Hello,

We're back with another alpha for our next slab of content - the Boss Rush Update!

How does it work?

There is a new area, accessible through the basement door in Prisoner's Quarters where you access the Training Room and the Tailor - one you've gone through the basement door just follow the corridor until you come to the third door with the red boss head next to it.

Through this door, you'll find another 4 doors, leading to 4 different stages where you will fight:

• 3 bosses back-to-back
  
• 3 bosses back-to-back with modifiers
  
• 5 bosses back-to-back
  
• 5 bosses back-to-back with modifiers

What are modifiers, I hear you ask? Basically we've given the bosses even more ways to kick your ass. Think extra limbs, healing powers, buddies to help them kill you - all the good stuff!


The bosses are randomly selected from the following tiers:

Tier 1 - Concierge, Conjunctivius, Mama Tick

Tier 2 - Time Keeper, The Giant, The Scarecrow

Tier 3 - Hand of the King, The Servants (just the final fight, not the entire tower!), The Queen

Spoiler Boss is not available in the alpha and likely won't be available on release BUT it should™ arrive later.


The stages with 3 bosses back-to-back will pit you against one Tier 1 boss, then one Tier 2 and finally, you guessed it, one Tier 3. Simple!

The stages with 5 bosses follow a similar path, but here you'll be fighting two Tier 1 bosses, then two Tier 2s, then one Tier 3. Not quite so simple...


NOTE: For testing purposes, in the alpha you will have access to all bosses regardless of your progress in your current save. In the official release of the update, the bosses that you encounter in the Boss Rush will only be bosses that you have personally encountered at least once in-game.


There is a choice between Brutality, Tactics and Survival at the start of each stage - choosing one will automatically give you stats focused on the one you chose, and give you a choice of relevant builds in the following room.

New unlockables

There are more goodies to unlock as you progress through the stages, if you can!

New stuff will unlock depending on the length (3 bosses or 5 bosses), the mode (Normal bosses or Modified bosses), the difficulty (0+BC, 3+BC or 5BC) and your ability to flawless the entire run or not.

Yep, the 5 boss 5BC Flawless is going to be a bit hard to get!




Weapon - Glyph of Peril (Tactics/Survival): A ranged attack with 7 attacks in its combo. The more health that you're missing, the longer the combo. Critical hits will start after the third hit of the combo.


Skill - Taunt: Taunt an enemy, making it relentessly pursue you for 20 seconds. In doing so, it drops its guard, so it takes 75% more damage from melee attacks during its pursuit.
I'll let you discover exactly what taunts the Beheaded uses, but I don't think you'll be disappointed...


Mutation - Wish: The next weapon you pick up is legendary. Once chosen it cannot be removed (like the YOLO mutation).


Skins: There are 6 new skins to discover, with various barbarian/boss themes.


Customisable statue: You've got a fan! They're making a grand statue of you as tribute, and as you progress through the Boss Rush, you'll be able to add shiny new elements to it. Such humility!

New/updates legendary affixes

We're also adding more legendary affixes to flesh out our last update. These are:

• Spartan Sandals: Super Bump - bumps stuff even further
  
• Oil Sword: Oil on Kill (again, quite self explanatory: spreads oil on the ground on kill)
  
• Flint: Instant Charge - all attacks are fully charged without needing to hold the button
  
• Katana: Deflect Bullets - all uncharged attacks deflect bullet (but not grenades)
  
• Killing Deck: Random Effect - every card applies a random debuff on targets (any kind of DoT, crowd controls, etc. with a few exceptions that wouldn't make sense like item-specific effects)
  
• Money Shooter: Pay to Win - refund the shot's cost if it kills a target + innate super pierce. Can trigger multiple times if a shot kills several enemies.
  
• Knockback Shield: Super Bump
  
• Wave of Denial: Super Bump
  
• Pollo Power: Miracle of Life - eggs hatch into chicks that attack nearby enemies

Back up your save first. The alpha shouldn't affect your saves but better to be safe than sorry. If the worst happens then there’s a save restore hack detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1696100248017690442)

Then follow these instructions to access the alpha:

• 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.

As always, 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 you can do so in the comments here, or on our official Discord (link at the bottom of the post) - there are two channels called update31-alpha-discussion and update31-alpha-feedback specifically for these conversations, so please use them!

Bug reports can be sent to us with the following form to help us collect all information on bugs and crashes in one place, this helps us to fix them quicker! https://forms.clickup.com/f/2b318-1807/WG3GMB5KUFQB4XRAHX

We have some known issues already:

• Long load time after the Queen. It'll be fixed in the next patch.
  
• Glyph of Peril weapon lacks polish.
  
• The exit text when you win a run should not be "Do you want to abandon the run?", obviously.
  
• The alpha is only available on Windows, not Mac or Linux - we have a problem which should be fixed for beta.

Full patchnotes are here.

Hope you enjoy the new mode, we'll gather feedback for a week or two then come back with the beta :)


Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hello,

Due to circumstances that we will explain below, we're being forced to increase our prices in Argentina & Turkey.

We don't make this choice lightly, but unfortunately a significant portion of sales in the last year came from these two countries, without a corresponding increase in players there.

To put this in context, the % of our total sales from a given country will roughly equal the % of our total players from that country. For Argentina & Turkey, their % of total sales is 3-4x the amount of the % of their total players.

By no coincidence, the price of Dead Cells and DLC in these two countries are by far the lowest in dollar/euro terms, so it is extremely likely that people are changing their region to take advantage of a 70-90% reduction in price.

Dead Cells is already not an expensive game at $24.99 and we regularly discount Dead Cells by 40-50%. With people taking advantage of the region pricing on top of this discount, hopefully you can see why this is impacting us so heavily.

We realise that this will seem unfair to legitimate Steam users in Argentina & Turkey, but we are not a big studio and we are losing a very significant amount of revenue while trying to finance future projects and more Dead Cells content, so we are being forced to act.

We hope that explains why we're making this change, we always try to be as open as possible with our community here on Steam and we are always open to feedback.


Thanks,
Matt, EE & MT

Hey everyone,

We're back with our thirtieth update, 'Enter the Panchaku'!

To celebrate this milestone of 30 updates, we're releasing 30 NFTs that unlock exclusive content in the game. The release date for these is never, because we're not touching that stuff. Gotcha...


Here's the TLDR of the update:

• panchaku and new 'flame head' Bobby outfit
  
• rebalancing on weapons & items
  
• rework of legendaries system
  
• Soul Knight weapon and outfit
  
• pet your pets
  
• roadmap and Evil Empire/Motion Twin priorities

We've made a little trailer to go along with the update:


And here's a VLOG for people who don't like to read!


