Dead Cells is a 2018 roguelike-Metroidvania game developed by Motion Twin and Evil Empire, and published by Motion Twin. The player takes the role of an amorphous creature called the Prisoner. As the Prisoner, the player must fight their way out of a diseased island in order to slay the island's King. The player gains weapons, treasure and other tools through exploration of the procedurally-generated levels. Dead Cells features a permadeath system, causing the player to lose all items and other abilities upon dying. A currency called Cells can be collected from defeated enemies, allowing the player to purchase permanent upgrades.
Production of Dead Cells began after Motion Twin planned development for a follow-up to their previous browser game Die2Nite. The developers decided to replace the cooperative gameplay of Die2Nite with a single-player experience focused around combat and action. They took inspiration from the Engineer character class from Team Fortress 2, and remade Dead Cells into an action platform game where the player would utilize a variety of combinations of weapons and skills.
The game was released for Linux, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on August 7, 2018. A mobile port for iOS was released on August 28, 2019, and an Android port was released in 2020. A version for PlayStation 5 was added on June 29, 2023. After release, Motion Twin supported the game with several updates and expansions. The game received positive reviews from critics, who praised its combat style and level design, with specific praise being directed towards the randomized levels and weapons. By March 2021, the game had sold 5 million copies.
Dead Cells is a 2D side-scrolling "roguevania", a combination of the roguelike and Metroidvania genres.[2][3] The player controls the Prisoner, an amorphous creature who journeys across an island full of mutated monsters.[4] When the player dies, they lose all weapons and upgrades obtained in a playthrough, excluding a few permanent items.[5][6] Weapons primarily include swords, bows, shields, and placeable traps that harm enemies that come near them. In combat, the Prisoner can dodge across the ground to avoid the attacks of enemies, or jump over the attacks. Dodging into an enemy's space allows the Prisoner to move through them and attack from behind.[7] When falling from a height, the Prisoner can slam into the ground, allowing them to stun enemies, or allow the Prisoner to fall from heights without getting stunned themselves.[8][9]
The game's combat is comparable to the Dark Souls series, with difficult enemies possessing certain behaviors the player can learn, and where frequent player-character death is a fundamental part of the game.[10] As they explore a series of levels and fight the creatures within, the player can collect an in-game currency called Cells from defeated foes. Cells can be used to purchase permanent upgrades, such as potions that restore hit points or additional weapons that may be randomly obtained during a playthrough.[6][10] These Cells can only be spent at the end of a dungeon section; if the player dies before then, they lose all collected Cells.[11] New upgrade options can be found by locating blueprints inside dungeons, which must be taken out of the level to be collected.[12]
Levels are procedurally generated by the merging of predesigned sections in a random configuration, creating dungeons with many different placements of enemies and items.[10] Between dungeons, the player can obtain a limited number of mutations, benefits which grant unique bonuses to the Prisoner's capabilities that last until they die.[8] The player can reforge weapons during this time, giving the reforged weapons new effects during combat.[9] Inside the dungeons, the player can find hidden Power Scrolls, which increase the Prisoner's hit points and increase the damage of weapons depending upon the tool's classification of Brutality, Tactics, or Survival.[5][7] The player can also find multiple permanent upgrades called Runes, which allow for new methods of travel in the game's levels. Runes can be obtained by defeating powerful Elite enemies, which are located inside the game's levels.[9] Each upgrade requires the previous Rune in order to obtain the next one.[8]
Taking place on an unnamed island, the player character is the Prisoner, an amorphous creature capable of possessing dead bodies located in the depths of the island. While the "head" of the Prisoner is immortal, the bodies it possesses are not, and "dying" will force the Prisoner to return back to the Prisoners' Quarters to find another corpse. The Prisoner itself does not speak, limiting its interactions with non-player characters (NPCs) to gestures and body language alone. The player is occasionally shown the thoughts of the Prisoner through dialogue boxes.
