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Dead Cells is a rogue-lite, metroidvania inspired, action-platformer. You'll explore a sprawling, ever-changing castle... assuming you’re able to fight your way past its keepers in 2D souls-lite combat. No checkpoints. Kill, die, learn, repeat.
NOTE: Console versions (including Switch) will come as soon as we're through certification, usually 2-3 weeks.
Hey all!
Today we’d like to present for your consideration update number fourteen: “Who’s the Boss?” I’d also like to mention that we’re doing an AMA over here tomorrow for anyone who has questions and such. Now, to business:
This update brings a bunch of new content to the game, in the form of monsters to kill and new weapons to unlock! The idea behind the update is relatively simple, bosses are challenging and killing them should be rewarding.
We find it frustrating when we fight our way through an hour long run, make it to The Hand and promptly get rekt in 10 seconds flat. To take the sting out of the injustice of it all we’ve added in some new monsters based on each of the bosses. You’ll find them in the levels immediately preceding the boss they’re based on and they’ll be equipped with one of the most deadly or uncharacteristic attacks of their master.
For example, here we have the Sweeper, whose main function seems to be viscera cleanup detail. You’ll find him in the ramparts tidying up, waiting to send you off to the bin or finally teach you about the flame attack of the Concierge...
One of my favourites is the Automaton, because I always get slammed by the Time Keeper’s dash. The Automaton will appear out of thin air, rapid dash across the screen and leave you wondering when the hell we added that to the game. Hopefully you’ll get good at recognising when she’s coming then rolling to safety or introducing a shield to her face. (and yes I’m aware my screenshots are rubbish).
Weapons:
Moving on to the weapons! Which is after all the fun bit… We like the idea of winning feeling good. You want the first time you make it past the Time Keeper to be special. So we’ve added a weapon based on one of the attacks of each boss, which you’ll of course unlock when you beat the boss in question.
The Pan:
This gets it’s own heading because it’s literally been a year since the requests started coming in, and you’ve been very insistent on the subject of the cooking equipment... “pan when?”, “can we have the pan?”, “when are you going to give us the pan?” and so on. So here it is! Note, the pan slap is pretty much the reverse of the dagger…
Mutations:
This update adds support for the glass cannon melee tactics build. It’s not as safe as a survival build or a ranged tactics loadout, but we’re really trying to provide a bunch of different ways to play the game based on what you like, rather than just having one meta that makes sense at all times regardless of the items that drop.
And theeeeen?
That’s pretty much it, except for the usual quality of life and bug fixes which you can see over here on the patch notes site.
What's next for Motion Twin and Dead Cells?
In other news, a lot of people have been asking what’s next for Motion Twin, so here’s the deal…
The majority of the Motion Twin team are working on the next game, or at least making a whole bunch of prototypes and brainstorming about what the next game is going to be. There’s no firm direction yet, but we’re testing new technology, weird and wonderful game designs and a whole bunch of different art styles.
(this was a proto that didn’t make it…)
Once we come up with something that keeps everyone up at night dreaming and scheming then we’ll get cracking and go through the whole process of building and releasing a game again.
Meanwhile… Some of the Motion Twin team decided it would be best to keep on keeping on with Dead Cells, for financial reasons (obviously) but also because we’re not done with DC… There’s a STACK more ideas we’d like to try and so far the community that has formed around the game is awesome and keeps wanting more, so that’s a very good reason for us to keep working on the game.
So, given that Motion Twin is a workers co-op and that this makes growing beyond 8-10 people quite difficult, those of us who wanted to keep Dead Celling decided to start another company to do just that.
And so Evil Empire was born. In fact it doesn’t really change a terrible lot, three of us have been working on Dead Cells since the beginning and we’re all still in the same office as the rest of the Motion Twin team.
Motion Twin retains complete creative control over the game and everything that we do is subject to their approval, though we’re obviously here to suggest cool new things and bring new levels, monsters and items into the game.