Finally, the full patchnotes are here as usual.

Let's get into it!

Panchaku & Bobby outfit

After numerous requests following the animated Bad Seed trailer, we're finally adding the panchaku to Dead Cells, with a new outfit inspired by Bobby Pills' trailers.
We already had a 'Bobby' skin, but now the iconic pink flame head is here to make it complete. You can stop pestering us now, or just move onto the next shiny thing you reprobates want.


Sorry for the potato quality, the 5MB limit on Steam just kills my gifs


The panchaku is simply two frying pans tied together with a piece of string, which crits on enemies facing you and has a slick combo with hits behind and all around you.
It can also reflect bombs and projectiles in the middle of the combo. So a slight upgrade on the Vorpan...

Item reworks

It's been a while since our last major rebalance of weapons, with the 'What's the Damage?' update releasing over a year ago. Since then we've had new items and mutations from the 'Everyone is Here' and the 'Break the Bank' updates, plus 'The Queen and the Sea' DLC, so there's a few imbalances here and there.

So, we're making changes to 29 weapons and skills (and a mutation!) to rebalance the item pool.

Why do we do rebalancing? This isn't a multiplayer game after all...

Well, we need to do this to keep the variety element strong - a good roguelite should offer you difficult choices. If you're going to take the same 2 or 3 weapons every time because they're OP, then you're going to get bored very quickly. And we don't want you to get bored of Dead Cells!

That's why we need to bring items to the same power level (or as close as possible) to encourage players to explore and use more of the item pool.

Here's the buffs & nerfs:

Buffs:

• Hard Light Sword and Pistol: slight damage buff to the sword and attack speed buff to the pistol
  
• Hokuto's Bow: damage bonus buffed
  
• Queen's Rapier: the delayed slice hits sooner
  
• Maw of the Deep: attack speed buff
  
• Wrecking Ball: first and last attack are faster + greatly reduced lock on Wrecking Ball's third and fourth attacks
  
• Leghugger: now jumps on a nearby target before launching its reactivation attack + keeps its growth state across instances of the object in a run
  
• Killing Deck: damage buff on the first 2 attacks
  
• Hand Hook: now also crits when the thrown enemy hits another entity + removed the first hit + greatly reduced the lock of the last attack.
  
• Greed Shield: can now trigger once per enemy every 10 seconds + damage buff
  
• Frantic Sword: crit multiplier is now inversely proportional to your life (when at or under 50% max life)
  
• Abyssal Trident: slight damage buff
  
• Shrapnel Axes: slight damage buff
  
• Pollo Power: now fires 1 more egg + damage buff
  
• Crowbar: now also crits on beast enemies (hand-picked, think "non-humanoid, non-mechanic")
  
• Lightning Bolt: now crits one tick earlier and damages you 1 tick later
  
• Spiked Shield: crit damage buff
  
• Cudgel: Bullets parried will now stun enemies as well.
  
• Gilded Yumi rework:
  - Reduced the ammo count to 2.
  - Now has a 2-hit combo, which shoots the second arrow faster.
  - Is now considered to be a Heavy Weapon.
  - Increased the overall weapon speed.
  - Increased the base damage, reduced the crit multiplier.
  - Damage no longer gets split between hit enemies.
  - Arrows now pierce all enemies.
  - Bosses get dragged by the arrow more.
  - Reduced the arrow's speed.
  - No longer stuns in an AoE on hit.
  - Can't roll ammo or pierce affixes anymore.

Nerfs:

• Smoke Bomb: scaling heavily nerfed (it was following the same formula as the stats)
  
• Grappling Hook: same as Smoke Bomb
  
• Boy's Axe: damage nerf + can't roll the Extra Ammo affix + can't be affected by Ammo mutation
  
• Bladed Tonfas: slight crit multiplier nerf
  
• Lacerating Aura: cooldown now starts at the end of the effect instead of starting at cast
  
• Maw of the Deep: its root is now less effective on bosses
  
• Crusher: its slow is now less effective on bosses
  
• Hunter's Grenade: no longer provides stats
  
• Rapier: damage nerf
  
• Sonic Carbine: damage nerf
  
• Hokuto's Bow: procs less often
  
• Barbed Tips: damage of each stack is reduced the more arrows there are in the enemy. 1 arrow = 40dmg, 2 arrows = 74dmg, 3 arrows = 104dmg, etc.

Legendary item change

Moving on to the legendary item change, which we’ve wanted to do for a while. For those who don’t know, legendary items are the gold-coloured items.

In the old system, their damage would scale off your two highest stats (Brutality, Tactics and Survival), which wasn’t intuitive with the stats system. Your average player usually just spread points between the off-colour stats to gain maximum health.

As the legendaries power was affected by your two highest stats, it meant that you would need to put points on only one of the stats that you weren't using to get maximum damage from legendaries.

Basically the whole thing wasn’t very clear.

It was also just not very interesting – the only thing that legendaries gave you was more damage, that was it. More damage is always good, but we wanted to make it better!

So to replace the old system, we're introducing legendary affixes (affixes are the tasty extra powers you get on items, like 60% damage to a bleeding enemy).



All the legendary affixes have been specifically added to certain weapons so that they each have a synergy with their item's gameplay. This way, they'll be making legendaries stronger than your typical weapon version by adding an extra, complimentary gameplay element instead of just upping the damage.



We've created a few brand new affixes as well as using some existing ones. There are a lot of legendary affixes in this list, so if you don't really care about specifics you should just scroll past!

Melee Weapons

• Balanced Blade: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Spite Sword: Poison Skin Area
  
• Assassin’s Dagger: Mega Crit
  
• Blood Sword: Double Stack
  
• Twin Daggers: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Broadsword: Global Shield on Kill
  
• Shovel: Better Secrets
  
• Cursed Sword: True Evil
  
• Sadist's Stiletto: Super Back Damage
  
• Swift Sword: Run Speed on Kill
  
• Giant Killer: God Slayer
  
• Shrapnel Axes: Fire Bullet
  
• Seismic Strike: Death Root
  
• War Spear: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Impaler: Super Back Damage
  
• Symmetrical Lance: Quad Damage Free & Ignore Global Shields
  
• Rapier: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Meat Skewer: Super Back Damage
  
• Nutcracker: Death Root
  
• Spartan Sandals: Fire Feet
  
• Spiked Boots: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Hayabusa Boots: Super Back Damage
  
• Hayabusa Gauntlets: Mega Crit
  
• Valmont's Whip: Mega Crit
  
• Wrenching Whip: Bleed on Hit
  
• Oiled Sword: Poison on Hit
  
• Torch: Double Stack
  
• Frantic Sword: Heal Mid Life
  
• Flawless: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Flint: Fire on Hit
  
