Hey friends!

It's here, it's crawled out of the alpha dungeon, made it though the beta gauntlet and now it's here for you all to play, Rise of the Giant, our first free DLC has fiiiinally made it to you after a slightly longer than planned gestation period.

https://youtu.be/wc6ZpTwN2cI

• A brand new level for those who have finished the game at least once (remember we lowered the base difficulty significantly in update 11). This is a kind of cavern, a deep dark hole filled with traps and other nasty surprises.
  
  
• A new Boss! Guess what it is... Go on, guess! If you said "it's the giant" then you're wrong! It's Kratos!!!!!!! We teamed up with Sony Santa Monica to bring everyb.... Nah it's the Giant. And guess where he's hidden!!! Go on, guess!
  
  
  
  
• The next big thing we've got for yo is the Custom Mode that many have been clamouring for, is now available WITHOUT requiring you to beat the game. If that's not quite what you wanted, keep complaining, we're a little slow on the uptake, but we do listen, even it we're maybe a little deaf in the right ear...
  
  
• A shiny new SKINNING SYSTEM, that's right, skin the creatures you find and wear them like it was Silence of the Lambs up in here! All for the very reasonable price of $19.99 per loot box where you've got 99% chance of getting absolutely nothing!!! Oh wait, what!? You just play the game and unlock them for free? BUT WHAT ABOUT OUR SHARE PRICE!?
  
  
• Ok enough college sarcasm, next up we have 10 new enemies! Some of them will obviously be waiting for you in the new levels, though many of them have been spread out through the NG+ difficulty levels. They're waiting for you to roll up thinking you own the game...
  
  
• 3 new skills, including a flying pet thing with extra cuteness and 10 new weapons including the completely original Boi Axe! Now with extra BOI!
  
  
  
  
• The Hunters Grenade door has been replacecd by the Spcicalist's Shop. Essentially a few knick knacks for those advanced players who know what's up, and some pweeeety skins for the rest of us.
  
  
• Oh and there may be another bunch of hidden stuff yadi yadi yada floating around in the game. No biggy.
  
  
• Alright that's it, i'm done. You can check out the rest of the gazillion changes you've helped us make over here in the patch notes.

I really cannot stress enough how important your continued feedback, contribution and support, each and every one of you, has been to bringing Dead Cells to where it is today.

We said that we were going to do this free DLC quite a while ago, something of a thank you present to the community, and we meant it. So thank you all! Ok enough mushiness and tears, this is NOT goodbye.


Here's a little of what we're planning at the moment and where we're heading:

• Right now we're working on building out the team a bit more, we'll have news on how that's coming along and how we're planning on doing things as we move forward soon.
  
  
• We are however building some new monsters, some little guys that may or may not have leaked a little bit already *cough cough over here cough cough*
  
  
• We're going to keep adding content to the game for as long as it makes sense to do so, that's to say, for as long as enough people keep buying and playing the game to support the development costs and make us some more money for our next game.
  
  
• There WILL be a next game... If you didn't see the Redbull documentary that they did on us, check it out, because you'll learn that we're really just all about games, and we'll be doing it until the arthritis kicks in and we physically can't.
  
  Before you ask...... NO, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE NEXT GAME WILL BE. We are going to go through a really fun period of building demos, iterating and arguing over why roguelites are so yesterday and therefore we should definitely do another. We'll keep you posted as soon as we have things to share, and maybe even before we should.
  
  Super top secret non-existant co-op royal battle of the bush mode, with machine gun, and frying pan.
  
  
• We'd like to try and figure out if we can build some insane modes for Dead Cells, we don't know how yet, but we're imagining a sort of Skunk-works team secluding themselves in a bubble for months on end without showering, with the aim of emerging with something incredible! That or a whole bunch of take-out boxes and a smell to put the Guillain's pile of rotting corpses to shame.

We've always tried to be open and honest and the success of Dead Cells will not change that one bit, so stay tuned.

Oh and since you all asked once or twice... a minute. The console releases will follow ASAP, I'd say around the end of the month early May, though as it's not 100% up to us (thank you certification period) we'll just do our best and officially say "soon". Also next time I'll jsut include this kind of useful information from the get go...

To finish up with this public safety announcement, here's some more community artwork:

Noir Cells by @LeoTeEdglord

Freaky realistic cells... By ExCharny

KDA strike a pose! By Hobo_hellorville

Heya everyone,

We hope you're all doing well. On our side, the DLC is going live tomorrow and we made a second animated trailer to celebrate! Really hope you will like it, and for the ones testing the new content on the beta branch, some parts should feel a bit familiar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLz1r_sCeXc

The music, done by Dead Cells' sound composer Yoann "Valmont" Laulan, is also available on Youtube and Bandcamp.