What this all really means is that there will be more Dead Cells, a second Motion Twin game and eventually a completely new IP from Evil Empire, so hopefully it’ll be a win win for everyone.
Will anything change?
Nope, the whole thing stays as it was, well hopefully we’ll get better at trying to sim-ship console and PC, gathering feedback and generally not pushing game breaking bugs into the game, but otherwise, you can still hit us up via Discord, Reddit, here on Steam or the other social networks.
Also we'll put out a road-map ASAP.
Fan art:
As usual we finish this broadcast with some most excellent contributions from the community. Enjoy!
Dead Cells is quietly one of the best 2D combat games on PC, a highly snackable roguelike with gorgeous pixel art and a growing array of weapons, traps, and bombs. Update 14: Who's the Boss? expands the armoury with some of the game's most over-the-top weapon drops yet, like a (very powerful) frying pan and a giant fist.
The update adds seven items and six new mobs inspired by the game's punishing bosses. You summon the god-sized punching arm of a giant with a magic whistle. Amusingly, the giant chooses who he decides to smash. He mostly seems to target the strongest enemy on screen, but while I was playing he would occasionally obliterate a zombie in a different room minding its own business.
This is always funny, but it also shows how Dead Cells' world has developed since it dropped into Early Access in 2017. Dead Cells started as a gruelling, minimalist combat game inspired by Dark Souls and Binding of Isaac. It's still tough, but a few years of updates have added an inventive layer of tools that allow for more experimentation—though not quite as much as the developers would like yet. This update is designed to make "glass cannon" builds viable in the late game where shields can feel like a must-take item. Who's the Boss adds three melee-focused mutations to boost damage output for more aggressive play styles.
Seasoned Dead Cells players will recognise that giant fist as belonging to The Giant, added as a new boss a few months ago. The new items all represent The Prisoner stealing powers from vanquished bosses. New enemies will also spawn in biomes leading up to boss arenas, to give new players experience with that boss' nastiest attacks. It doesn't make the bosses any easier, but it does make the game feel fairer. Being instantly killed by an unblockable attack you've never seen before doesn't feel good.
The new weapons are the star of the update for me, though. There's a dash power that leaves a trail of flame. If you tap the dash command the moment The Prisoner stops, he'll dash back again. Motion Twin tells me that an early version of Dead Cells had a dash dodge, later replaced by the roll because it felt much better. By making the dash equippable, long-range and adding fire, it feels great to use. I also enjoyed the big red axe that you can charge up to deliver a high-risk, high-damage blow. Then there's the pan, which sells itself in the latest vlog at the top of this post.
While I was visiting Motion Twin last week and got to see some work-in-progress glimpses of Dead Cells updates planned months out, and there's substantial stuff to look forward to that I won't ruin. There is a studio dedicated to working on new Dead Cells features, and a smaller team of veteran developers speed-prototyping new ideas, one of which might become the team's next project. More on that process soon.
The 14th "Who's the Boss?" update is now available in the beta branch. It brings new enemies, new weapons, balancing, lots of QoL and bug fixing. Also three Melee Tactical mutations allowing a new kind of Assassin/ Glass Cannon playstyle on which we would love your feedback. Is it fun for you? Is it viable at the Boss Cell level you're currently playing? Do you have any suggestions to improve on it?
Well, if you have any feedback for us, we want to hear it. A thread on Reddit has been opened to centralize feedback and discuss the new content and balancing, but we're also often present on the #current-update-discussion channel on Dead Cells' Discord.
A quick news to inform you that we pushed in Alpha the 14th update thematically tied to around the bosses of Dead Cells. It adds 6 new mobs and seven weapons stolen on their still warm bodies. Hence, the name of the update!
A more detailed news will be coming before we go in Beta, but in the meantime, we prefer letting the surprise to the brave alpha testers out there. Let's wish them luck!
Of course, it also comes with the usual batch of QoL, bugs fixing and balancing tweaks.
