Mar 24, 2021

Update 23 moves to beta - Small reworks to Tombstone weapon & Execute mutation

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

Hey everyone,

The Update 23 alpha has given us loads of opportunity to tweak the new mutations & weapons and to fix the new bugs that inevitably pop up (whack those moles!), so we're moving the update into beta as of now :)

There hasn't been a huge amount of changes to the new content, except a bit of a rework of Tombstone and the Execute mutation.

So, the way Tombstone works now is:

When you kill an enemy with the third hit of the Tombstone combo, you 'doom' nearby enemies
A tombstone spawns above these 'doomed' enemies, dealing damage to them after a moment
If an enemy dies from this doom effect it adds another tombstone above the already doomed mobs (each new tombstone deals reduced damage)
This tombstone of doom combo chain has a cap of 3 and will fail if a wave of tombstones doesn't kill an enemy

The Execute mutation rework is removing the tier scaling and halving the effect on bosses. I did warn you that might happen...
So, before it was "Instantly kill enemies with under 5% health (scales up to 15%) when you hit them with a weapon" and now it's "Instantly kill enemies with under 15% health when you hit them with a weapon. Effect halved for bosses". Much more simple!

We've done lots of balancing on the other weapons like changing charge times, damage, speed etc, but nothing that drastic. If you want to see the full details of the update as of today, then check out the patchnotes.

If you want to try out the beta and don't know how then 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 "Beta".
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
Start playing.

I wanted to add some community highlights but the Steam server doesn't want to play nice with me so I'll add them onto the update release post, which will hopefully be next week!

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

Mar 5, 2021

Update 23 in alpha - 3 new weapons, 3 new mutations & tweaked difficulty curve

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

Hey everyone,

It’s been a while since our last post, which was for the Fatal Falls DLC release in fact. Dear god that's nearly 6 weeks ago... Why is time so fast?!

Anyway, since then we've been in the game dev kitchen cooking up some spicy sauce to put in our regular updates this year.

Our next one, 'The Whack-a-mole Update' is heading into alpha today (access instructions at the bottom of this post for the impatient).

TLDR of the changes:

3 big, heavy, f-off weapons
3 damage-focused mutations
Altered the difficulty curve (work in progress)
The Collector’s Intern - spend your cells in 5BC!
A fix to stop all seed error crashes. We hope...
Malaise balancing and UI
Fatal Falls balancing
UI & QoL improvements
A ton of bug fixes (yes, including the Me, Jealous? Achievement not triggering)
Random diet option

The highlights are explained a bit below, for the full picture you can read the entire patchnotes here.

New weapons

These are all Survival, one-slot and focus on smashing enemies with something heavy until they stop moving.

The Big Axe - Sweep your way through mobs as you would with any massive axe. Apparently the last hit can be chained to become an unstoppable lawnmower-thing...

The Big Club - Roleplay as your favourite troll/ogre/giant ugly creature. Smash with the normal attack, or hold the attack button to charge up a downward hit on the head of your foe.

Tombstone - Kill enemies with a heavy dose of irony. Leaves a tombstone to mark your enemy's grave - why not plant your own death garden ^^

New mutations

Execution (colourless) - Instantly kill enemies with under 5% health (scales up to 15%) when you hit them with a weapon. Applies to bosses, for now...

Barbed Tips (Tactics) - Inflict X damage per second to enemies, per arrows stuck in them.

Point Blank (Tactics) - Close range attacks inflict X% bonus damage.

New difficulty curve

We're experimenting with a slightly new way of increasing the difficulty from one BC to the next:

BC0: Health fountains in every transition.
BC1: Health fountain every other transition, with one minor flask when the fountain is missing.
BC2: No more health fountain, one minor flask in every transition.
BC3: One minor flask after the first boss and before the second.
BC4: No more health in any transition, enemies teleport to your position.
BC5: No more health, enemies teleport, malaise added.

We're particularly interested to have your opinion on that new formula, so don't hesitate to give us feedback!

The Collector's Intern

An enterprising Guillain has decided to put on a cloak and trade cells for blueprints in 5BC, so no more shifting down to 4BC to spend your hard-earned cells.

Seed error fix

We've worked some developer magic to maybe™ stop all seed error crashes... FOREVEEERRR!

