The only good cells are Dead Cells

King of Posters
#1

Dead Cells is a pretty good game. It’s been mentioned here, so I know a couple of folks are playing it already, but I hadn’t seen anything too substantial on it. It’s a self-described rogue-lite that compares itself to Castlevania and Dark Souls, which sounds like procedurally-generated indie game marketing, but it plays well.

You start each run with a double jump, a ground pound, a dodge roll, a sword that can do a 3-hit combo, and a bow or a shield, depending on your preference. It feels like just the right amount of buttons – a decent variety of moves without an overwhelming amount of options (jumping and rolling is all the defense you need, I haven’t really tried the shields).

Combat is maybe a little repetitive initially – hit X three times, roll, repeat – but that’s OK by me. The weapons and items you find during a run encourage you to change up your approach enough. It actually scratches the itch I have that’s been telling me to buy Diablo III.

Try it out ya’ll.

#2

It was made by a French studio with a huge amount of experience making small mobile games that I’d never heard of. It looks like this is their effort to make an ambitious indie game for the Steam audience. The practical experience toiling in the trenches really shows, this game concept is very standard by now but it’s strangely more compelling than most other action roguelikes. The game mechanics are a bit janky but always in the direction of making the player feel creative and/or powerful, which is the most direct way it feels like Dark Souls.

I’ve played it out for now but plan to get back to it when it comes out of early access.

#3

Hey mods copy my posts in GUPT to this thread

#4

The AI is pretty bad too, in a good way. I’ve grown to appreciate really dumb computers in games.

1 Like
#5

I feel like there’s something to be said W/R/T Symphony of the Night and other castlevania games (and even dark souls) that a lot of games like this haven’t really understood that well.

In Dead Cells I haven’t felt a particular connection to any of the areas of the game besides The Ramparts and that’s purely on a level of good use of pixelart and parallax scrolling.

In Symphony (and even Dark Souls) Alucard moves so slow and the levels are so much bigger than the player that you have to spend time in them and you create your own preferred route through them - it’s just not osmething I can see happening in a lot of these games where the focus is on randomly generated design.

#6

I was thinking about that after my first couple of runs, specifically how I’d prefer if this weren’t a procedural roguelike because I wanted more substantial / rewarding exploration. But now I think I want the opposite.

The mechanics are satisfying on their own and the nonlinear level structure doesn’t add much. Might as well ditch the map and the forks to nowhere and give me a straightforward death march to the goal where I don’t have to double back for anything.

#7

The game is definitely more interesting from the Black Bridge onwards in terms of locations but they still don’t grab me the way they usually do in games like this. The Black Bridge itself is wasted on a lame bossfight!

#8

Did anyone play through this after it got out of Early Access? Thoughts? I just finished Hollow Knight and am hungry for some more metroidvania action.

#9

It’s a fast-action variant of post-Symphony of the Night Castlevania. It feels really good in the hand although most of the friction comes when dropping into a crowded room. Level design is not really a focus; it’s mostly about learning enemy matchups and your moves and the extremely tight clutches it uses to keep you on one more run (when you die, it respawns you with money waiting to spend immediately with no choice to quit – devious).

Some weapon builds are obviously intentionally easier which requires you to give up on easier builds to make it interesting, which is obnoxious.

Tone issues with the writing destroy the atmosphere (the art suggests something better than the ‘lol Dark Souls’ the words produce) but that isn’t a major part of the game. Just a bummer.

On a personal note after it burned through my office a group of people independently picked up Galak-Z when looking for a replacement and unknowingly gushed about it to me. then I pulled off my mask

3 Likes
#10

The in-level writing came late in development; it was better served by the expressive silent gestures they had for earlier interactions but I think they didn’t have the time nor the in-team talent to do more with it. You can only shrug so much!

Mechanically, it’s crunchy. I play it purely on kb+m and it fares just as well with playing on a normal controller. Most weapons let you get in at least one attack before you need to respond to enemies and the dodge-roll/parry lets you remain on the attack in many situations. There are enemies that break that mold but they come later when you have more verbs to throw at them.

Bosses are frustrating because they have fairly unique moves and the only times you have a chance to practice against them is when you reach them. They are going to be the end point of many runs, particularly the King’s Hand at the end. They do feel like they’re meant to be mainly an attrition fight though I’m not sure they’re intended to be, especially when it’s combined with the NG+ ramping up the difficulty and reducing in-game sources of healing. I’ve also seen evidence that every attack is able to be dodged (and have done no-hits on the first couple).

Also it’s the first rogue-like I’ve encountered that, in addition to having a door with goodies for speedrunning through a level, also has a door for killing X number of enemies in a row without getting hit.

2 Likes
#11

Yeah, I don’t mean to say that I didn’t like it, it’s very good at the things it’s trying to do.