If you have any feedback for us, please don't feel shy and contact us or discuss with other players through the dedicated community channels listed below.
How are you doing? Are you hyped by the recent E3? There were quite a few interesting announcements, but here we all have been particularly impressed by the trailer of GhostWire: Tokyo from Tango Gameworks (and Shinji Mikami).
Aside from that, we've also been busy working on the thirteenth update of Dead Cells. The full patch notes, as usually, can be found here but I will run you through the reasoning behind the main changes here.
New content
The Rampager: This is the new enemy inhabiting a variety of biomes in Boss Stem Cell 3 and higher, since the previous 3BC mob, the Arbiter was put back in its original lair only, the Cavern. More on that later.
The Rampager is reaaaaaaaally fast and will pursue you until the end of time if it sees you. You better be ready to smash that parry or dodge button when one is on your back.
Frenzy and Adrenaline mutations (Brutality): Melee and Brutality currently have a hard time recovering from their wounds, so we added two new mutations to make risky and fast-paced play style more viable. Both scales with your damage output and your Brutality stat.
Balancing
There are approximately 30 "autosell" items and weapons buffed for less than 10 "instapick" ones nerfed. Since we know seeing its favorite killing tool being nerf is never a great feeling, we wanted to offer at least some level of explanation here.
The items that have been nerfed were clearly predominant in the meta and much more effective than their counterparts and alternatives... It made every other weapon feel underwhelming and weak in comparison.
Having too powerful weapons and items go against the core experience of Dead Cells which is at least partially based on weapon variety, making every run feel same-y and uninteresting. Which is why we thrive to offer an item pool as much balanced as we can and will continue to work on improving that aspect of Dead Cells based upon community feedback.
Nerfs
Powerful Grenade: Super wide area, high damage, not so long cooldown, ability to interrupt and bump, dual scaling, that grenade had it all. The size of the area and its damage have been reduced; it's still effective, just not at the "waaaaaay-better-than-everything-else" level it was before.
Heavy Turret: Range, stun, high damage by itself and increased player's damage... err, same as above, this turret brought so much to the table that it overshadowed all the other turrets and traps.
Rampart: Such a very defensive-oriented shield shouldn't be so effective at dealing damage, thus why we decided to decrease its damage. The invulnerability time frame has also been reduced by one sixth.
Giant Killer: This sword was both great to clear a level and the best to get rid of elites and bosses, with no real downside to compensate. Now it's still the absolute best to melt elites and bosses but it's weaker for the less worthy foes.
Explosive Crossbow: Survival scaling long-range weapons are complicated to balance, and it's almost by design. It allows to get the best of all worlds; high damage, long-range, tons of health, a great shield and the best mutations in the game as of right now, resulting in a very safe and effective build. To all that, the explosive crossbow added AoE damage and an easy crit condition... We decreased its speed, but increased its damage by a bit to bring it back closer to a more "survival weapon" feeling.
Wave of Denial: Super short cooldown, repel enemy and projectiles, high damage when projecting on a wall or making use of fall damages... The point of the skill is to use it when well positioned in the middle of the enemy pack or as a panic button to save yourself from incoming threats, but the low cooldown meant you could waste it all the time and hence not really be rewarded for the "well-positioned" aspect. Thus, cooldown has been increased.
Infantry Grenade: While, to be honest, it wasn't as broken as the powerful grenade, the Infantry Grenade's super low cooldown and good damage made for an over effective skill. Its damage output has been reduced by around one fifth.
Necromancy: This mutation was dominating the meta, providing unparalleled survivability. We reduced the amount of health it gives back by enemy killed and lowered the maximum cap.
Buffs:
Most of the buffs are fairly straightforward, increasing either the speed or damage of the item. Hopefully, nobody should feel robbed by a buff, hence we see a lesser need to detail the reasoning. All the changes are listed in the patch notes. Oh, and now you can set fire to water with some oil.