Last thing, we're at Pax East this year, so if you're around, come say hi and test the DLC!

Cheers,
The MT Team

Community highlights:

Redditor 1sombras1 's empathy gave birth to this awesome drawing of our new favorite boss



Thanks @FogRyu for choosing Dead Cells as an inspiration for its #pixel_dailies soumission!

Hey all,

Our first free DLC is going to be coming to the main branch on the 28th of March! The Rise of the Giant DLC is the fulfilment of a promise that we made during our early access to continue to support the game and to continue to provide content for as long as you guys are interested in playing it.

I'm not going to say a terrible lot more about what's in the game, so as not to spoil it too much for anyone who's waiting for it to hit the main branch, but suffice to say that there's new levels, new bosses and a whole bunch more!

In the meantime for the curious, you can checkout the patch notes here, or test it yourself in the beta branch of the base game.

We're also super stoked to present to you a little accolade trailer that a friend of our made for us. It's been an incredible ride since way back in May 2017 when we first showed off another rogue-lite, pixel art, souls-wannabee to you all and since then we've continued to work to make the game bigger and better. The trailer shows off a few of the high points so far.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X56EtuqXfek

Stay tuned for more info as we polish this build and get it out to you all as our first DLC.

The MT team.

Hello everyone,

Hope you're doing well! As we told you a while ago, the team is working on the upcoming free DLC we promised. We're finally reaching the final phases before we ready to publish it. However, as always, we're looking to get as most feedback as we can from Dead Cells' players. And, well, since there is a lot of new content, we need your help now more than ever to tweak, hunt the bugs, and balance it.

The new content has been built to give more depth to Dead Cells' end game. Hence, one of the new biome and its boss won't be accessible before you beat the game a first time. A fifth boss cell is now available... I will let you deduce where to find the second boss and biome are hiding themselves!

We're also improving the end game by making the Dead Cells' experience in Boss Cells 1 to 5 more unique and interesting. New ennemies and new rewards (skins and weapons) are awaiting the braves ready to rise to the gigantic* challenge.

The patch notes are available here.

Let us know what you think in the comment down there, or, even better, on Reddit where we're going to open a specific thread dedicated to the discussion (pinned).

How do I get in?

To access the ALPHA 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 "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
Start playing.

WARNING:
In this version of the game you will lose your save every time we push an update, which could be pretty often! This will not impact your old save files. You will be able to import the old ones in to this version, but not export them. This way you can play with everything you've already unlocked, without fear of frying your saves.

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

There is a special slot only for saves from this version that will appear.

We hope to read you soon!
The MT team


Quick (but great) animation by Karlsia.



A tribute to ValmontDeRag's cat, by @hellorville



Mr Prisoner, by @cellophasis





*Motion Twin denies all responsibility for this joke. Any complaint must be address to Steve.

Hello everyone,

We just pushed the 1.1 in the main branch!

The main changes are listed here, but if you're more a full patch notes kind of guy, go here.

Also, the whole team wishes you a Merry Christmas!

Cheers,
The MT Team

I am the king of the woooooooooooooooorld


1.1 is stable and have been tuned to take into account the feedback we received from the brave alpha testers. We’re now hoping to see more of you jump in, share experiences with this new version, and help us improve it.

How to access the beta

What’s new?

• New Custom Game Mode

Basically, this mode gives you the keys to the kingdom of Dead cells. You can pretty much configure your run how you want it to be. For instance, we think not letting the player choose it starting gear or remove items from the loot table forces people to try new strategies and to adapt to the random part of roguelites.

However, the other side of the argument is also perfectly defendable, and if you rather have your favorite combo of sword/bow/shield every when starting a new run, well now you can.

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. You can add or remove a lot of gameplay elements to the game, load the same fixed seed with your friends to compete with the same procedural generation, decide the timer behavior and much more.

Just be warned that a great power comes with great responsibility. For instance you can unlock everything in the game, every weapon, every mutation, every skills, etc. If the progressive unlocking of the game is a important element for you, you probably won’t enjoy the game any more if you don’t have anything left to unlock.

We really hope you will take a few seconds to take a look at this new possibility and get back to us with feedback and suggestions!

• Buffs, buffs and buffs

We took a new look on the items and mutations universally considered bad, and reworked or changed the numbers to increase their power and their usefulness. Give a new chance to the weapons you previously thought uninteresting, you may have some surprise! And again, let us know which ones you still find very subpar compared to the others.

• A new kind of challenge:

The roguelike nature of the game means, at some point, you will probably know the first levels by heart and it won’t really be challenging anymore. We added a new kind of challenge which rewards killing 60 enemies (only 30 in the first level) without being hit.