Essentially, if a seed error occurs when the game is loading the next level, then instead of crashing it will now start loading the level again but with a new seed. So we'll be trading crashes for occasionally longer biome load times, which we think is a pretty decent exchange.

Balancing

Legendary items now scale based on the sum of your two highest stats. Also, Legendary status no longer increases the item level. This is very subject to change and there is no visual indication of the changes yet, so bear this in mind please.

Malaise no longer increases the movement speed of enemies, plus mobs can no longer spawn or turn into Elites in the first few seconds after an Elite aggros you.

Bonus scrolls added in Fractured Shrines from BC3+ and Undying Shores from BC4+.

Quality of Life

Option to toggle "Hold to chain attacks" added in the Gameplay tab of Options.

Item description and affix list scroll together in the Pause menu.

When malaise increases, the changes are now shown by icons in-game.

Cursed gems require a long press to be picked up.

Access Instructions

If you want to play through the changes, you can access the alpha like so:

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.

Bear in mind that everything is still being tweaked according to feedback, so some things may break, have strange interactions or just straight up crash the game.

If you want to leave feedback (or bug reports) for the alpha - we now have a fancy form you can fill in.
This will let us collect all the feedback in one place rather than spreading it over Steam, Discord, Reddit etc etc. If you really don't want to fill in the form then please continue to post in the usual places, we're not going to stop checking them out, but just be aware that we may miss things that are posted there.

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

Jan 26, 2021

Fatal Falls DLC out now!

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

Hi everyone,

We are excited to announce that the Fatal Falls DLC is now officially available, giving you two extra mid-game biomes with new enemies, weapons, traps, lore rooms and a green-fingered boss!

Our traditional animated trailer by Bobby Prod has just landed too, introducing the new Brutality pet who's maybe a little too clingy for the Beheaded...

That should have given you some idea of what's in the DLC (basically more cartoon violence, as everyone was expecting), but if you want more visuals of what to expect in the DLC then check out our VLOG below. If you'd prefer to read the highlights and then discover the content for yourself just skip right on past :)

VLOG link

New levels

Fractured Shrines

Home to a vicious pagan cult, these floating islands are connected with fragile ledges that are littered with traps and deadly drops.

Expect giant snakes lobbing spears at you, even bigger statues wielding mighty axes and frenetic platform fights.

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it

Undying Shores

Descend a cliff caught in the middle of a storm while fighting off undead healers and strange experiments.

The caves might offer you some refuge, but I wouldn’t count on it...

Insert Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme here

The Mausoleum

This ruin is now the home of a gardener who adores flowers and mushrooms. Unfortunately you are neither of those things…

Weapons

Seven new weapons can be found in these regions, including our new Brutality pet ‘Serenade’. This sarcastic sword will fly around hacking at enemies until you call it to your hand to deal crits to the monsters it's already weakened.

Others include:

The Ferryman's Lantern, a combo melee/ranged weapon that harvests souls from melee kills which you can then fire as projectiles. Spooky.

Channel you inner Zeus with Lightning Rods which call lightning bolts to smite anything lurking in between the rods you've placed in the ground.

Snake Fangs that teleport you to the nearest enemy to inflict melee & poison damage, opening up some speedy slashing gameplay. Speedrunners rejoice!

The Iron Staff parries melee attacks and the combo after a successful parry inflicts criticals. Basically you get to combo critical hit a stunned enemy which ain't so bad...

How much is it?

Pricing is $4.99/4,99€ (or equivalent). Like The Bad Seed, this will help support further development of the game while Motion Twin work on their next project. By the way, one of our free updates will be coming shortly with some heavy-hitting weapons, mutations and tweaks to Malaise.

If you haven’t tried the game yet and are reading this for some reason, then the main game is on sale right now with a 50% discount. A bundle of the main game and both paid DLCs is also on offer with a 15% discount if you want to go all in.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1451460/Dead_Cells_Fatal_Falls/

Please give us any feedback you have about the DLC in the comments or on any of our social channels!

That’s it, we hope you enjoy the DLC and we’ll be back very soon!

Cheers,
Matt, Evil Empire and Motion Twin

Community Highlights:

R_Neophyte

https://www.instagram.com/p/CKCx3cDHsSt/

@kawaiiasabutton

@komik_trips

Jan 12, 2021

Fatal Falls DLC coming 26th January!

