Nov 7, 2019

Dead Cells' 15th free update adds Corrupted Confinement biome, deadly birds, and more

Dead Cells

It's been well over a year since Motion Twin's phenomenal platform-action rogue-like Dead Cells bounded into the
world, but the developer still isn't ready to call it a day. Instead, Dead Cells' 15th free update is here on PC, introducing a new biome, malevolant birds, and more.

Dead Cells' latest update, officially known as the Corrupted Update, is, according to Motion Twin, predominantly about balance. To that end, it makes significant changes to biome difficulty so that one path isn't objectively better than another, and fiddles around with cursed chests and colourless weapons in an attempt to make the latter more relevant.

But while balance might be the focus, there's still room in the Corrupted Update for more stuff. Chief of the new additions is the Corrupted Confinement biome, accessed via the Toxic Sewers and designed to mirror the Prison Depths. It's described as a "very short" area with a guaranteed cursed chest at the start, that will ultimately lead players to either the Ancient Sewers or the Ramparts.

Nov 7, 2019

Dead Cells has a big new update that adds horrible death birds

Dead Cells

Dead Cells developer Motion Twin has just released a substantial new update for its roguelike platformer. The Corrupted Update adds a new challenge biome full of horrible blue birds to fight, and it makes key changes to Dead Cells' balance in order to keep things interesting.

The new area is called The Corrupted Confinement, and it's accessible from the Toxic Sewers. From there, you'll go either to the Ancient Sewers or the Ramparts (via the Boss Cell level one door).

Motion Twin informs us that this area is the home to some angry blue birds, who "ain't kidding around," according to the update. They're large and mean and their main hobby is murdering you, so keep an eye out for them if you head into the Corrupted Confinement.

There are some other big changes in the Corrupted Update as well. If you can defeat the Hand of the King on hard, you'll unlock the Recycling Tubes. These give you the option of selecting one of four five-piece gear loadouts when you begin a run, the idea being to make the early areas of the game less tedious and RNG-dependent.

You'll also be able to unlock a new rune called Explorer Instinct. This marks important points of interest on your map once you've uncovered a majority of a level. There are three new Tactic Mutations too: Crow's Foot lets you drop damaging caltrops behind you when you roll, Tactical Retreat slows enemies when you perform a perfect dodge, and Networking links up enemies you've struck with projectiles so they share damage.

Motion Twin has also done a lot of balancing to keep any particular path through the game from becoming dominant, so expect to find fewer cursed chests and colorless weapons.

It's a significant update, and you can read the full patch notes here.

Nov 6, 2019

15th Corrupted Update is live!

Dead Cells - Messbass

Hello everyone,

We're super stoked to announce that our fifteen update has just reached live. You can find the full patch notes here, but I will give you a rundown of the main additions brought by the Corrupted Update.

Alternatively, if you prefer watching to reading, there is the 5 minutes vlog linked above showing the fancy new things in action and explaining our reasoning behind the changes.

New Content:

New challenge, optional, biome:

The Corrupted Confinement, which mirrors the Prison Depths. You can access it from the Toxic Sewers, and it will lead to either the Ancient Sewers or the Ramparts (BC1 door). This biome is very short compared to the others, and has a guaranteed cursed chest at the beginning. Prison Depths structure has also been updated to be similar. Beware of the blue birds, they ain't kidding around.

New Meta upgrade:

Given as a reward for beating the Hand of the King in BC1, the Recycling Tubes replaces the random starting gear. Instead, you will get the choice in-between 4 sets of 5 items (Melee weapon, Range Weapon, Shield and 2 skills). Choose wisely.

New Rune:

Explorer Instinct reveals the point of interests on the map once you've explored the majority of the level. It will help you if you're like us and can't stand to let a tiny bit of a platform unexplored, and regularly waste time backtracking only to find... nothing.

3 new Tactic Mutations:

Crow's foot allows you to let caltrops behind you when you roll, slowing and damaging the enemies. Tactical Retreat slows all enemies around you on a perfect dodge. They also won't be able to inflict you Malaise during a few seconds. Finally, Networking make all the mobs with projectiles stuck in them share damage.

Balancing:

While adding new content to the game is always great, The Corrupted Update is actually mainly an overall balance of the biomes and paths. With these new changes, we try to prevent a biome or a road to become a clear unquestionable better choice than its counterparts. To this end, all biome difficulty and scrolls count has been balanced.

We've also drastically reduced the amount of cursed chests in the higher difficulty levels, but we've also buffed the colorless weapons by making it scales with your forge tiers (no more thousands of golds wasted to improve it to S-quality) as well as making the bonus stats always be of your main color.

The decision to removed lots of cursed chests was mainly motivated by having to prevent the colorless weapon from making the color system irrelevant if they were too common (remember the 1.1 legendaries?) but also because we think too much cursed chests kinda spoil the uniqueness of what's supposed to be very tense moments. And it does encourages scouting, cheesing and backtracking, which can be cool but also break the momentum of the run and lengthen its duration.

