Dead Cells

Dead Cells
Developer(s)	Motion Twin
Publisher(s)	Motion Twin
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Release	August 7, 2018
Genre(s)	Roguelike, metroidvania
Mode(s)	Single player

Dead Cells is a roguelike-metroidvania hybrid video game developed and published by Motion Twin. Following about a year in early access, Dead Cells was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on August 7, 2018.

In the game, the player takes the role of a body of cells that take control of a corpse in a dungeon, through which they must fight their way out. The player gains various weapons, treasure and other tools through exploration of the procedurally-generated levels to fight undead creatures within it. At times, the player may gain "cells", a type of in-game currency that can be used to purchase permanent upgrades for the player if they reach a vendor near the end of each level. If they fail to reach this vendor before dying, they lose all the cells they gained and must start again. Motion Twin was inspired by The Binding of Isaac in developing the game.

Gameplay

Dead Cells is described as a "roguevania", a combination of procedurally-generated roguelike games and action-exploration-based metroidvania games.^[1] The player controls a mass of cells that occupy and control the body of a deceased prisoner at the start of each game. As they explore a series of dungeons and fight the creatures within, they collect weapons, armor, abilities, power-ups, and money. Some enemies will also drop cells when defeated, which can be used to obtain permanent power-ups such as additional health potions or new items that can be bought or found in later runs.^[2] These cells can only be spent at the end of a dungeon section; if a player dies before then, they lose all collected cells.^[3]

Each level is procedurally generated by merging of predesigned sections in a random configuration along with random placement of enemies and items.^[2] The game's combat is said to be similar to the Souls series, with difficult enemies with certain behaviors the player can learn, and where frequent player-character death is a fundamental part of the game.^[2] At intervals throughout the game, the player must also defeat boss enemies known as "Keepers." Currently, there are four Keepers in the game—The Concierge, Conjunctivious, The Time Keeper, and The Hand of the King.

The game includes Twitch integration, allowing viewers, via the stream's chat, to influence the game, such as voting for which upgrade paths the player should take.^[4]

Plot

The plot of Dead Cells is minimalistic, only giving bits of information to the player. Taking place on an unnamed island, the player character is referred to as the Prisoner, a humanoid with a pile of gelee or plantmatter in place of a head. The Prisoner is a silent protagonist, but occasionally shows some personality traits such as confusion or frustration (giving the finger on several occasions). The Prisoner is immortal, as every time he or she dies their "head" manages to lurch its way back to the starting prison. According to a guard, the Prisoner is said to have been executed for some crime, but the nature of the crime is never specified.

Every time the Prisoner dies, the island reconfigures itself, which serves as an explanation for the rogue-like mechanics. In the game, the reason for this is specified as the island being a living organism that evolves over time.

Development

Dead Cells's developer Motion Twin had been developing games for the browser and mobile gaming market since 2001. The studio found that competition in the mobile market required more investment to make viable games, and decided to switch focus to develop what they considered their "passion project", a game that was "something hardcore, ultra-niche, with pixel art and ridiculous difficulty" that they knew would be a potential risk in terms of interested players.^[5]

Initially, Motion Twin had set out to make a follow-up to their browser game Die2Nite, which was cooperative tower defense game for up to forty players released in 2008; most of the game, players would work together to form defenses around a town, and then during a night phase, wait to see if their town survived waves of attacks by zombies. Initially they wanted to have the sequel improved by allowing players to take actions and fight during the night phase, implementing free to play mechanics. While this version worked well with large number of players, Motion Twin found it was not very exciting for single players.^[6] In 2014, they stripped down the game to basically a single-player experience between preparation and combat, and took it to an event called the Big Indie Pitch, where the idea came in second place. Inspired by this, they decided to strip away the game's preparation phase and focus it as a combat-based game. The process of figuring out how to keep and work from these combat elements took about a year up through the end of 2015.^[6]

To tighten the gameplay, Motion Twin took inspiration of the Engineer class from Team Fortress 2, where the use of turrets and other buildable items helps to strengthen the character's abilities, and took Dead Cells into an action platformer where the player used weapons along with a variety of skills (including some elements they had developed for the tower defense approach).^[7] They did not want players to get used to having a single weapon/skill combination that they used indefinitely, and arranged the roguelike elements as to require the player to try out new combinations of weapons and skills as they progressed in a given run to defeat newer foes, and keeping what items they would get in a random manner every time they started a new game.^[7] Motion Twin's producer, Steve Filby, said that The Binding of Isaac was a significant influence, as there, the way the game proceeds "is entirely based on the choice of items that you get. That’s the fun of the game."^[7] To give the player enough options, the developers crafted about 50 different weapons, avoiding having too much duplication in how each weapon worked so that there would be unique gameplay possibilities with each. The team used an iterative process in gameplay and graphics and art so that each of these weapons also exhibited unique animations or behavior so that the player would get a sense of a tactile response and the special nature of each weapon.^[7]

Motion Twin opted to use Steam's Early access approach to both gauge interest and to get real-time feedback from players on game features and the balance from procedural generation.^[5] They also feared the stigma around indie games at the time, fueled by industry speculation of an "indiepocalypse" where too many indie games would have caused a collapse of the games market around 2015, but which never occurred.^[8] They did not want to release too early within early access, and made sure the first version available, while only about 30 to 40% complete, had tight combat and gameplay controls that players would appreciate.^[6] Early access also allowed them to address balance issues, as they did not want to punish players for a specific style of play, and used the feedback to address this. This also allowed them to make sure that regular combat encounters should be short, and that maneuvering within the game's levels itself was not a challenge to the player.^[8] The developers planned for the game to spend about a year in early access before its full release, during which time they fleshed out the content and incorporated much of the player feedback on both bug reports and feature suggestions into the game.^[6] Lead designer Sébastien Bénard estimated that 40 to 50% of the features in the final game were drawn from feedback during early access.^[9]

The early access period was launched on May 10, 2017 with support for Microsoft Windows, and released macOS and Linux versions in early access on June 26, 2018.^[10] In November 2017 the game was also released on GOG.com as part of their drive to provide an alternate way to purchase games that are in development.^[11] In January 2018, Motion Twin also stated they are planning on console development for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with a planned release in August 2018 to correspond with the Windows' version leaving early access.^[12][13] Motion Twin does not anticipate creating a sequel, and instead focused on adding a robust modding system for the personal computer versions to allow players to expand the game following release.^[9]

Dead Cells was fully released on August 7, 2018 for computers and consoles. Retail editions of the game are expected to also ship later in August 2018.^[14][15]

Reception

About a year from its early access release, Dead Cells has sold over 730,000 units,^[23] and exceeded 850,000 units just prior to its full release.^[9]

The game was a runner-up for "Best Action Game" at IGN's Best of 2017 Awards,^[24] and was nominated for "Best Visual Design" and "Best Indie Game" at the 2018 Golden Joystick Awards.^[25]

References

External links

• Official website