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

Hey everyone,

I hope you’ve all managed to take some time off and chill out a bit (and recover from the Christmas binge), everyone here is recharged and ready to kick on with making more Dead Cells.

That’s my extremely subtle move into our announcement that the Fatal Falls DLC will be available on 26th January at 9am PT!

For a taste of what’s to come, check out our gameplay trailer:

What's in it?

We have made 2 new mid-game biomes which are alternative paths to Stilt Village/Clock Tower and Slumbering Sanctuary/Forgotten Sepulcher.

One is the Fractured Shrines, which is a load of floating islands connected by ledges that are covered with traps and ready to drop you into the abyss below. When you're not falling you'll be dealing with pagan snake people and giant statues with even bigger axes.

After that you'll enter The Undying Shores where you need to descend a cliff in the middle of a storm. Some caves offer a way out of the rain but they're full of weird experiments and undead healers, so good luck getting out!

Obviously, no DLC is complete without a boss to mess up at the end. So we've added The Mausoleum - the home of a gardener who adores flowers and mushrooms. Unfortunately you are neither of those things...

And if you want a handy alert when the DLC is available, you can wishlist it and Steam will send you an email as soon as it's live:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1451460/Dead_Cells_Fatal_Falls/

Bundles

If you already own Dead Cells, there will be a 'complete the set' bundle introduced on the 26th, which will save you 15% on The Bad Seed & Fatal Falls so make sure to look out for that!

Happy New Year and we'll be back very soon :)

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

Community Highlights

@AlchemistDoodle - before you ask, no this is not official canon :D

@ClovergrassWang

@megatronmeg

Dec 21, 2020

Update 21 available now!

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

By David Thor Fjalarsson

Hey everyone,

Update 21 has just been released, introducing lots of new shiny things to play with over the holidays along with some broader gameplay changes. There’s a TLDR and an overview below, and if you want to get the full detail head here for the patchnotes. Boom, everyone's attention span covered.

TLDR:

Colour scaling rework
Malaise rework
New mutations
New mob, weapon, outfits & diet
Backpack rework
Hand of the King lore room
Usual QoL fixes

The reworks will need some explaining for people who haven't been keeping up to date through the alpha, so I'm going to run through all the 'minor' bits first!

New Weapon

The most requested weapon from the community is now in the game! The Katana allows you to chain a standard slash with a dashing charge attack by holding the button, for the full experience wear the Ninja outfit at the same time.

We fully expect you to play with this for a day then start calling for Panchucks...

New Mob

This is the first mob in the game inspired by a Discord community suggestion (many thanks to Leylite#4491)!

Using the Explosive Crossbow, the Demolisher will blast you from a safe distance (oh how the tables have turned). It can be found ignoring all health & safety rules and blowing shit up in the Distillery at BC0 and in several places later on, mostly as an alternative upgrade to the Knife Thrower.

New Outfits

You might have guessed from the key art, but there are some jolly new outfits introduced in this update, including 2 Christmas-themed ones. Enjoy!

Ho ho ho, now I have a funny costume...

Hand of the King lore room

The mystery man becomes slightly less mysterious with a new lore room hidden somewhere in the castle...

Katana *tick*, Hand of the King lore room *tick*, what's next...

Cheese diet

No self-respecting French studio can pass up the opportunity to let you eat cheese, so we’re giving you the option to heal yourself with a nice smelly slice of Camembert!

So that’s all the shiny pretty stuff, now on to the major changes.

Weapon colour rework

Colours had losta lot of consistency of playstyle between the 3 colours. So, we decided to change the colour scaling of a good chunk of items & mutations to refocus each statistic on its primary identity.

Tactics keeps all things related to ranged gameplay: turrets, range weapons, with some utility and damaging spells to support it. Dual scales with anything that wouldn’t fit in that category but is poison or electricity gameplay (e.g. Sadist’s Stiletto is a melee weapon so it shouldn’t scale with Tactics, but as it’s crits work on poison gameplay it is still a red/purple dual scaling weapon).
Brutality keeps its focus on fast melee weapons and everything related to jumping into the melee. Grenades stay mostly red. Dual scale with anything that wouldn’t fit in that category but is fire or blood gameplay.
Survival keeps its focus on crowd control, survivability, shields and slow, heavy melee weapons. Also supported by heavy damage skills with the long cooldown that goes with it. Dual scale with anything that wouldn’t fit in that category but is root or ice gameplay.

