Dead Cells made it into our list of the best metroidvania games alongside the likes of Cave Story + and Hollow Knight even though it was still in Early Access, and has only improved since then. To celebrate its impending release from the dungeon of lengthy public betas, it's got a cool new animated trailer that sums up its core loop of killing, dying, and trying again with some new gear.
When Shaun first played it last year, here's how he summed up the unusual hook of Dead Cells: "A very excellent and important touch is that you play as a man with no head—a ripe roleplaying opportunity. This headless fellow must collect cells, for some reason, and is doomed to repeatedly do so."
We hope you’re as excited as us to see the release of Dead Cells just around the corner. To celebrate we’ve released a Animation Trailer showing off the basic “Die&Retry” mechanic in, at we hope, a entertaining and humorous way. Let us know what you think!
We really, really wish to push this forward and make sure you’ve all the tools you need to make your own take on Dead Cells. As mentioned in a quick news recently, we greatly improved the mod support to give more freedom to our friend modders. However, it also means most of the previous mods won’t work anymore.
The new additions include:
Level Scripting:
You can now create your own world design. For instance, let’s say you think The Remparts should link to The Clock Tower, because it seems more coherent, well, now you can. This also allow you to plug in the current world design any custom level you may have done. Or create your own World Design with only custom levels. Your call!
Custom Levels
You can now create a custom level based on the parameters of an already existing level or set the parameters from scratch. When building it, you have the option of importing an pre-existing roaster of monsters from another level or make a mix. A new tool, the ScriptTool, will generate a default script with comments and basic exemples to get you going.
Dummy Mod now includes a basic script.
If you want to begin in Prison Start and not in the custom level with the Dummy Mod enable, head to the repertory of the mod and delete the script file.
We’ve been beta testing with this feature for the past few weeks with the help of a few streamers. It’s now live on the main branch for everyone.
Peeve was nice enough to be among the first to test the Twitch integration live. You can see the record here. However, we've fix a couple of issue and add some features since this stream. Here are the pretty much exhaustive list! Note that everything is togglable, if you don’t like a feature you can just turn it off.
Captain Chicken: randomly chosen among willing viewers at the beginning of each level, he is in control of your health potion. When the player hit the heal button, Captain Chicken receives a whisper Twitch asking for a heal, which he can provide by writing "heal" in the chat. "Noheal" allow to reject the request of the twitcher.
By default, Captain Chicken can also heal the player without any request, but it can be disabled. Finally, every words wrote in the general chat by this viewer starting with @[name of the twitcher] will appear in-game as if it was said by the bird.
If the twitcher sends 3 healing requests without getting any response (heal or noheal), the chicken is reset, and another viewer can apply for this role. The viewer can also type “resign” to leave its role. As a failsafe, you can also manually banish the current Captain Chicken from the menu, in the Twitch Integration settings.
Twitch Boss: A random viewer selected from those who volunteer will be able to add a bit of challenge during the boss fights by typing specific commands in the chat. Maybe consider disabling it if you're not quite comfortable with the combat yet. [/size]
Scrolls: Viewers choose between brutality, tactics, and survival.
Twitch Chest: Only viewers can open the chest, by writing “boom”, “poke” or “bing”, etc. in the chat
Amulets: Viewers can vote for a permanent upgrade to add to it between each level
Gameplay modifiers: Between each level, viewers can vote to apply a gameplay modifier for the next level (enemies drop a bomb when dying, health began to drop after a while without killing an enemy, etc.)
I saw a secret!: Viewers can type “secret” in the chat to tell the player they spotted a secret thing on screen. Enable only when the player missed a secret.
Praise/taunts: Viewers can praise or taunt the player on specific events (death, boss battles, timed doors, etc.)
Do it! or Nope: In specific situations, viewers can encourage (or not) the player to do special things, like opening a Cursed Chest.
Next level: Viewers can recommend a specific exit in the current level (like “sewer” or “roofs”). The player may or may not comply, depending on its equipments and own opinions :)
New Sub: A new sub always deserves a little celebration! [/size]
Merch
We’ve partnered with FanGamer (following the advices of some of you) to bring you a Dead Cells T-Shirt. Should be ready any time soon now, so keep an eye out there for it if you’re interested!.
Before signing off, I also wanted to mention the awesome article Kotaku wrote about the inner workings of Motion Twin. It popped up a lot of interesting debates.
There's this TINY patch for MODDERS out right now! (Well actually since this afternoon, but damn am I busy).