• Flawless: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Tentacle: Poison on Hit
  
• Vorpan: Fire on Hit
  
• Flashing Fans: Bleed on Hit
  
• Scythe Claw: Death Root
  
• Rhythm n’ Bouzouki: Fire on Hit
  
• Crowbar: Super Back Damage
  
• Snake Fangs: Double Stack
  
• Iron Staff: Frost Shield
  
• Ferryman's Lantern (Melee): Fire on Hit
  
• Hattori's Katana: Mega Crit
  
• Explosive Crossbow (Melee): Death Freeze
  
• Tombstone: Cascading Tomb
  
• Oven Axe: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Toothpick: Heavy Stun
  
• Toothpick (Broken): Rebuild on Kill
  
• Machete and Pistol: Bleed on Hit
  
• Hard Light Sword (Sword): Mega Crit
  
• Pure Nail: Death Worm
  
• Bone: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Abyssal Trident: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Hand Hook: Bleed on Hit
  
• Maw of the Deep: Triple Bullets
  
• Bladed Tonfas: Run Speed on Kill
  
• Wrecking Ball: Speed Ball
  
• Queen's Rapier: Super Slice
  
• Dagger of Profit: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Gold Digger: Heavy Stun
  
• Panchaku: Fire on Hit

Ranged Weapons

• Multiple-nocks Bow: Double Bullets
  
• Bow and Endless Quiver: Poison on Hit
  
• Marksman's Bow: Heavy Stun
  
• Sonic Carbine: Poison Bullet
  
• Infantry Bow: Bleed on Hit
  
• Quick Bow: Mega Crit
  
• Ice Bow: Strong Ice
  
• Heavy Crossbow: Super Pierce
  
• Heavy Crossbow (Reload): Global Shield on Use
  
• Repeater Crossbow: Super Pierce
  
• Repeater Crossbow (Quiver of Bolts): Pierce
  
• Ice Crossbow: Strong Ice
  
• Ice Crossbow (Piercing Shot): Death Freeze
  
• Explosive Crossbow: Super Pierce
  
• Alchemic Carbine: Double Stack
  
• Boomerang: Extra Ammo Few
  
• Hemorrhage: Bleed Propagation
  
• The Boy’s Axe: Extra Ammo Few
  
• War Javelin: Fire Bullet
  
• Hokuto’s Bow: Super Pierce
  
• Nerves of Steel: Mega Crit
  
• Throwing Knife: Bleed Propagation
  
• Electric Whip: Super Back Damage
  
• Firebrands: Double Stack
  
• Ice Shards: Death Freeze
  
• Pyrotechnics: Double Stack
  
• Lightning Bolt: Global Shield on Kill
  
• Fire Blast: Global Shield on Use
  
• Frost Blast: Strong Ice
  
• Magic Missiles: Super Pierce
  
• Blowgun: Poison Cloud on Hit
  
• Barrel Launcher: Death Fire
  
• Ferryman’s Lantern (Soul Shot): Fire Bullet
  
• Hard Light Gun: Double Stack
  
• Killing Deck: Bleed on Hit
  
• Gilded Yumi: Fire Bullet
  
• Money Shooter: Super Pierce
  
• Magic Bow: Double Bullets

Shields

• Front Line Shield: Counter Attack
  
• Cudgel: Long Stun
  
• Punishment: Death Freeze
  
• Knockback Shield: Death Root
  
• Rampart: Frost Shield
  
• Assault Shield: Heavy Stun
  
• Bloodthirsty Shield: Double Stack
  
• Greed Shield: Gold Damage Buff
  
• Spiked Shield: Mega Crit
  
• Parry Shield: Stun Shield
  
• Force Shield: Frost Shield
  
• Thunder Shield: Poison Shield
  
• Ice Shield: Strong Ice

Deployable Traps

• Double Crossb-o-matic: Super Pierce
  
• Sinew Slicer: Bleed Propagation
  
• Heavy Turret: Super Pierce
  
• Barnacle: Poison Bullet
  
• Flamethrower Turret: Double Stack
  
• Cleaver: Double Stack
  
• Wolf Trap: Ice on Stop
  
• Crusher: Ice on Stop
  
• Explosive Decoy: Run Speed on Kill
  
• Emergency Door: Deployed Dmg
  
• Tesla Coil: Oil and Fire on Destroy
  
• Scavenged Bombard: Double Speed

Grenades

• Powerful Grenade: Bigger Explosion
  
• Infantry Grenade: Oil
  
• Cluster Grenade: Echo
  
• Magnetic Grenade: Echo
  
• Stun Grenade: Long Stun
  
• Ice Grenade: Strong Ice
  
• Fire Grenade: Bigger Explosion
  
• Root Grenade: Death Root
  
• Oil Grenade: Death Fire
  
• Swarm Grenade: Poison on Hit (yes, it applies to the biters’ attacks)

Powers

• Death Orb: Double Speed
  
• Tornado: Double Speed
  
• Knife Dance: Bleed Poison
  
• Corrupted Power: Global Shield on Use
  
• Vampirism: Oil and Fire on Use
  
• Tonic: Extended Duration
  
• Grappling Hook: Fire on Use
  
• Phaser: Poison on use
  
• Corrosive Cloud: Double Stack
  
• Lacerating Aura: Bleed on Hit
  
• Wave of Denial: Oil and Fire on Use
  
• Wings of the Crow: Global Shield on Use
  
• Great Owl of War: Super Pierce
  
• Lightspeed: Global Shield on Use
  
• Giant Whistle: Echo
  
• Telluric Shock: Global Shield on Kill
  
• <Spoiler Item>: Run Speed on Kill
  
• Smoke Bomb: Run Speed on Use
  
• Mushroom Boi!: Poison Cloud on Hit
  
• Lightning Rods: Fire on Stop
  
• Scarecrow Sickles: Double Bullets
  
• Ice Armor: White Walker
  
• Serenade: Durability Up
  
• Cocoon: Frost Shield
  
• Face Flask: Oil and Fire on Use
  
• Pollo Power: Death Worm
  
• Leghugger: Bleed on Hit

Legendaries will always roll their legendary affix and they cannot be removed, rerolled or replaced.

Also just to be clear, we've removed the double stat scaling system, although legendaries will remain colorless in terms of scaling, which means that they scale off whichever of your stats has the highest value.

More legendary affixes will be coming in future updates, so keep your eyes peeled.

Oh and we're also adding an option in Custom Mode to allow 'legendary-only' runs:


Look at all that gooooold!

Soul Knight content

We're also introducing content from Soul Knight, another roguelite that already has Dead Cells content in it, so we're returning the favour!