In addition, the health points scaling of Brutality and Survival has been decreased in the late game while for Tactics it's been very slightly increased. However, it's mostly felt at high scrolls counts, so you won’t feel it until late game at 3BC+.

Backpack

The Backpack was introduced in the 19th update to support transitioning from 2-slots weapons to two different 1-slot weapons. It's now a meta upgrade unlocked at the Collector, like Recycling or the random starting weapon tubes, and can be used with any type of weapon.

You can store any weapons in your backpack, except 2-handed weapons and the Giantkiller (for obvious reasons), by pressing the backpack key (Y on Xbox controller, △ on a PlayStation one) when picking a weapon. Empty your backpack by holding the "use" key.

Because we're all-round lovely people, video settings have also been added to accommodate everyone's backpack preferences. You can choose to put the backpack slot to the right of your skill slots or in-between your weapons and your skills, plus a slider for opacity.

Mutations

Five new mutations have been added, three were initially designed to support two-handed weapons through the backpack slot, but after some testing we've decided to let them be used with any type of build:

Acrobatic Preparation: Attacking with a ranged weapon also attack with the ranged weapon in your backpack. Roll to reload. (Tactics).
Porcupine Backpack: Rolling through enemies attacks them with the melee weapons stored in your backpack. (Brutality)
Tortoise Wheel: Rolling parry attacks and projectiles with the shield stored in your backpack. (Survival)

Porcupine Backpack in action

The fourth mutation, Fatal Cadence (Survival), increases your attack speed when alternating in-between primary and secondary weapon slot.

The final mutation, Ranger's Gear (Tactics) is like Scheme, but for ranged weapons, so your next ranged attack after using a skill will deal extra damage.

Malaise

Thanks to all your feedback through alpha and beta, we think we've arrived at an improved Malaise mechanic:

The bar now fills with game time, but pauses in lore rooms, chest rooms, shops. The malaise contamination rate is tied to the number of enemies still alive in the level, the fewer enemies, the less quickly your malaise bar will fill. When only 10% of the enemies are left alive, the biome is considered "Malaise cleared".
The higher the malaise, the more dangerous the enemies (increased movement speed, quicker teleport, shorter reaction time and at the latter stages, increased damage).
Enemies will also randomly spawn around you and from time to time, an enemy will transform into an Elite. The spawn rate and Elite rate will also increase with Malaise.
Being hit doesn't increase your malaise anymore. Killing enemies, Elite, and Bosses decreases your malaise gauge.
Food looted in walls is always contaminated and will increase your Malaise bar, the "healthy" food looted on enemies doesn't decrease your Malaise bar. Healing with your flask does heal some Malaise too.
The "Malaise Cleared" event completely stops the bar from filling until the end of the biome, and even decreases your malaise gauge with the amount you would get by killing all the enemies left in the level. However, these enemies won't give you any more malaise reduction. Mobs and Elites will stop spawning for the rest of the level.

We're aiming to give a cycling nature to the mechanic, with a Malaise that should stay in-between 3 and 7 during most of the run (except boss fights). Currently, all mutations and items interacting with the Malaise have seen that aspect of their design disabled and future updates will let us tweak it slightly if needed.

Best of the rest

All biomes in BC3+ have less mobs overall.
An option to disable the gameplay slow-motion (most notably when elites die) has been added.
2-slots weapons can now have different affixes on each part.

Christmas & January

Christmas is four days away, so obviously most of the team is imminently leaving for holidays (and panic buying gifts) until early January. We will be checking in just in case anything happens, but our hands are going to be full of food and drink for the next week, so don't expect much news until early January!

Speaking of January, our next DLC, Fatal Falls, is just over a month away from release, if you want to chuck it in your wishlist we would be very grateful :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1451460/Dead_Cells_Fatal_Falls/

The usual community highlights are below, but first we have a load of Motion Twin's concept art for rejected projects to show you, make sure to check them out below.

That just about covers everything, we hope you have a great Christmas and we'll be back soon!