These rewards (cells, gold and more powerful weapon will help you unlock new gear faster and can really become handy in the latter levels and final boss combat, where your survival is far from guaranteed.

• And much more:

• Mob Auto-Scaling mechanic removed
  
• Time doors moved to in-between levels
  
• More challenging Boss Cell 4
  
• Recycle ability doesn’t break the economy anymore
  
• Legendary items now drops from mobs and altar
  
• Cooldown Reduction reworked
  
• Increased HP given for each scroll you pick.
  
• Damage reduction mechanic reworked
  
• Elites get a additional random skill
  
• Bug fixes
  
• ...

Full Patch Notes

All this changes should have quite an impact of your experience. Please let us know what you think of the new balance, difficulty, challenges, etc.

Cheers!
The MT Team


Invocators' bullets now go through the wall \o/


Mod Merger, a temporary solution to combine mods.

A wild fan art by @_audejave_



@indefinities‘s take on the prisoner

Hello everyone!



Long time no see. First, apology for the long silence since the last news. We were still in the post-release/holiday mood, attending a couple of events and all three artists were in a two-week training session. And when half the team is away, the other half usually tends to feel a little lost.



That’s said, now that we’re all back and working, we’ve got a good chunk of new content for you. And by that, I mean the biggest update we've ever made to Dead Cells, with a few new additions, as well as custom games and many, many tweaks to the gameplay and balancing. Some urgent issues reported by the community have alsobeen addressed.

Overall, the Dead Cells version you can play in Alpha feels quite different to the one on the main branch. We’re expecting it to stay in alpha for quite some time while we tune the new balancing with your help.

Here's how you access the alpha: https://steamcommunity.com/app/588650/discussions/4/1474222595296562851/

Full patch notes: https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes





Looking forward to seeing you play!
The MT Team

Community Highlights:

Arrangement for Five harps of the Merchant song, by Amy Turk. (oO)

Halloween Pumpkin by @DahveedMcVey






Dead guy approved! By @Kibo_Castro

Hello everyone!

We hope you’re all doing well. The 1.0 release is now a good month and a bit behind us, so it seems like a good time to start talking about what’s coming in the short/mid term, just so you don't think we're dead...

Becaaauuusse we're not. We're just super tired after 3 years of bringing this baby of ours to life, now we're hungover from our time in the pub, so it's time to go spend some time on the beach, or just at home playing our favourite games that aren't Dead Cells. That's why we've been quiet, we're all on holidays right now there are only 4 out of 12 people in the office... and that's going to be worse tomorrow and next week. But don't despair we're not done and we'll be back recharged and ready to go soon.

In fact, the first major post-release update is currently under construction and we’re hoping to have it in the beta branch late October/ early November. This patch will focus on heavily balancing, polishing and bug fixing, as well as new possibilities for customization with better mod support, and a new Custom Mode.

The Custom Mode is designed to give you a new layer of control over the game, really giving you the ability to make “your” Dead Cells. For instance, one of the most requested feature was to be able to ban some weapons from the loot table once unlocked, or choose your starting gear. Many other modifications of the standard gameplay will also be possible.

Then, we will get busy with a first (free) DLC, focused on new playable content. No ETA yet, but we’re already playing with a few ideas:





After that, we would like to sit down and have an honest discussion about future content. We would love to keep supporting Dead Cells on the long run, but we haven't really figured out exactly how yet. What do you guys think about paid DLC? Would you prefer regular light updates or more packaged, themed ones? More playable content in the vein of what’s already existing or exploring new ways to play the game through different modes? Everything is on the table... Let us know what you want to see.

Cheers!
Joan & Steve

Community Highlights:

A 3D model of the Broadsword, by @SoulthePupper



Awesome Dead Cells drawings, by Sergej Kloster





SFW-but-still-Rule34 Dead Cells sketch, by @dgallon

Hey there everyone!

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.

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.

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.

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:



Image by: Facebook awesome dude whose name I'll have to find tomorrow


Image by: zadobag


Image by: kaerazene

And on that note... I'm going to bed.

Thanks for everything!

Steve and the entire MT team.

Edit: Deleted the IGN review.

Hello everyone!

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!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGFdM28zZ7k&t=2s
We also wanted to share with you three great news.


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.

• Bugs fixing

Links:
Modding General Doc
Modding Technical Doc
Script Samples (currently only one, the Courtyard script)





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]

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.


Thank you all!
The MT Team.

Community Highlights:

Cool cover from Catboss of the prisonner awakening track of Dead Cells.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvfZ0Q4Bh-w

Hyper Light Drifter meets Dead Cells by Pengow. Seriously guys, HLD is great. Try it.



Dani has a hate/love relationship with the Hand of the King, which to be honest, we can empathize with. Still an awesome artwork, thanks!