The Magic Bow fires 5 slow-moving arrows, which make up for their lack of speed by homing in to their nearest enemy. Each arrow that successively hits the same enemy does more damage to that enemy.
The Knight outfit adds the pint-sized adventurer and his oversized head as an option.

Pet the pet

The last bit of content we're adding is letting you pet the pets.

In transitions between biomes you just need to long press the interact button to show some love to your latest companion. You won't get any benefit from this, it's just something fun for us to add. I mean why wouldn't we add this!



Unfortunately the owl was too awkward to code this for, so it will never know the loving touch of the Beheaded...

Other additions

• Reworked the Outfit Selection UI. It is now a grid displaying the icons of all the unlocked outfits, as well as an in-game preview.
  
• Added Teleportation Monoliths before the exits leading to Forgotten Sepulcher.
  
• Added an exit to Clock Tower in Graveyard, for cases where the player would get softlocked otherwise.
  
• In Ramparts, prevented the exit leading to Conjunctivius from being locked behind a Breakable Ground.
  
• In Prisoners' Quarters, if the player has the Spider Rune but not the Vine Rune, the passage to the Sewers door will now use a specific room. Yes, this is a very specific change, don't ask about it.
  
• Weapons' icons on the HUD now fade away when their controls are locked.
  
• Uniformized the different speed bonus feedbacks.
  
• Made double tap input option for Dive Attack more reliable and consistent.
  
• Talisman DoT Affixes now scale based on the highest tier stat, instead of the tier average.
  
• Gold Gorgers now can't attack or teleport to the player if they didn't see the player at least once.

Bug fixes

• Fixed Corrosive Cloud not triggering the Bleed Propagation affix.
  
• Fixed Serenade sometimes losing its affixes on use.
  
• Fixed Explosive Barrels not updating properly when not on screen.
  
• Disabled gravity when picking up a scroll, to prevent a softlock when falling offscreen.
  
• Fixed tier icons not displaying properly on colorless items.
  
• Fixed the Bank Pop-up and the 1BC Pop-up overlapping.
  
• Corrosive Cloud now correctly displays its synergy with Bleed.
  
• Fixed the Cherry on the Cake bombs not dealing any damage to the player.
  
• Added the missing world map transition of Distillery -> Lighthouse.
  
• Fixed Conjunctivius sometimes shooting projectiles during the death animation.
  
• Fixed the Hunter's Grenade not spawning back when thrown off a cliff, or when an enemy converted to elite fell of a cliff.
  
• Fixed a crash when picking up an amulet with the Homunculus Rune in the Daily Challenge.
  
• Fixed Mushroom Boi getting stuck in the dash animation after triggering the explosion.
  
• Fixed Mutineers' melee attack not having the attack warning.
  
• Fixed Invisibility not affecting the player's head or scarf.
  
• Fixed Armored Shrimps moving while frozen.
  
• Fixed the player getting stuck off-screen in some specific situations.
  
• Fixed pets sometimes dying for no apparent reasons
  
• Fixed the Leghugger not teleporting back to the player when too far away.
  
• Fixed minimap refresh hiding part of the maps revealed by Explorer's Instinct.
  
• Fixed Scrolls on the minimap not displaying their Stat icon, when triggering Explorer's Instincts.
  
• Fixed mutations going higher and higher on the HUD every time the player changes the "place backpack next to weapons" option.
  
• Fixed Queen sometimes getting stuck on the "Reality Slices" phase.
  
• Fixed some powers and effects not working properly after going through a ZDoor, as well as their visual disappearing:
  - Ice Armor's sprite.
  - Cell Bonus FX.
  - Lacerating Aura FX.
  - Wings of the Crow FX.
  
• Fixed elite Gold Gorgers using Elite Skills when transformed by the Hunter's Grenade.
  
• Fixed Barbed Tips damage multiplier being applied one stack too early.
  
• Fixed Two-Handed Weapons not properly generating their legendary affix.
  
• Fixed the way DoT Effects damage scale was calculated, leading to some of them dealing less damage than intended.
  
• Fixed Custom Heads being on the wrong layer after the player was thrown by the Queen.
  
• Fixed DPS display on weapons not working properly with damage multipliers.
  
• Fixed DPS display for the Bone.
  
• Fixed options text getting out of the frame when opened on the main menu.

Roadmap

In case you missed our post the other week, we released the roadmap below. The basic idea is that we'll continue to add Dead Cells content into 2023 & beyond, and 2023 will be our biggest year since v1.0 was released!




This also raised the question of whether there'll ever be any new games coming out. Dead Cells keeps getting new content so we can't be working on anything else, right?

Well, we are.

Motion Twin, the creators of Dead Cells, have not been working on Dead Cells for years. Although they do retain creative control over Dead Cells and have final approval on every addition Evil Empire makes to the game.

Evil Empire is a separate studio made of ex-Motion Twin developers & some new blood, and we took over development of Dead Cells in 2019.

Motion Twin have been working on their next project since then, but we all still work in the same office so it's a close relationship. Evil Empire are also working on our own projects too, but Dead Cells remains the priority for us.

Essentially, don't worry, new games are coming!


Finally, if anyone is going to PAX West in September we'll be there to show off a sneak preview of the upcoming Boss Rush update.


Have a good one and we'll be back soon with news on the Boss Rush update!


Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Community highlights:


NNY666


@FlameAozora


@domxto

Hey all,

Just a short post on yet another patch for the beta - we're taking as much feedback as possible on board!

Here's the changes:

Balancing:

• Removed the pushback on Rampart's force field.
  
• The recovery after Wrecking Ball's 3rd hit and 4th hit has been greatly reduced i.e. you can dodge roll/jump much quicker after the hits. The 3rd attack can also be cancelled without losing your combo.
  
• Full Life Damage is not a starred affix anymore.
  
• Increased Barbed Tips initial damage.
  
• Barbed Tips damage of each stack is reduced the more arrows there are in the enemy. 1 arrow = 40dmg, 2 arrows = 74dmg, 3 arrows = 104dmg, etc.
  
• Removed Hand Hook's first hit and greatly reduced the lock of the last attack.
  
• Added new Legendary Affix, exclusive to Serenade: Durability Up, the sword pet never expires. Please note that the only translations of this affix are in French or English right now.
  
• Gilded Yumi rework:
  - Reduced the ammo count to 2.
  - Now has a 2-hit combo, which shoots the second arrow faster.
  - Is now considered to be a Heavy Weapon.
  - Increased the overall weapon speed.
  - Increased the base damage, reduced the crit multiplier.
  - Damage no longer gets split between hit enemies.
  - Arrows now pierce all enemies.
  - Bosses get dragged by the arrow more.
  - Reduced the arrow's speed.
  - No longer stuns in an AoE on hit.