Thanks,
Matt, EE & MT

Motion Twin concept art

Community Highlights:

@Starbind_S

u/hauntedcactus

u/Teifling_Darkhalis

Dec 16, 2020

Update 21 moves into beta

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

Hello everyone,

The Christmas Update, also known as the Malaise update, is now available in beta! It mainly includes the rework of the Malaise mechanic, which is a 4 and 5BC exclusive, a lot of weapon color changes, an improved backpack and 4 new mutations, as well as the usual ton of QoL and bug fixes. Full patchnotes are here.

Artwork by the fantastic David Thor Fjalarsson

Since both the reworks to weapon colors and the Malaise have proven more controversial than expected among the community, we thought it would only be fair to explain the reasoning behind the changes and our plans for the future.

Warning: This isn't the shortest explanation ever - we want to communicate properly with you and a TLDR doesn't really work for that...

Malaise

Previously, this mechanic ensured 4BC+ players wouldn’t abuse HP stacking and rallying strategies so much, by introducing a maximum number of times someone could be hit without dying that wasn’t dependent on those parameters.

Reworking Malaise became one of the most recurrent requests over time, with players accusing this mechanic of ruining the fun by punishing jumping into the melee and encouraging waiting for its cooldowns. Dodging enemies without fighting became a very viable strategy, even the most effective way of beating the game according to many.

Taking it slowly or dodging enemies was never something we wanted to incentivise, let alone reward. That’s why the new Malaise essentially treats time as a balancing factor (our previous post explains the new mechanic) - if you take your time, you’ve got less chance of being hit by enemies and the game is essentially easier for you, so we're increasing the difficulty the longer you spend in a level - this balances with the players who are spending less time in a level by going full hog on groups of enemies and putting themselves at greater risk of being hit. So you can still complete your runs with a slower playstyle, but you now get rewarded by actually playing the game and killing enemies, instead of ignoring them.

However, we know timers often bring stress and anxiety, which then leads to 'stupid' mistakes and people getting pissed off and bored. That’s why we’re trying to soften this feeling as much as we can, by stopping the timer in plenty of situations (merchants, treasure rooms, once you’ve killed most of the level’s enemies, etc.). Basically, if you prefer to take your time, you'll still have plenty of opportunities for a breather.

We’re also aware the increased RNG tied to the Malaise spawning mobs and turning others into Elite can create unfair situations, and we’re really working on identifying when and where to fix it with your input, like we did with the 21.1 patch.

We really hope you'll give this new Malaise a chance and try to experiment with it before judging that it's not for you. In any case, we’ve added an option to disable the Malaise so you can experiment in the two last Boss Cells without it. Unfortunately, letting both types of Malaise co-exist would have been really complex, so, the 'old' Malaise won’t be playable now or with future updates*.

*For Steam players, you can always choose to keep Dead Cells with the old Malaise mechanic by choosing Update 20 in the beta tab of the game settings.

This new Malaise is certainly not perfect, but we feel like it’s definitely more interesting than the previous 10 hits bar. And the work on this mechanic won’t stop with this update release, but continue in future updates. So that's where we're at with Malaise, now on to the weapon color rework.

Colors

Broadly, we think each color should mainly be defined by a playstyle. That’s the compass which we use to decide which color each item should scale with. But we also want each statistic to be associated with one or more themes (chosen somewhat arbitrarily), helping with both a sense of identity and variety by allowing in some items that don’t necessarily fit with the playstyle.

Finally, we also want each color to be lacking something by design (and not because we haven’t implemented the needed content yet), to have a distinct feeling of comparative goodness in-between different runs with different colors, and to keep the colorless and legendary items interesting.

However, and despite our best efforts, inconsistencies will most likely always be present, with items that are scaling with a color they shouldn’t fit in with, or the contrary. These inconsistencies may have many reasons, for example, for the sake of balance, variety, or because it can be perceived differently by several players. Also, because of oversights on our end!

Now that we’ve dug a bit in to how we see the point and role of colors, it’s time to do a quick overview of the colors in the newest update.

Brutality

Red lost 2 mutations aimed at increasing its survivability (Berserker and Soldier’s resistance), but is absorbing the “assassin” playstyle of Melee Tactics, with Predator, Scheme and Initiative going red. Thematically, everything related to Fire and Bleed will also scale with Brutality, however poison isn’t part of this color theme anymore (hence why Alchemic Carbine was made Purple only, while Pyrotechnics got its dual-scale).