The Prisoner awakens in the depths of the island's prison, suffering from amnesia. A soldier encounters the Prisoner, and mentions that they can no longer die. The Prisoner tries to escape the prison, but their head is forced back to the depths as soon as its body is destroyed. Between subsequent escape attempts, the Prisoner learns that the island was once a mighty kingdom that fell when a plague known as "The Malaise" transformed most of the kingdom's citizens into mutated monsters.
After escaping the Prisoners' Quarters, the Prisoner decides to kill the island's reclusive King, believing that his death will cause something on the island to "change". While leaving the Quarters, the Prisoner meets with the Collector, a hooded figure that trades Cells in exchange for items and weaponry. After fighting through the island's Malaise-infected locales, the Prisoner reaches the King's throne room and succeeds in slaying the comatose monarch. However, the King's corpse violently explodes in the process, destroying the Prisoner's host body. The Prisoners' head crawls out from the burning fragments of the destroyed throne, where it exits the throne room through a fountain's drain. The drain leads back to the Prisoners' Quarters, where the resurrected Prisoner ponders the consequences of the King's death.
The Rise of the Giant downloadable content expands the plot of Dead Cells, providing the game with alternative endings. The Prisoner gains access to a new area of the island, the Cavern, which houses a titanic undead Giant. Upon his defeat, the Giant reveals that the Prisoner is actually the King himself, and blames him for the destruction of the kingdom. After defeating the final boss, the Prisoner can collect Boss Cells, in-game modifiers that are used to increase the difficulty of the game. If the player collects all five Boss Cells and reaches the throne room, they are able to gain access to an additional level called the Astrolab. At the top of the Astrolab, the Prisoner meets the Collector; he tells the Prisoner that he has been trading for Cells in order to create the Panacea, the ultimate cure for the Malaise. Upon producing the Panacea and drinking it, the Collector goes mad and attacks the Prisoner. The Prisoner manages to ingest some of the Panacea before the Collector's defeat, which causes their host body to disappear. Disappointed with the Panacea, the head returns to the Quarters to possess another corpse.
When the Prisoner reaches the throne room again, they discover that the King's body has reappeared undamaged. The head of the Prisoner abandons its host body and attaches to the King's, restoring the Prisoner's memories and allowing him to speak. However, the King's body is infected with the Malaise, and he continues to the Astrolab to face the Collector. This time, upon the Collector's defeat, the Panacea cures the King and "binds his body and soul". The King returns to his throne, where he is confronted by a look-alike of the Prisoner intent on slaying him. The King and the look-alike battle each other in a duel.
Dead Cells' 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 profitable 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 thought would be a potential risk for gaining player interest.[13]
Initially, Motion Twin had set out to make a follow-up to their browser game Die2Nite,[14] which was a cooperative tower defense game for up to forty players released in 2008; for most of the game, players would work together to form defenses around a town, and then during the game's night phase, wait to see if the town survived waves of attacks by zombies. Motion Twin wanted to have improve the sequel by allowing players to take actions and fight during the night phase, while 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. In 2014, they stripped down the game to 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 in a contest. Motion Twin decided to remove the preparation phase and focus the game around constant action. The process of figuring out how to keep and work with combat elements took a year up through the end of 2015.[15]
To tighten the gameplay, Motion Twin took inspiration of the Engineer character class from Team Fortress 2, where the use of turrets and other buildable items helps to strengthen the character's abilities, and remade Dead Cells into an action platform game where the player used weapons along with a variety of skills. They did not want players to get used to having a single weapon/skill combination that they used indefinitely, and arranged the roguelike elements to require the player to try out new combinations of weapons and skills as they progressed. Motion Twin's producer Steve Filby cited The Binding of Isaac as a significant influence, highlighting its item-driven gameplay. To give the player enough options, the developers crafted about 50 different weapons, using an iterative process in gameplay, graphics, and art to ensure each of these weapons exhibited unique animations or behavior.[16]
7fc3f7cf58