Legendary Affix changes:

• Double Crossb-o-matic: Super Pierce
  
• Explosive Crossbow: Super Pierce
  
• Heavy Crossbow: Super Pierce
  
• Giant Whistle: Echo
  
• Tornado: Double Speed
  
• Spiked Boots: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Cluster Grenade: Echo
  
• Balanced Blade: Run Speed on Crit
  
• Hank Hook: Bleed on Hit
  
• Serenade: Durability Up

Level design:

• Added decorations in the Panchaku Lore Room

Graphics & UI:

• Weapons' icons on the HUD now fade away when their controls are locked.
  
• Updated the credits.

Quality of life:

• Made double tap input option for Dive Attack more reliable and consistent.
  
• Added an angry eye on some animations, with the Bobby Outfit.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed Scrolls on the minimap not displaying their Stat icon, when triggering Explorer's Instincts.
  
• Fixed mutations going higher and higher on the HUD every time the player changes the "place backpack next to weapons" option.
  
• Fixed the "Try 1BC" pop-up appearing when the player has already played 1BC at least once.
  
• Fixed Challenge Portals graphics being messed up.
  
• Fixed multiple crashes related to shader compilation.
  
• Fixed being able to pet Serenade when holding it as a weapon.
  
• Affixes now work on Leghugger and Mushroom Boi's attacks.
  
• Fixed a crash when entering some biomes with the "secret zone visibility" option enabled.
  
• Fixed Queen sometimes getting stuck on the "Reality Slices" phase.
  
• Fixed some powers and effects not working properly after going through a ZDoor, as well as their visual disppearing:
  
• Ice Armor's sprite.
  
• Cell Bonus FX.
  
• Lacerating Aura FX.
  
• Wings of the Crow FX.
  
• Fixed some sound effects getting randomly cut off. Hopefully it's fixed this time.
  
• Fixed elite Gold Gorgers using Elite Skills when transformed by the Hunter's Grenade.
  
• Fixed some fires and candles displaying as pink rectangles, not displaying at all, or displaying the wrong sprite.
  
• Area effects that are directly triggered by Weapons, Grenades and Actives will now be properly affected by the source item's affixes.
  
• Fixed Panchaku and Bobby Outfit not unlocking properly

EDIT: Known Bug that we are working to fix - Gilded Yumi can roll Pierce and Super Pierce affixes even though it now has baseline Super Pierce.

Let us know your thoughts in the Discord server or here in the comments :)

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey all,


Update 30 has progressed from alpha to beta! If you don't know what we'll be adding in this update, go read the alpha post.


Here are the changes we've made for the beta (also in patchnotes on our website):


Important features:

• Added unlocking conditions for the new content (Panchaku, Bobby Outfit and Soul Knight Content)

Balancing:

• Buffed the damage of the Back Damage, Super Crit and Super Back Damage affixes.
  
• Reduced the damage and tick rate of Barbed Tips.
  
• Increased the damage and crit multiplier of Gilded Yumi.
  
• The Hand Hook pull attack now comes out way faster, but has more lag to compensate.
  
• Legendary Weapons no longer roll a guaranteed Starred Affix
  
• Bullets parried by the Cudgel will now stun enemies as well.
  
• Rampart's forcefield now pushes enemies away for its entire duration.

Graphics & UI:

• Reworked the Outfit Selection UI. It is now a grid displaying the icons of all the unlocked outfits, as well as an in-game preview.

Music & SFX:

• Added proper sound effects to the Panchaku.

Mods:

• Custom Heads can now load custom atlases.
  
• Added a new folder in the ModTools : ModHelperSkin. It contains a full custom outfit with differently colored points instead of a proper model, to help with making outfit mods.
  
• We also provided a json file containing all the tracks of all the joints, for all the animations in the game. This data can potentially be used to roughly recreate the 2D animations.

Bug fixes:

• Corrosive Cloud now correctly displays its synergy with Bleed.
  
• Prevented Death Root from triggering on non-mob entities.
  
• Fixed the Tailor's Room decorations being offset from the center.
  
• Removed the Flawless Outfits displaying two times in the Outfit Selection UI.
  
• Fixed a crash when breaking the Bank's Golden Doors.
  
• Fixed the bombs from the 'Cherry on the Cake' modifier in Custom Mode not dealing any damage to the player.
  
• Added the missing world map transition of Distillery -> Lighthouse.
  
• Fixed Conjunctivius sometimes shooting projectiles during the death animation.
  
• Fixed the Hunter's Grenade not spawning back when thrown off a cliff, or when an enemy converted to elite fell of a cliff.
  
• Fixed a crash when picking up an amulet with the Homunculus Rune in the Daily Challenge.
  
• Fixed Mushroom Boi getting stuck in the dash animation after triggering the explosion.
  
• Fixed Mutineers' melee attack not having the attack warning.
  
• Fixed Invisibility not affecting the player's head or scarf.
  
• Fixed Armored Shrimps moving while frozen.
  
• Fixed the player getting stuck off-screen in some specific situations.
  
• Fixed pets sometimes dying for no apparent reason.
  
• Fixed Magic Bow and Scarecrow's Sickles interacting weirdly when reflected by the Queen.
  
• Fixed the Leghugger not teleporting back to the player when too far away.
  
• Fixed minimap refresh hiding parts of the map revealed by Explorer's Instinct.

How to access the beta:

NOTE: Playing the beta will lock your chosen save slot to update 30. You won't be able to go back to update 29 with this save slot during the entire duration of the beta. However, your progress in the beta will be automatically merged into the main game when we release update 30 officially.

If you want to try out the beta and don't know how then first BACKUP YOUR SAVE FILE, 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.

You can leave any feedback here or on our official Discord - there are two channels called update30-beta-discussion and update30-beta-feedback. We also have a bug report form specific to this beta.


Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey everyone,

We're taking a little breather from constant alpha/beta/update announcements to kill off the belief that, with the latest DLC 'The Queen and the Sea', we are at or near the end of Dead Cells' lifetime. We can see how people ended up thinking this, but reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated...

To clarify the situation we're giving you a little roadmap for the rest of the year. We're reasonably confident on the release times and content, but there's no guarantees in game development so please don't take this as gospel truth.



If you follow our Steam posts, you'll know all about our next update, which is currently in alpha. If you're not up to speed you can read the alpha post here.

Quick TLDR: we'll be adding the long awaited panchaku and a new flame head outfit based on our beloved animated trailers, a ton of rebalancing on weapons & items, reworking the legendaries system to make it more intuitive & interesting, a Soul Knight weapon & outfit and you'll be able to pet the pets.



