Dead Cells - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)
After fourteen months in early access, Dead Cells officially launched today. We declared the roguelikelike platformer our favourite game of 2017 even in its early access state, and our Brendan’s Dead Cells review yesterday will tell you it’s now even sharper. A good video game. But if you’ve not been persuaded by our baby-and-a-half of squawking, instead waiting for the full launch, today’s your lucky day. Developers Motion Twin aren’t done-done with it, mind, already working on new free content.
After 30-odd years of pillaging fantasy realms I'm pretty sick of video game loot, but I do love poring over the vicious trinkets I've harvested from the tissues of Dead Cells, Motion Twin's superb, handsome blend of Spelunky and Metroidvania. There they dangle in the jail where you begin each run: a galaxy of smoky coloured icons, sealed in jars that are chained to the ceiling. Bounce into them - one of my personal rituals, before I venture into the dungeon beyond - and the jars chime together ever so gently in a way that makes my skin crawl. I'm not sure the resemblance to a mad scientist's anatomy collection is deliberate, but it's compelling all the same. How better to capture the morbidity of escaping to a world of make-believe only to shake it down for swords and tat? You can almost smell the formalin.
As the name suggests, Dead Cells is rather on the macabre side. An action-platformer with permadeath, randomised rewards and procedurally generated stages, it takes place on an island overrun by undead creatures and casts you as the worst critter of the lot - a parasitic snotball that survives by reanimating the bodies of beheaded criminals. Die in your efforts to escape, and the parasite squidges back through the island's plumbing to the prison, where another corpse is always, somehow, waiting. Fortunately, once plugged into a torso the character is a formidable martial artist and a delight to control - able to perform brisk three-hit combos, double-jump, block or parry, slither around ledges, kick down doors to stun nearby foes and slam earthwards mid-jump to pulverise anything beneath.
The game's swish animations and skin-bursting effects are its immediate draw - Klei's Mark of the Ninja with a big dollop of Diablo 3 and Mortal Kombat. Besides looking tremendous, it succeeds in being thoroughly readable for all the quantity of bodies, gibs and damage numerals on show, helped no end by sound design that excels at conveying nuances like the difference between a normal and a critical hit. Also captivating: the level art, which combines the sunset palette of a Mike Mignola comic with the filigreed touches of vintage Castlevania. One stage is a hellish clocktower, cogs spinning inside walls and fragments of masonry drifting against a burning cloudscape. Another is a mildewed Siren-esque village on stilts above a river of gore, lanterns gleaming from windows in the backdrop.
I'm writing this with a mix of nostalgia and fatigue. Seriously it's late over here... Today Dead Cells grows up and flies the coup, heading off into the world to become it's own game, get an apartment, find a special someone, pay taxes and bitch about traffic. Good for it!
It's been 454 days since we first introduced you to what we though was a half finished, reasonably well balanced but somewhat bizarre attempt at making a rogue-lite metroidvania. Man has it been some fun since!
With the help of all you equally half baked mad men and women, we've brought that little game to what we can now happily and proudly call "finished". Well at least something that's in a finished state for the time being.
We've written 47 of these update posts for you, well mostly Joan, but I do 'em every now and then too. We've pushed 79 updates including 10 major content additions or feature expansions. Plus probably a bunch of hot-fixes no one wrote any patch notes for, because the devs like to keep the people guessing.
All the while we've tried to hold true to our early access promises and prove that the platform can be a potent tool when used right. We've taken your feedback and done our best to build something with you, while staying true to what we wanted to do from the outset and right now... Well seeing all the reviews come out today, it feel like we've done pretty well. So thank you guys, from each and every one of us, thanks for all of this:
Dead Cells gets into your nervous system like a wonderful toxin... Brendan Caldwell, RPS.
Dead Cells is a phenomenal effort to blend together some very disparate genres into a tight, cohesive whole. Daniel Starkey, GameSpot.
Dead Cells may be the most fun I've had in a game all year. Justin McElroy, Polygon.
Dead Cells is the best Castlevania game in years Andrew Webster, The Verge.
Hell they even wrote about us in the WASHINGTON FRICKEN POST!!!
Dead Cells’” steady introduction of new mechanics made it easy for me to pine for one more go. In my view, that’s the hallmark of a successful arcade experience. Christopher Byrd, THE Washington FRICKEN Post.
And theeeeeen?
So anyway... that's all very well and good, but we're not done. Just because we're now OK saying that we're at 1.0 quality levels, doesn't mean we're just going to down tools and go home. Nor does it mean that we've been sitting around doing nothing since the last big update.
Today we're happy to present to you are version of a story, a little touch of lore, to the game. We've hung a skeleton up in a closet, well more numerous pieces of numerous skeletons in many different mostly not closet hiding places, for you to find.
From there we'll decide whether the lore is up to scratch, or whether, as with everything else in the game, you might not want to leave your mark on it.
Anyway, for now, have find finding out what's going on with your enigmatic, smiley, caustic and somewhat cantankerous, green ball of a prisoner is doing on this island.
Aaaaaaannnnddddd theeeeeeeen?
Well it wouldn't be much fun to spoil it all, and we did cover a lot of the rest of the stuff in our previous post on modding tools, Twitch integrations, UI updates, Mac and Linux versions and whatnot.... Buuuuuut.
If you do so happen to choose to start a new run and play through the whole game, there might be some new stuff to see. Some new things to do, not a terrible lot, but you know... Go have a look.
What next?
Well right now we're actively working on our first big post release update. It'll be a free DLC, or a big-ass free update, whichever is technically feasible, but there'll be a stack of new content. Good stuff... Playable stuff...
From there we'll do what we've always done and work with the community, if demand stays strong, who are we to deny the people their Dead Cells? If y'all get over Sir Blobspierre, then we'll go off and make another game.
So if you want to see more content be sure to let us know.
Right now I'd like to finish, by not finishing, but by doing what we always do and showing off a bit of the community's handiwork:
Community Artwork
Image by: Facebook awesome dude whose name I'll have to find tomorrow
Dead Cells - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Brendan Caldwell)
Dead Cells gets into your nervous system like a wonderful toxin. If it wasn t so fast-paced, you could almost feel the electro-chemical effects pulsing through your body, from hand to eye to screen to brain, as your panicked flurry of knife strikes eviscerates another sewer worm. The game began as a roguevania , and it was strong even in its early days. But the final version has seen every edge of this Castlevania homage sharpened to the point of needing a big cork on top. The verbs hack and slash have rarely been put to better use.
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.