Red is considered in a good spot right now, although it’s a bit lacking in secondary weapons with only three shields and a handful of range weapons to go with. This is where we will focus our efforts to improve it in the next updates.

To sum it up:
Pro: Quick melee weapons, quick offensive spells.
Theme: Bleed and Fire.
Con: No access to defensive abilities, few ranged.
Coming next: Secondary options.

Survival

Green is in a better spot than before, because of the Malaise rework, allowing it to enjoy its bigger HP pool without that secondary constraint. However, the reduced hp scaling late game and some changes like the Dead Inside mutations reducing the effectiveness of healing sources balance it out a bit. The new green mutation, Tortoise Shell, now allows survival players to benefit from the parry mutations* and effects while handling the Scythe Claws or the Crossbows, which definitely makes that strategy more viable and coherent.

The color has now access to a good arsenal of offensive and defensive skills, but is comparatively to the other a bit poor when it comes to main weapons. A “Survival” pack of classic heavy weapons in the vein of the Broadsword or the Bouzouki would be welcome to add a pinch of variety there for Survival players, hence our priority for Survival in the next updates.

To sum it up:
Pro: Best shields, bigger health pool, defensive skills.
Theme: Freeze, Root.
Con: No access to quick melee weapons, 1h range weapons or quick offensive skills.
Coming next: pack of 1h melee weapons.

*Yes, it doesn’t work as of right now - we’re aware and are working on the issue. Sorry!

Tactics

Purple got it pretty hard, with the loss of 3 mutations and most of its melee scaling weapons in favor of brutality. Lots of skills were also initially taken out, because we didn’t think it was really coherent with the color identity.

However, we reverted this decision following negative feedback from tactics players arguing that these skills were quite good at completing range strategies. On our end, when playtesting more, we were also a bit frustrated, because Purple had become mainly dependent on turrets, which led to many runs feeling a bit too samey.

Now, our priority for Tactics is to implement new mutations, which the color is currently lacking severely. We also want to keep some melee weapons in tactics, but the idea would be to make them able to benefit from the range purple mutations, one way or another.

To sum it up:
Pro: Ranged weapons, Turrets.
Theme: Electricity, Poison, Knockback.
Con: Few melee weapons, low HP pool.
Coming next: Mutations, melee weapons working with tactics mutations.

Beta

We're listening to all your feedback, in the Discussions here in the Steam Community, on Discord and on Reddit, and we hope that the adjustments to the weapon colour rework and Malaise that we've made going into the beta have fixed most if not all of your concerns.

If you want to try out the beta and don't know how then 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 "Beta".
Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
Start playing.

That's it for now, we'll be back soon with more news!

Thanks,
Joan, EE & MT

Community Highlights:

@blaskoart

u/1sombras1

u/Teifling_Darkhalis

Dec 3, 2020

Update 21 alpha open now

Dead Cells - mezzamazza55

TL;DR:

Alpha for update 21 is available.
Malaise has been reworked.
Colours have been changed, with a re-focus on their primary identity.
Backpack will now be a meta upgrade and not dependent on two-handed weapons
4 new mutations, 3 are tied to the new backpack.
The much requested Katana has finally been added to the game.
New Mob, found in the distillery in 0BC and in some other levels in higher BCs
The most ridiculous skin ever done in DC, and 4 slightly less ridiculous outfits.

Hello everyone,

We hope you’re doing well in these times of uncertainty. On our side, we’ve been busy with the next DLC (see the announcement here) as well as spending a fair bit of time cleaning the code behind the game to make it easier to maintain in the long run.

However, we’ve also been working on the next update which will mainly be focused on reworking the Malaise, the 4/5BC mechanic, as the current version is often called out as detrimental to the overall experience. We’re aware that the new implementation isn’t perfect, however, we think it’s time to get it in public alpha and keep improving it with your help.

So, if you want to access the alpha go ahead and follow the instructions below. If you'd just like to see what's going to be arriving in the update, skip ahead:

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.