Following that update we'll be adding a Boss Rush area! The basic idea here is to let you fight all the bosses you've met so far, one after the other, with unlockables to win as you progress.
There should be a few different 'modes' in the Boss Rush to expand the challenge beyond that central idea and we'll potentially be adding a scoreboard to add a bit of friendly competition.
Again just a reminder that this is all TBD so, for your sanity and ours, don't take anything said here as set in stone.


Before Christmas there'll be yet another update dropping, but this one is still under wraps so you'll have to wait a bit to know what's in this one.


Heading into 2023 we won't be slowing down, in fact we'll be stepping things up! It's going to be by far our biggest year since the 1.0 launch and we're thrilled to show you what we've been cooking up behind the scenes.


What we're getting at here is that we're very much in the mid-life of Dead Cells. We're not sneaking out at night to get drunk on street corners anymore, but we've still got plenty of life in us before our knees start to give in, so prepare yourselves for more Dead Cells content.


Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey all,

Hot on the tails of our accessibility release, we're releasing a new alpha into the wild!

In this update we'll be adding the long awaited panchaku and a new Bobby outfit to go with it, a ton of rebalancing on weapons & items, reworking the legendaries system to make it more intuitive & interesting, Soul Knight content and (game changer!) letting you pet your pets.

Patchnotes are here if you just want to read the list, if you want a bit of extra info and some gifs then keep reading!

Panchaku & Bobby outfit

Your eyes aren't deceiving you, the long-awaited panchaku is finally coming to Dead Cells, with a new outfit inspired by the animated trailers by Bobby Digital. Yes, we already had a 'Bobby' skin, but now the iconic pink flame head is here to go with it.

It crits on enemies facing you and has a pretty tasty combo if you can reach the end, now go out and relive the Bad Seed trailer!

Item reworks

It's been a while since our last major rebalance of weapons, with the 'What's the Damage?' update releasing over a year ago. Since then we've had new items and mutations from the 'Everyone is Here' and the 'Break the Bank' updates, plus 'The Queen and the Sea' DLC, so there's a few imbalances here and there.

So, we're making changes to 26 weapons and skills to rebalance the item pool.

Why do we do rebalancing? Well, we need to do this to keep the variety element strong - a good roguelite should offer you difficult choices. If you're going to take the same 2-3 weapons every time then you're going to get bored pretty quickly - we don't want people to be recycling 90% of weapons without even considering using them.

That's why we need to bring items to the same power level (or as close as possible) to encourage players to explore and use more of the item pool.

Here's what we're proposing:

Buffs:

• Hard Light Sword and Pistol: slight damage buff to the sword and attack speed buff to the pistol
  
• Queen's Rapier: the delayed slice hits sooner
  
• Maw of the Deep: attack speed buff
  
• Wrecking Ball: first and last attack are faster
  
• Leghugger: now jumps on a nearby target before launching its reactivation attack + keeps its growth state across instances of the object in a run
  
• Gilded Yumi: charge time slightly decreased + now crits reliably on Mama Tick (to be consistent with Impaler)
  
• Killing Deck: damage buff on the first 2 attacks
  
• Hand Hook: now also crits when the thrown enemy hits another entity
  
• Greed Shield: can now trigger once per enemy every 10 seconds + damage buff
  
• Frantic Sword: crit multiplier is now inversely proportional to your life (when at or under 50% max life)
  
• Abyssal Trident: slight damage buff
  
• Shrapnel Axes: slight damage buff
  
• Pollo Power: now fires 1 more egg + damage buff
  
• Crowbar: now also crits on beast enemies (hand-picked, think "non-humanoid, non-mechanic")
  
• Lightning Bolt: now crits one tick earlier and damages you 1 tick later
  
• Spiked Shield: crit damage buff

Nerfs:

• Smoke Bomb: scaling heavily nerfed (it was following the same formula as the stats)
  
• Grappling Hook: same as Smoke Bomb
  
• Boy's Axe: damage nerf + can't roll the Extra Ammo affix + can't be affected by Ammo mutation
  
• Bladed Tonfas: slight crit multiplier nerf
  
• Lacerating Aura: cooldown now starts at the end of the effect instead of starting at cast
  
• Maw of the Deep: its root is now less effective on bosses
  
• Crusher: its slow is now less effective on bosses
  
• Hunter's Grenade: no longer provides stats
  
• Rapier: damage nerf
  
• Sonic Carbine: damage nerf
  
• Hokuto's Bow: procs less often + damage bonus nerfed

I'm sure there's going to be some pain here, especially with the Rapier and Sonic Carbine, sorry about that but hopefully the explanation above made sense!

Besides, none of this is finalised, we want to test the changes with a broader set of players and make some changes based on feedback anyway. However, we have our own thoughts, this doesn't mean you can convince us not to make changes to your favourite weapon by saying it feels too weak now...

Legendary item change

We've wanted to adjust the legendary items for a while. The current system where they scale off your two highest stats is pretty OP and out of whack with the rest of the scaling system, plus it's just not very interesting - all it does is give you more damage.
It's also counter-intuitive for players who aren't clued in and will split the off-colour stats to gain max health, instead of focusing on one off-colour stat to get max power from legendaries.

So, we've removed the double stat scaling system, although legendaries will remain colorless in terms of scaling.

In it's place, we're introducing legendary affixes. We've created a few brand new affixes, including specific affixes for certain items. They have all been hand-picked and should have a synergy with the item's gameplay (or at the very least, somewhat thematically linked). This way, they'll be making legendaries stronger than your typical weapon by adding an extra, complimentary gameplay element instead of just upping the damage. There are a LOT of legendary affixes so I won't list them here, if you want to read the whole list go check out the patchnotes on our site.

Legendaries will always roll their legendary affix AND it becomes a bonus affix, i.e. the item is rolled normally and then gains the legendary affix on top. Legendary affixes cannot be removed, rerolled or replaced.

We'd like to have your feedback on all these, we're running a public alpha after all! Of course, we are not asking that you each test every legendary item in the game, although if you want to do that then be our guest. In this spirit, we added a new custom mode option (that will also be added in the release version of the update, it's not just for testing) which makes every item legendary.

Soul Knight content

We're also introducing content from Soul Knight that was already in the mobile version. Soul Knight is another roguelite that already has Dead Cells content in it, so we're returning the favour!

The Magic Bow fires 5 slow-moving arrows, which make up for their lack of speed by homing in to their nearest enemy, and the Knight outfit adds the pint-sized adventurer and his oversized head to Dead Cells.

Pet the pet

Finally, we're letting you, well, pet the pets.

In transitions between biomes you just need to long press the interact button to show some love to your latest companion.

Unfortunately the owl was too awkward to code this for, so it will never know the loving touch of the Beheaded...