The list of items buffed includes: War Javelin, Swift Sword, Blood Sword, Cleaver, Cursed Sword, Fast Bow, Flamme Turret, Hook, Knockback shield, Magnetic Grenade, Nutcracker, Oiled Sword, Pyrotechnics, Repeater Crossbow, Sadist's Stiletto, Seismic Blade, Shrapnel Axes, Sinew Slicer, Stun Grenade, Sonic Crossbow, Swarm Grenade, Twin Daggers, Valmont's Whip, Quick Bow, Spartan Sandal, Thunder Shield.
We hope you saw the name of your favorite weapon in there! Of course, nothing is set in stone and we looking to see you try these weapons and give us some feedback on the changes.
Level Design
As mentioned previously, the Arbiter has been replaced by the Rampager as a transversal 3BC+ mob. A bullet-hell(ish) Dead Cells is not what we want, and it had also the unforeseen impact of slowing down the pace of the game by a lot, as well as making a shield even more mandatory than it is right now.
Consequently, Inquisitors are making a comeback into higher difficulties (3BC +) to fill the lack of long-distance shooters let by the Arbiter's retreat into the Cavern.
However, this made the Prison Quarters the hardest level in the whole game (once again) in high difficulties. Being an unavoidable level as well as the only one where you're almost unequipped, an unfairly hard Prison Quarters is a major issue. The enemy density has hence been reduced, and we added back the base Zombie at higher difficulties.
Currently, it's the only level where a low-tier enemy is mixed its higher-tier counterpart, which could make for a more enjoyable and varied experience, but may also lead to hectic fights. It's by no mean a definitive decision, but if it works well, we could also decide to expand this philosophy to the rest of the game. Let us know what you think and if you like it or not!
A few more change in the bestiary of some biomes have been done to make it more consistent. All of this come with the usual batch of QoL changes and bg fixing. Details listed in the patch notes.
Well, I think that will do! Thanks for the ones braves enough to read the entirety of this news. As always, we hope you will love the many changes we brought to Dead Cells and don't hesitate to discuss, debate and suggest here on the Steam forums, on Reddit (an official thread will be opened) or on Discord.
A short news to inform you of the latest patch pushed today in the beta branch. The 13.4 and 13.5 are coming with a bunch of balancing tweaks (quite a lot actually) and we would love to get your feedback on it..
Another thing: we're encountering some technical issues with the Linux build, so if you're playing on this platform, 1. Don't panic. 2. Send us a report so we can dig the problem and try to fix it.
To the windows users, please warn us if your antivirus thinks Dead Cells' binaries are virus; our security certificate has come to an end, we supposedly don't need another one, but you never know.
Quick memo on how to join the beta branch:
Go to your Steam game library
Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties"
Select the tab "Betas"
In the first dropdown box select "beta - "
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading
Start playing.
WARNING: If you play with your save files in the beta version, you will not be able to use them in the stable version, until we push the beta branch out to the public.
If you are worried about losing you save then head over here: "steam\userdata\<ID>\588650\remote" and copy the files somewhere safe.
You can have one save slot dedicated to the beta branch and one to the old branch simultaneously, but you must revert to the stable branch to be able to use it.
We hope you will enjoy the new additions and changes the 13.4 brings to the table. In any case, don't hesitate to let us know here, on Reddit, on Discord or on Twitter!
Thanks to Rehbock who is drawing the adventures of Youkool and Gatlink coding Dead Cells. Always a pleasure to a new episode pop up! You can find more on these on the Dead Cells' Discord.
Hope you're doing well! On our side, we just made the new update available on the Beta branch. The full patch notes are available here as usual, but here is a quick rundown:
Brutality get 2 new mutations
Brutality and melee builds clearly needed new ways to sustain through the game to make risky playstyles more rewarding and viable, so we added two red mutations, Frenzy and Adrenalin to help with that.