Before going into the detail of everything that has been added/changed in the update, please remember that the major changes are a work in progress and are likely to be tweaked. The list below is the 'highlights', for full detail check out the patchnotes. Anyway, let's get to the meaty stuff...

Malaise rework

The Malaise bar is still there, but now it fills with time (game time - which means it won’t fill in lore rooms, merchants, treasure rooms, etc.) rather than when you’re hit.
It also doesn’t destroy your health at 10% once you reach 10 malaise points anymore. Instead, enemies become more and more dangerous as your Malaise bar fills, dealing more damage, moving and detecting you faster. Mobs will randomly spawn around you, and some mobs will unexpectedly transform into Elites (without the random skill though).
The malaise contamination rate is tied to the number of enemies still alive in the level, the fewer enemies, the less quickly your malaise bar will fill. When only 10% of the enemies are left alive, the biome is considered "Malaise cleared". Easy right?

Colour changes

A lot of item and mutation colour changes have been made too, specifically designed to re-focus each stat on its primary identity:

Tactics keeps all things related to ranged gameplay: turrets & ranged weapons, with some utility and damaging spells to support it. Items that don't fit in that category but have poison or electricity gameplay will still dual scale with Tactics (e.g. Sadist's Stiletto, a knife that crits on poison targets, is not a turret or ranged weapon but has poison gameplay elements - so it will still scale with Tactics).
Brutality keeps its focus on fast melee weapons and everything related to jumping into the fray. Grenades stay mostly red. Non-melee weapons that have fire or blood gameplay will dual scale with Brutality.
Survival keeps its focus on crowd control, survivability, shields and slow, heavy melee weapons. Also supported by heavy damage skills with the long cooldown that goes with them. Unrelated weapons with root or ice gameplay will dual scale with Survival.

You can find the full changelog here, including the various nerfs and buffs coming with those changes.

Also, the health scaling of Survival and Brutality has been reduced. It’s not really significant without a high scroll count, so it will only impact the mid/late game of BC3+ players. Tactics got a slight buff, so there will be less difference between Survival’s hp pool and Tactic’s hp pool.

Updated backpack

The backpack will now be independent of two-handed weapons, so we’ve been working to make it less awkward to use and more customisable.

You can now empty your backpack by holding the use button, and you access your backpack storage when taking an item on the floor by pressing your secondary weapon button (Y on Xbox controller for instance).

In the video settings, you will also find an option to set the backpack slot opacity to your convenience, as well as an option to place it in the middle of the weapon and skills slots instead of to the right.

4 New mutations

3 new mutations have been added to go along with the new backpack:

Acrobatic Preparation*: Attacking with a ranged weapon also attacks with the ranged weapon in your backpack. Roll to reload. (Tactics).
Porcupine Backpack: Rolling through enemies attacks them with the melee weapon stored in your backpack. (Brutality)
Tortoise Wheel: Rolling parries attacks and projectiles with the shield stored in your backpack. (Survival)

The fourth mutation added, Fatal Cadence, increases your attack speed when you switch between the primary and secondary slot. It’s specifically designed for two-handed weapons, but can also be used with others.
As a side note, the two-handed weapons can now have different affixes on each slot.

*All names are placeholders until we find the time to think of better ones!

New weapon

With Christmas just around the corner, we thought we had to fulfill long-lasting requests from the community that gives us so much during the rest of the year. The Malaise rework is obviously a part of it, but we wanted to give a little something to everyone, not only to people with the crazy gaming skills able to beat the highest BCs.

So, here it finally is: the Katana, allowing you to attack swiftly by smashing the button, or to slice through mobs by holding it. We hope you enjoy using it!

New mob

Armed with Explosive Crossbows, the Demolisher can be found wandering in the Distillery (because there aren’t enough explosions there already) as well as in other biomes in other BCs.

New outfits

Massacre your merry way through the island as Santa Beheaded or try and hold your concentration as the Snowman. Nothing stands in the way of us becoming Game of the Century now *evil laugh*

New diet

One glaring hole in the game was the lack of smelly cheese to heal yourself with. As a French studio we had to rectify this immediately, so you can now scarf a whole wheel of cheese like a real Skyrim warrior. Vive la France!

Phew! That's it for now, we're going to let the alpha run for a week or so, and if you want to leave some feedback after trying it out then head over to our reddit thread here.

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

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