You won't get any benefit from this, it's just something fun to add.

Other additions

• Popup window to tell you to try 1BC at the start of every 0BC run after killing HotK, if you've never tried 1BC (stops appearing after you try 1BC one time)
  
• Sonic Carbine DPS display fixed
  
• Damage cap (50%) added to the Servants (you can't one shot them anymore, sorry)
  
• Conjunctivius' tentacles' damage cap increased to make them 2-shottable

Back up your save first. The alpha shouldn't affect your saves but better to be safe than sorry (and if the worst happens then there’s a save restore hack detailed here - https://steamcommunity.com/games/588650/announcements/detail/1696100248017690442)

Then follow these instructions to access the alpha:

• 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.

As always, 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 you can do so in the comments here, or on our official Discord - there are two channels called update30-alpha-discussion and update30-alpha-feedback specifically for alpha conversations, so please use them!


Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hello,

We've just released a hotfix to address some pressing bugs that were introduced with the latest update (and a couple from previous updates!)

Here are the issues that we've fixed:

• Can't use the down input with analog stick on controller. If the problem persists - reset the controller settings to default to fix it.
  
• Glitchy sound effects
  
• Crash when reloading a save where you are in Undying Shores
  
• Issues with stat icons being misaligned and different sizes
  
• "We recommend playing Dead Cells with a controller" message overlapping with "Show the update pop-up again" message
  
• Boss HP resetting to full HP when you exit to main menu and reload
  
• Affixes for oil dive attack and fire dive attack triggering at different heights
  
• Auto-jump triggering while climbing, making it impossible to climb
  
• Misplaced arrow in multiple lives selection
  
• Dying to the vault challenge in The Bank with Continue Mode softlocks the game
  
• Damage numbers on enemy hit have an arrow icon in the middle
  
• Lock with dying on Time Keeper boss then Null Access crash on reload
  
• Pollo Power effect affixes not working
  
• Using Pollo Power while entering The Ossuary leaves you stuck in mid-air
  
• Custom mode is displayed twice in the main menu
  
• Sprite of item bought from a shop with a mimic remains on screen and can't be interacted with

Thanks for your patience while we fixed these, please continue to let us know about any issues!

We'll be back soon with more news :)

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

Hello everyone,

Our latest update 'Breaking Barriers' is live and making Dead Cells more accessible to everyone. It's been five years since our Early Access release (yep, five freaking years!) and we realised it's about time we made sure that Dead Cells can be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

TLDR

• Loads of new options to improve accessibility, such as adjustable font type & size, input customisation and individual adjustment of sound effect volumes
  
• Assist Mode including customisation of enemy health/damage, trap speed/damage and parry window. Plus options for multiple lives, auto-hit with primary weapon & full map reveal
  
• Big reduction in cell cost of early-game weapons
  
• 7 weapon reworks

If you prefer videos, here's a VLOG showcasing all the changes. Warning for short attention spans: it is 9 minutes long!



So, we're trying to achieve this greater accessibility in two ways – one is a whole bunch of new options, mainly based around visibility and mobility, such as outlining characters and objects in-game, holding a button to repeat actions, or changing the font style and size. There's a full list of these options below.

The other part of the update is an Assist Mode that allows you to adjust elements of the game such as enemy damage, enemy health, trap damage, parry window and trap speed, plus options for auto-hit and multiple lives.

There's also a rework of 8 weapons, and the cost of early game weapons is being heavily reduced to allow players to unlock weapons while also working towards the crucial upgrades like health flasks and gold.

So, why are we adding the accessibility options?

Hopefully we don't need to justify adding accessibility options, but we'd had quite a lot of feedback that the game can be inaccessible for a wide range of reasons.

Dead Cells is intended to be tough but fair - sure, you die a lot, but you grow your skill while gaining new weapons & powers until you can beat the final boss. Then you add a Boss Cell to up the challenge and die to a rat on the next run, pick yourself up and go again until the next Boss Cell, and repeat.

However, we realise that the way the game is designed can put up barriers to reaching this experience for some players. These new options are designed to allow tailored, specific adjustments of the game for those who need it, to make this "tough but fair gameplay" accessible, instead of adding arbitrary difficulty levels which don't actually address players' needs.

We hope that these changes can let more players enjoy Dead Cells as we intended, and if the unaltered version of Dead Cells already hits the right balance of challenge and progression for you, then these changes are all optional - just leave the game as it is and continue having fun :)

If you know anyone who didn't try Dead Cells or put it down because they found it inaccessible, then please do let them know they can come and give it a go!

What are the new options?

All the changes that are described below were tested with a panel of players with various disabilities at AbleGamers, and of course the usual legends in our Steam community. Thanks to everyone who helped us to figure everything out!


Input

These options are designed to address mobility disabilities.

• Hold to second jump
  
• Hold to roll
  
• Shield toggle option, instead of long press
  
• More options to customise controls, especially actions that require a long press or a complex input + joystick action

Additional input options


Visual

These are designed for players with various visual disabilities such as limited visual acuity, colour blindness or who suffer from sensory overload.

• Customisable interface size and transparency
  
• Choice of game font styles (including pixellated)
  
• Game font colour customisation
  
• Font size can be changed for item names, item descriptions and dialogues
  
• Stats (Brutality / Tactics / Survival ) colour customisation - affects the stats colour for the HUD, menus, icons, weapons, items etc
  
• Texts in the stat selection menu no longer use "Red", "Purple" and "Green", but "Brutality", "Tactic" and "Survival"
  
• Display stats icons (fist, lightning, plus sign) next to character stats
  
• Add an outline to the Beheaded, projectiles, enemies, active skills, NPCs and secrets. Outline colours can be customised
  
• Add a colored filter between the background and foreground. The color and opacity of the filter can be freely customized
  
• Synergy and stat icons in equipment menu to help readability
  
• No-blood mode
  
• Adjustable particle limit (reduce the particle effect from enemies dying or weapon effects)
  
• Option to toggle critical hit feedback
  
• Adjust the size of the attack announcement exclamation mark

Reduced UI size


Transparent UI


Font colour menu


Stat icons displayed next to items


Outlines applied to Beheaded and enemies (plus customised stats colours in bottom left)


Sound

Finally, we have auditory options.

• Adjust volume of different sound effects separately

Everything is collected in a specific accessibility menu to gather all these options in one place! There's no point making an accessibility menu inaccessible...


Assist Mode

This mode exists in it's own menu and allows you to make several adjustments to the gameplay.

• Multiple lives – each time you die you can resurrect from the beginning of the biome (this effectively already existed by quitting the game when you die, now it's just 'official'). You can choose between 1, 3, 7 or infinite lives. This is targeted for players who have involuntary movements or activity, such as muscle spasms, to have another chance if their run is ruined by something that is out of their control.
  