We added fragments of scrolls to be found in biomes to make up for the loss of the stats points that were brought by the cursed chests, and adjusted the health of bosses to make sure you don't spend 10 minutes in a tedious fight against them. The curve should be more coherent now, with an easier beginning thanks to the new meta upgrade but a slightly more difficult mid game (compared to before where every mobs were one-shoted).

We hope that the changes will please you, but in any case, don't hesitate to let us know.

Now, a quick announcement to end up this news! We have partnered with Level 99 Games to add the Beheaded to Exceed, a super cool card game inspired by fighting video games. We really hope our little guy will be completely overpowered compared to the other fighters available, but Level 99 isn't bad at balancing its roster, so the hope is thin.

All the art was done by David Thor Fjalarsson, who also did the key art for the Corrupted Update!

If you're interested, you will be able to buy it here or here, although the page won't be up before one hour or so.

Cheers,
EE and the MT team.

Oct 23, 2019

Corrupted Update is now on the beta branch!

Dead Cells - Messbass

Heya everyone,

The Corrupted update is live on the beta branch! Our fifteenth update comes with a new (optional) biome mirroring the Prison Depths. Both are now considered “challenged” biomes and are hence quite short.

It also comes with a bunch of new content, namely three tactical mutations, a new rune and a new meta upgrade, and a complete rebalance of the biomes and paths (scrolls, cursed chest, mobs, etc.). The goal is to prevent one road or biome to be always better than its counterparts.

Finally, you can’t take two of the same item anymore, unless you allow it in the custom mode, but that will lock the achievements. Achievements are also locked if you play with less than 20 items unlocked. These two changes may seem odd, but we really think it will end up improving the game and the experience on the long term. We’ve put a lengthy post explaining our reasoning on our reddit here.

We hope you’re excited to test the Corrupted update, which hopefully won’t be worthy of its name just because of the broken things and bugs that come with it.
How to access 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.

Cheers,
EE and the MT team.

Community Highlights:

3D Slumbering Sanctuary, by Khang Tran

Dead Cells Fan Art, by Daniëlle Aurora Verburg

Oct 9, 2019

15th Update available in the alpha branch.

Dead Cells - Messbass

Heya everyone,

We just pushed the Corrupted Update in the alpha branch. Many new things in there, so for the ones willing to help us polish the whole through feedback, you're more than welcomed to jump in!

Just be aware that we're now giving the possibility of creating a 100% unlocked save to make testing easier, which means you could be spoiling yourself, both from a gameplay/ progression perspective but also lore-wise.

Here comes the traditional reminder on how to access the alpha 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 "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
Start playing.

Cheers!
Evil Empire and the Motion Twin Team

Community Highlights:

Brainless inktober by u/1sombras1 and Skeleton Fan art, by u/Schner

"My boy" by U/DoctorPicklepuss

Oct 2, 2019

The 10 best games like Dark Souls

Rain World - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Brendan Caldwell)

Sorry, definition nerds. Soulslike is a word now. Disgusting, I know, but this is how genres are made. Along comes a giant like Dark Souls that everybody won t stop bleating about and soon it has copycats. Before you know it, a swarm of like-minded games with sparse checkpoints and lethal attacks are scuttling around, leaving slime trails and biting your ankles for surprisingly massive damage. Ugh, soulslikes. But stoop low to appreciate these little monsters, and among them you ll find some very good games about dying.

Here are ten of the best.

(more…)

Sep 4, 2019

September's Xbox Game Pass games include Gears 5, Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon

Enter the Gungeon

If you're an Xbox Game Pass subscriber positively quivering with anticipation over what happens next, inner peace is about to be restored: Microsoft has revealed the full line-up of games coming to the service on PC and Xbox One in September.

The biggie, of course, is Gears 5, the latest instalment in Microsoft's long-running cover-shooter series. The 'of War' may be no more, but the thick necks and bug mangling are still present and correct - and Xbox One and PC Game Pass subscribers will be able to see how developer The Coalition has fared on Friday, 6th September.

Before that, however, Motion Twin's exquisite action-platform rogue-like Dead Cells joins the Game Pass library tomorrow, 5th September, on Xbox One. It's coming to PC this month too but - and you'll soon spot a theme here - there's no release date on the platform at present. Metal Gear Solid HD Edition: 2 & 3 also arrives on the 5th, but that's Xbox One only.

Aug 13, 2019

Dead Cells' 14th free update adds tiny versions of bosses, devastating frying pan

Dead Cells

Dead Cells, developer Motion Twin's smashy, stompy action-platform rogue-like, is great. What's also great is the continued support it's received since leaving early access last year. And here we are again, with Dead Cells' 14th free update, the snappily titled Who's the Boss, now available on PC, with console versions to follow.

Who's the Boss exists, according to Motion Twin's latest dev video below, to fix a problem: the absolute, game-ending pummelling that players often receive on encountering one of Dead Cells' gargantuan bosses for the first time.

The issue, essentially, is that little in the game familiarises players with bosses' deadliest moves prior to a showdown, meaning that death can come within seconds - a frustrating proposition if you've just slogged an hour to get there, in classic rogue-like fashion.