Tiny bit of info right now, more to come when we hit 1.0:
- 7 save slots - Mods UI rework - scripting levels.world structures - mob rosters and level params editing - technical documentation of scripting API - Fix rooms not being reloaded correctly after altered CDB - Fix CastleDB's turmoil when editing rooms - Fix random crash when uploading mods 0 Fix upload of mod's category
Then the bus EXPLODED. Hello, this is the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, and we are here to talk about the best game openings and intros. Whether they are cold opens or slow burns, we love a good first impression. (more…)
It's Indie Mega Week at the Humble Store right now, which - as you may have gleaned from the name - is a big celebration of some of the best indie games around, with the range seeing discounts of up to 90 per cent for the time being.
There are pages of stuff on offer in the Indie Mega Week sale range, ranging from smaller and more obscure titles to some of the biggest indie games released in recent years, and some soundtracks and DLC packs are even thrown in for good measure.
It's been a little over a year since Dead Cells, "the old school Castlevania gone roguelike" as Shaun described it, debuted on Steam Early Access. It's come a long way since then, with a new biome and monsters, daily challenges and abilities, and a new level and boss, and today developer Motion Twin announced that it will finally leave its pre-release state behind and go into full release on August 7.
"We’re super stoked to see people play Dead Cells 1.0," the devs said. "However, the journey doesn’t end there as we’re still working on Dead Cells to bring you new content, as promised before, and are dedicated to improve mod support."
There's also a little note that while the release date is definitive, it is not valid "in case of fire, flood, or zombie invasion." Talk about hedging your bets.
Shaun took Dead Cells for a spin shortly after it hit Early Access last year, and even at that stage he found it impressive. "While there was little in Dead Cells that surprised me, there was a lot that compelled me to keep playing it," he wrote. "It’s as moreish and punishing as the sub-genre demands, but the small evidences of polish and inspiration are what sets it apart from the rest of the pack."
The standard digital edition of Dead Cells goes for $25/£21/€25, on Steam, GOG, and the Humble Store, and there's also be a boxed edition available, with a concept art book and soundtrack, for preorder for $35 or your regional equivalent.
Dead Cells - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Dominic Tarason)
RPS have watched platform roguelike Dead Cells like some sort of many-headed nightmare hawk. Excellent even in its first early access release and steadily improved by patches, its deep combat and huge number of viable play-styles making each run feel fresh enough to keep us coming back. We even declared it the best game of 2017 in a fit of communal enthusiasm.
After a great many updates, it’s just about time for developers Motion Twin to put a bow on it and declare the game ‘complete’ (for the time being) – Dead Cells will be leaving early access and launching on August 7th.
How are you doing? Hope your summer is less sweaty than ours! Note that working on a room filled with computers doesn’t help.
That’s said, let’s move on to the big news: we finally have a firm, definitive* release date! Dead Cells will launch on August 7 2018. If you’re a PC player but still have some love for physical releases, you should know that we’re also releasing one, available here.
And we do have a new trailer to celebrate! \o/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02G3GUt6Nzo We’re super stoked to see people play Dead Cells 1.0. However, the journey doesn’t end there as we’re still working on Dead Cells to bring you new content, as promised before, and are dedicated to improve mod support.
Finally, the soundtrack of Dead Cells is also coming in in a physical release as super classy looking vinyl! Take a look here.
Cheers, The MT team
*Except in case of fire, flood or zombie invasion, in which cases we’re considering ourselves released from our promise.
Community Highlight:
If you find Dead Cells too easy for your super skills, head to alaah’s Workshop! You will find a few way to raise the difficulty to your level.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Astrid Johnson)
Welcome to Soundbyte, an audio mini-series that stimulates your ears and explores topics in the games industry. In our first episode, Pixel Picketers, we’re talking about unionisation in the games industry, what some folks are doing to make it happen, and the challenges they face. Let’s start by speaking to Doug Cockle, who plays Geralt in The Witcher among other roles, about his negative experiences in the recording booth. It turns out you can’t speak like a rough mercenary for hours on end without your voicebox shriveling up. Who knew?
Dead Cells - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)
With Dead Cells nearing its exit from early access, developers Motion Twin have ticked off a few big boxes on their to-do list for the rad roguelikelike metroidvania. Today brings Mac and Linux versions, “experimental” mod support, and final confirmation that the price will go up by $5 ahead of its August launch. But heck, Dead Cells was our favourite game of 2017 even in its early days on early access, so I’d feel fairly confident buying before it’s done-done mega-‘done’ done – especially as it’s going cheap in the Steam summer sale right now. (more…)