• Auto-hit – automatically target nearby enemies with your primary melee weapon. The one time that the mobile version was ahead of us! This will automatically attack with your primary weapon, allowing players to just manage their secondary weapon and skills, reducing the need for rapid inputs.
  
• Adjustable trap damage, enemy damage and enemy health in % increments, plus toggable options for slower parry window and trap speed. This is meant to allow specific, dare we say delicate, adjustment of the game’s challenge. For instance, the standard trap speed can make a Challenge Room require a series of rapid inputs to get through it successfully, which might not be doable for some players. But, if they find the rest of the gameplay balanced already, they can just change this specific part of the game and leave the rest as it is.
  
• Option to instantly reveal the whole map.

NOTE: We wanted to add a game speed slider at the beginning but it just isn't possible without breaking the game.


I don't really know where to put this in the post so it's going here, but the "Show Kill Count" option is now enabled by default as we've seen way too many people who don't know that this exists, which is criminal.



This update also brings some reworks of older weapons, which were in pretty dire need of a tune-up:

• Barnacle: new crit condition on bleeding or poisoned targets to make it less awkward (and bad).
  
• Tentacle: lots of bug fixes. It should be way more reliable now.
  
• Magnetic Grenade: full rework: it doesn't send enemies flying around (often in your head) but instead pulls them towards the explosion.
  
• Biters pets: now way more resistant to attacks and effects that don't specifically target them.
  
• Corrupted Power: now in % instead of a flat bonus. No other difference functionally speaking.
  
• Wings of the Crow: lots of bug fixes.
  
• Decoy: can be manually detonated after a few moments (it's not a grenade, but you don't have to awkwardly wait for it to explode if you don't want to)

The cost of most of the beginner items has been drastically cut, to make the early game less tedious for new players and to make new items a viable unlock option while trying to get your flask, gold and other useful upgrades. This should also make it easier to catch up on your item pool when starting a new save.

Negative feedback for Assist Mode during alpha & beta

Thankfully we saw pretty much zero negative feedback on the general options that we're introducing. However, the Assist Mode has seen a certain amount of 'pushback'. Rather than ignoring this part of the community, we're going to address it here to be fully transparent with everyone.

The Assist Mode is designed to let people to enjoy the game who would otherwise be excluded from doing so.

We recognise that some people who don't 'need' the mode will use it anyway and as a result they will die less and won't learn from mistakes, which is a key part of roguelites.
However, we've put multiple messages explaining this in-game, so it's on them if they want to go ahead and use the Mode anyway.
It's also a single-player game, so people are free to play and enjoy the game as they want, and it doesn't affect anyone else's enjoyment of the game. The only area that it would have affected other players is the Daily Challenge leaderboard, and here we have prevented scores from being registered if players are using Assist Mode.

We are also not disabling achievements for players who use these options. As said above, the intent of this update is to open the game up to players who would otherwise be excluded from enjoying it. We are not going to make that possible and then take achievements away from those players.



If you’re a Dead Cells player who doesn’t need any of the content that we’re introducing in this update, don’t worry we have plenty of shiny new things to introduce to Dead Cells this year!


Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook

Hey everyone,


We're back with a pretty expansive beta for our upcoming accessibility update. If you haven't heard about what we're planning, go and read our previous alpha post.

Otherwise, here are all the changes that we've made with the new beta...

Balancing

• Reverted the changes on Crowbar.
  
• Barnacle no longer crits on bleeding enemies.
  
• Machete & pistol: The third hit now ignores side shields.

Graphics & UI

• Added an option to toggle the Crit Feedbacks.
  
• Added an option to toggle Synergy Icons.
  
• Tweaked the Crit Feedback on the HUD to something less visually jarring.
  
• Changed all the Synergy Icons, as well as the Affect Icons, to make them more readable.
  
• Outlines' colors can now be changed.
  
• Added an option to toggle an outline for NPCs.
  
• Added an option to change the text size of Item Names, Item Item Descriptions and Dialogues.
  
• The HUD size can now be increased.
  
• Added the Assist Mode to the Main Menu.
  
• Added an option to increase the size of the Attack Announces.
  
• The Brutality / Tactic / Survival color override now apply to the HUD, menus, icons, weapons, items, etc.
  
• Added a new font to choose from: "Adys".
  
• Added an an option to add a colored filter between the background and foreground. The color and opacity of the filter can be freely customized.
  
• Reorganized the entirety of the Options menu and added a new "Accessibility" section.
  
• Texts in the Stat Selection Menu no longer use "Red", "Purple" and "Green", but "Brutality", "Tactic" and "Survival".

Quality of life

• "Show Kill Count" option is now enabled by default.
  
• The number of lives with Assist Mode's continue mode can now be changed.
  
• Added an option to prevent "Auto-Attack" from breaking doors.
  
• Added an Assist Mode option to instantly reveal the whole map.

Mods

• Added a way to modify the Assist Mode's values through mods.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a crash when scrolling through the credits.
  
• Thunder Shield is now longer considered to be a ranged weapon.
  
• Fixed a crash when entering Graveyard.
  
• Fixed a bug where the mob displayed by the Mirror would appear glitched out in some situations.
  
• Fixed Face Flask's "Volley of Arrows" affix not dealing any damage.
  
• Fixed a bug where scrolling in the options felt "bumpy".
  
• Fixed the left-most part of the HUD never fading back in, in case the player would ever be behind the HUD.
  
• Fixed Options Sliders, with ranges different to 0-100, not working properly with a mouse.
  
• Fixed the control label being wrong in the Controller or Keyboard Rebind menus.
  
• Fixed a bug where Assist Mode's Continue would not work if the player died by a curse.
  
• Fixed a bug with Options Lists, where the text would overlap with the arrows.
  
• Fixed Golden Bat Kamikaze appearing in the ground in the Training Room.
  
• Fixed the War Javelin being instantly thrown after teleporting, when "Hold to Attack" is enabled.
  
• Fixed multiple issues when going back to an older version, after tweaking some settings in Update 29. Now, going back to an older version will create a clean version of the Options, while keeping what you changed on Update 29.

If you want to try out the beta and don't know how then BACKUP YOUR SAVE FILE, 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.

You can leave any feedback here or on our official Discord - there are two channels called accessibility-alpha-discussion and accessibility-alpha-feedback. We also have a bug report form specific to this beta.

Barring any shenanigans, the next post will be for the update release so keep an eye out for that!

Cheers,
Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
  
• Official Reddit
  
• Motion Twin Twitter
  
• Dead Cells' Facebook