Home » Souls-inspired roguelike Dead Cells comes to Steam Early Access in May

Souls-inspired roguelike Dead Cells comes to Steam Early Access in May

Motion Twin has announced that Dead Cells will be making its way to PC in Early Access form next month. Here’s why you should prepare to die again.

One of the things that piques my curiosity in a video game is how it handles death. And indeed, for a lot of games, death is a ‘game over’ state, after which you reload your last save or checkpoint. Roguelikes take an extreme, permanent-death route of forcing you start over. And then there are games like Dead Cells, which proclaims that in this game, ‘death is the new backtracking’.

Dead Cells is a roguelike, but also a Metroidvania. The devs like to call it a ‘Roguevania’, which sounds really not that bad a word? Except now I can’t use it to make a game about a land full of vain rogues. As with roguelikes, death will be permanent, but certain upgrades you find in the game will stick with you, and will allow you access to new, previously unreachable areas. There’s some procedural generation in the levels, but the overall world will be fixed.

The combat involves lots of hacking, slashing and arrow-shooting, and bears a ‘tough but fair’ attitude in-line with Souls games. Much like them, the weapons you use will each have a unique feel. And you will roll. A lot. Or well, your head will, at any rate.

Here’s a trailer showing off how the game plays. Be warned, there’s quite a few light flashes.

Dead Cells is being developed by the French collective Motion Twin, whose website likes to point out that they have no boss. They’re a fairly prolific developer, but this is their first game to make it to Steam.

Dead Cells is hitting Steam Early Access on May 10th, and will be available on PC only. You can check it out here.