The Arbiter is dead... (BC3+)
As a transversal mob inhabiting a majority of biome in Boss Cells 3+, the Arbiter had the unwanted effect of transforming Dead Cells in a bullet hell(ish) kind of game, heavily punishing non-shield builds and terribly slowing the pace of a run.
Hence the decision to put him uniquely in the Cavern level where fighting him in the often wide and open combat rooms can feel less of an hassle. We also make it so the Arbiter will only attack horizontally.
I know some of you were just getting used to it and even beginning to like the guy, but hey, let's be honest here and admit that it had probably more to do with Stockholm's syndrome than anything else.
...Long Live the Rampager (BC3+)
With the Arbiter's... err... re-localization, we had to find an alternative mob to provide a new challenge to players. We tried replacing the Arbiter with various already existing mobs, but, in the end, nothing felt really convincing. So we went back to the drawing board and basically made an enraged, steroids-powered zombie.
All it wants is a good ol' hug. Probably.
Thunder Shield Rework
It's previous mechanic was definitely underwhelming, so we tweaked it. Now, parry once and you become a walking Tesla coil. Use your shield again to create a electric wave around you, dealing damage and stunning the enemies.
Elites Rework
With the addition of the random abilities, the minions weren't necessary anymore, and were adding a lot of visual noise, so we decided to get rid of it. The pushback effect also got deleted, as it lead to some cheap damage being dealt. We've also begun to prevent some mob/ skill combinations that were feeling really random and unfair.
All of these also come with the usual batch of bug fixes and balance tweaks, and a few Quality of Life improvements. So, please jump in the beta branch and tell us how you feel about the latest additions. Full list available here.
Moving on to a few additional notes. For the console players around getting their Dead Cells news here, the DLC will be available on Switch and Playstation today. Apologies for the Xbox owners... a nasty bug is still playing cats and dogs with us. We will bring you the DLC as soon as we can. The 1.3 will be sent to certification when we're satisfied with the community feedback here.
Last but not least, we've now passed the 2 Millions copies of Dead cells sold threshold! Thanks to all of you for the continuous support and for talking your friends into giving Dead Cells a chance!
We've just pushed a little bug fix update live on the alpha branch for those who are willing to test out the horrors we've prepared for you.
What's new?
I'm not telling you here, cos this is the Alpha update. So y'all can wait for a big detailed news when it hits the main branch. However, if my most excellent MS paint comic sans title image wasn't enough for you...
WE NERFED THE ARBITER! In fact we banished the beast from BC3 entirely, except for his natural cavern-esque habitat.
Yeah well, I didn't sleep well last night, so this is what happens. Half assed steam newsing, snoozing, snooooooozing.
Nah, actually this is us getting back on the horse! From now on we'll be MUCH more on the case with updates. We've heard you about the problems with the RotG DLC, some of the things will be fixed in the update 13 Alpha/Beta cycle, some will not (getting the collector into the base game... Not likely to happen... For now...)
Switch bloody Switch....
It's coming. In fact it's almost here. We're through lotcheck, just waiting for a few things to finalise on the DLC setup front before we get it up for everyone, but if there are no more problems, potentially next week or the week after.... Or excuses excuses.
Same goes for PS4 and XB1.
Anywho, stay tuned for more news and acerbic commentary, at least until Jo gets back and reclaims his rightful role as "chief news writing poobah"*.
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. It's pretty self explanatory, but feel free to ask questions. :)
The developer of Dead Cells is "looking into" releasing its games on Google's Stadia streaming service, which was announced earlier this month.
In an interview with DualShockers, Motion Twin's head of studio Steve Filby said he was "excited" by the platform, which doesn't yet have a release date, adding that the studio was open to working with Google and that it's "definitely something we’re looking into".
He also revealed that the Dead Cells dev team were "not planning on stopping anytime soon" with extra content, following the huge, free Rise of the Giant update this week. The studio will release another update in the summer, and plans to add new levels to Dead Cells later in the year, he said.
Motion Twin has not decided whether these updates will be free or paid, he added.
