a deal breaker. Once we've fixed that, we will release the tools into the wild along with some basic documentation. Hopefully, as early as this month. So, if you're interested in modding Dead Cells, please stick around, we will need your feedback to get this right."
At present, Dead Cells lives on Steam's Early Access initiative—but plans to launch in full this August. Here's its EA launch trailer from last year:
I don't agree with everything our Austin says here on why the Souls-like label needs to die, but he does raise some good points about how we characterise games like Dead Cells.
A quick news bite to let you know that the Mac and Linux versions of Dead Cells are available in the beta branch. So if you have a friend who hasn’t been able to play yet because they prefer the penguin or the apple to the window, tell them to hop in and report any bugs to us!
Next news, we're bringing back the original pixel art font. You can activate it in the settings!
Finally, we're also working on something which has been in our minds for a long time... Something that’s been quite difficult to pull off due to the way we built the game since the beginning: allowing the community to mod Dead Cells.
Internally we have a limited, basic mod support working. However, currently even very minor updates break compatibility instantly, which is kind of a deal breaker. Once we've fixed that, we will release the tools into the wild along with some basic documentation. Hopefully, as early as this month. So, if you're interested in modding Dead Cells, please stick around, we will need your feedback to get this right!
Take care, The MT team
Community Highlights:
@koiyokidd was nice enough to include the Beheaded among his favorite indiegame characters!
If only you could have heard the RPS treehouse chat a few months ago, during the great Metroidvania debate of 2017. Battle lines were drawn. On the one side: John, insisting that of course Dead Cells isn’t a Metroidvania. On the other side: everyone else, calling John an old fogey for insisting on overly strict and out-dated genre boundaries. On the other other side: the sensible people, who probably didn’t get involved because this is a silly discussion that’s of no consequence whatsoever.
Still, I was in the second group, and can’t help but picture the smug look on John’s face as he dropped news of the “Not a Metroidvania” Steam bundle into our Trello this morning. It includes the best game of 2017, the splendid Sundered, the Dark Souls-esque Salt and Sanctuary, and the comparatively essless Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition. John likes all of them, but what does he know. (more…)
Behold the magnificent update art by our very own dev Matt!
Hey there everyone,
The Babel update which you can check out over here, is live for everyone!
The only info we left out of our last update was that we've included a little Discord integration for y'all to play with. It's nothing fancy, it just shows how long you've been playing and which level you're in.
Of course this wouldn't be news if there wasn't some shameless self promotion... So chek out us on sale in this here bundle.
Community artwork!
Captain Caine put together this wonderful little Firewatch inspired piece.
The prolific Elkopolo is at it again with a bad ass Inquisitor!
Steam's Not a Metroidvania sale gathers Guacamelee, Salt and Sanctuary, Sundered and Dead Cells. Individually, you stand to save up to 40 percent on each game—or 50 percent if you buy them as a bundle. As the name of the sale suggests, these indie gems aim to sidestep the sweeping Metroidvania genre label. I like 'em all for different reasons.
DrinkBox Studios' Guacamelee, for example, is a fast-firing explosion of combos and colour. Thunder Lotus Games' Sundered is a gorgeous sidescroller with some larger than life bosses (look at the teeny, tiny hero fighting that gigantic baddie in the header image above); while Motion Twin's Dead Cells boasts a dizzying array of weapons and uber-cool animations.
Ska Studios' Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D Dark Souls-a-like. It's my favourite of the four, and as such gets a closer look:
"In these lovingly crafted 2D platformers, you'll explore and battle through unique non-linear worlds, discover new items and abilities which will allow you to progress beyond otherwise impassable obstacles, and revisit older areas along the way," says the sale's Steam blurb. "These games are proof that there's plenty of room for creative variation inside these simple rules of gameplay, but agreeing on a single term to describe them can be tough... May we suggest Castletroid? Vanimet?"
We hope that you're enjoying the latest additions to the game! After the Baguette update, named after the myth that we pushed a patch without having the translations ready, we're keeping the theme of language-based title with the Babel update.
As previously announced in the roadmap, this is the first of the two updates not focused around in-game content but rather on making Dead Cells accessible to more people.
The most important feature of the patch is the addition of new languages officially supported:
Deutsch
Español
Italiano
Русский
Português
Türkçe
한국어
繁體中文
Moreover, all bows and crossbows received some (cosmetic) love!
We were also thinking that the character wasn't looking nostalgic enough when staring into space. Now it's better!
Last quality of life improvement, the new version of the ceiling turret (known as the Barnacle) is now usable without a roof thanks to the latest technology designed by our finest engineers.
Nothing can stop the progress of science.
Oh, and you thought you could escape GDPR here? Slight change on our side, we're still tracking errors and crashes, but now we've anonymised the process.
Take care, The MT team
Community highlights:
Guest Star, by @Elkopolo. And yes, yes half of the office is playing it while the other half is threatening to kill the next person who say "boi" with a spoon. A very, very, little spoon.
Dead Cells - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Brendan Caldwell)
There are only three colours in Unworthy – black, white and blood. It s an upcoming minimalist monochrome Metroidvania that isn t so much inspired by Dark Souls as it is a pixel demake of it. In one sense, it’s very derivative. The health and stamina bars, the slow and deliberate attacks, the sin you collect from kills (and drop on death), the depressed ramblings of NPCs. Even the places you roam have names both intentionally Gothic and unintentionally funny. The Throat of Despair, the Catacombs of Ur, the Cradle of Death. The human soul is a sponge that soaks up our sins, it growls in the intro, until it simply rots away. But this grimness barely matters, because Unworthy is a competent pastiche of what many people love about Souls games. I still haven t beaten the first boss. (more…)
Behold the magnificent update art by our very own dev Matt!
