Dead Cells News

Heya everyone,

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

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

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

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

• Go to your Steam game library.
  
• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".
  
• Select the tab "Betas".
  
• In the first dropdown box select "beta".
  
• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
  
• Start playing.
  

Cheers,
EE and the MT team.

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

Community Highlights:

3D Slumbering Sanctuary, by Khang Tran



Dead Cells Fan Art, by Daniëlle Aurora Verburg

Heya everyone,

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

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

Here comes the traditional reminder on how to access the alpha branch:

• Go to your Steam game library.
  
• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".
  
• Select the tab "Betas".
  
• In the first dropdown box select "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
  
• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
  
• Start playing.
  

Cheers!
Evil Empire and the Motion Twin Team

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

Community Highlights:

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



"My boy" by U/DoctorPicklepuss

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Dead Cells is a rogue-lite, metroidvania inspired, action-platformer. You'll explore a sprawling, ever-changing castle... assuming you’re able to fight your way past its keepers in 2D souls-lite combat. No checkpoints. Kill, die, learn, repeat.

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NOTE: Console versions (including Switch) will come as soon as we're through certification, usually 2-3 weeks.

Hey all!

Today we’d like to present for your consideration update number fourteen: “Who’s the Boss?” I’d also like to mention that we’re doing an AMA over here tomorrow for anyone who has questions and such. Now, to business:


https://youtu.be/GDLS0bNgTTo


This update brings a bunch of new content to the game, in the form of monsters to kill and new weapons to unlock! The idea behind the update is relatively simple, bosses are challenging and killing them should be rewarding.

We find it frustrating when we fight our way through an hour long run, make it to The Hand and promptly get rekt in 10 seconds flat. To take the sting out of the injustice of it all we’ve added in some new monsters based on each of the bosses. You’ll find them in the levels immediately preceding the boss they’re based on and they’ll be equipped with one of the most deadly or uncharacteristic attacks of their master.

For example, here we have the Sweeper, whose main function seems to be viscera cleanup detail. You’ll find him in the ramparts tidying up, waiting to send you off to the bin or finally teach you about the flame attack of the Concierge...



One of my favourites is the Automaton, because I always get slammed by the Time Keeper’s dash. The Automaton will appear out of thin air, rapid dash across the screen and leave you wondering when the hell we added that to the game. Hopefully you’ll get good at recognising when she’s coming then rolling to safety or introducing a shield to her face. (and yes I’m aware my screenshots are rubbish).




Moving on to the weapons! Which is after all the fun bit… We like the idea of winning feeling good. You want the first time you make it past the Time Keeper to be special. So we’ve added a weapon based on one of the attacks of each boss, which you’ll of course unlock when you beat the boss in question.




This gets it’s own heading because it’s literally been a year since the requests started coming in, and you’ve been very insistent on the subject of the cooking equipment... “pan when?”, “can we have the pan?”, “when are you going to give us the pan?” and so on. So here it is!
Note, the pan slap is pretty much the reverse of the dagger…


This update adds support for the glass cannon melee tactics build. It’s not as safe as a survival build or a ranged tactics loadout, but we’re really trying to provide a bunch of different ways to play the game based on what you like, rather than just having one meta that makes sense at all times regardless of the items that drop.



That’s pretty much it, except for the usual quality of life and bug fixes which you can see over here on the patch notes site.


In other news, a lot of people have been asking what’s next for Motion Twin, so here’s the deal…

The majority of the Motion Twin team are working on the next game, or at least making a whole bunch of prototypes and brainstorming about what the next game is going to be. There’s no firm direction yet, but we’re testing new technology, weird and wonderful game designs and a whole bunch of different art styles.

(this was a proto that didn’t make it…)

Once we come up with something that keeps everyone up at night dreaming and scheming then we’ll get cracking and go through the whole process of building and releasing a game again.

Meanwhile… Some of the Motion Twin team decided it would be best to keep on keeping on with Dead Cells, for financial reasons (obviously) but also because we’re not done with DC… There’s a STACK more ideas we’d like to try and so far the community that has formed around the game is awesome and keeps wanting more, so that’s a very good reason for us to keep working on the game.

So, given that Motion Twin is a workers co-op and that this makes growing beyond 8-10 people quite difficult, those of us who wanted to keep Dead Celling decided to start another company to do just that.

And so Evil Empire was born. In fact it doesn’t really change a terrible lot, three of us have been working on Dead Cells since the beginning and we’re all still in the same office as the rest of the Motion Twin team.



Motion Twin retains complete creative control over the game and everything that we do is subject to their approval, though we’re obviously here to suggest cool new things and bring new levels, monsters and items into the game.

What this all really means is that there will be more Dead Cells, a second Motion Twin game and eventually a completely new IP from Evil Empire, so hopefully it’ll be a win win for everyone.


Nope, the whole thing stays as it was, well hopefully we’ll get better at trying to sim-ship console and PC, gathering feedback and generally not pushing game breaking bugs into the game, but otherwise, you can still hit us up via Discord, Reddit, here on Steam or the other social networks.

Also we'll put out a road-map ASAP.


As usual we finish this broadcast with some most excellent contributions from the community. Enjoy!

By Alseiz

By jumpyclumps

Hello everyone,

The 14th "Who's the Boss?" update is now available in the beta branch. It brings new enemies, new weapons, balancing, lots of QoL and bug fixing. Also three Melee Tactical mutations allowing a new kind of Assassin/ Glass Cannon playstyle on which we would love your feedback. Is it fun for you? Is it viable at the Boss Cell level you're currently playing? Do you have any suggestions to improve on it?

Well, if you have any feedback for us, we want to hear it. A thread on Reddit has been opened to centralize feedback and discuss the new content and balancing, but we're also often present on the #current-update-discussion channel on Dead Cells' Discord.

Cheers,
The MT Team

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

Dead Cells' comic, by u/luzufu



"Guess I'll die", by TeapotHater



Badass Beheaded's cosplay, by Dawlight