OVERALL IMPRESSION:
Dead Cells is a metroidvania, roguelike action platformer with a retro pixel art design. What’s apparent immediately is that this is some of the best combat in the genre. This is due to simple but clever combat mechanic design that is crisp but challenging. Allowing for varying playstyles and rewarding aptly timed maneuvers while maintaining a relentless pace to obliterate your foes. The procedural generation of levels, souls-like difficulty with plenty of secrets to unravel and builds to experiment with make each run interesting with much to discover. This isn’t a title for everyone. But those that vibe with the souls-like difficulty and retro action platformer genre will find a captivating metroidvania experience.
GAMEPLAY:
The core gameplay is a simple loop of fighting and dying. As The Prisoner, who is seeking to escape you discover that you no longer die, but that once your body is destroyed you return to the depths of the prison. Along the journey, you collect other cells from killing enemies and use these cells to gain valuable upgrades in the meta progression system.
Combat Basics:
The overall combat system is simple yet challenging. You have access to a primary and secondary weapon as well as traps. Each of these can also be upgraded along your journey. You also have a dodge roll that allows you to move through enemies. During any given run, upgrades in the meta system will persist while your other items and upgrades will be reset. You can acquire buffs to three main categories: your damage with weapons (brutality), damage with devices/traps (tactics) and survivability (health points).This allows you to develop builds that are based on your weapons and or secondary tools/traps. In addition, you can access certain mutations. These are additional unique buffs that can provide different abilities.
Combat is quick and visceral. Rewarding both speed and precision to avoid damage like in most roguelike games. The dodge ability that allows you to move through enemies is simple, but works perfectly in this type of game giving you to ability to maneuver as needed to avoid damage and/or get behind enemies. Moreover, you have a stomp ability that can activated off a jump that will slam you down to the ground. It can be a powerful ability to take out enemies. Action is high paced allowing you to dispatch an array of enemies quite quickly and rewarding the player for doing so with access treasure (cells) for completing sections within a certain time frame (or by avoiding all damage). Most of the gameplay revolves around exploring new sections, with various waypoints that allow you to teleport around the map. Between sections there are safe zones that allow you to use your acquired cells (a method to ‘save’ progress) and purchase upgrades/refill your health potion.
Exploration:
Throughout the journey there are plenty of secrets and mysteries to uncover. There isn’t much explanation and that’s not entirely a bad thing. Instead the player is encouraged to just play the game without having their hand held. This is quite liberating as most main stream titles offer an over abundance of explanation and remove the element of discovery and experimentation that made classic games so much fun when developers weren’t worried you wouldn’t be able to figure something out. On the flip side, it can be confusing as you won’t understand everything until you’ve advanced further into the game. Overall, the sense of exploration and discovery is rewarding and fun. It’s a quality that we need to see more of in modern games.
STORY:
The story is quite simple. As The Prisoner, you are trying to escape. Along the way you discover other NPC’s that offer items and/or side objectives that give you small glimpses into the world. As you have amnesia, most of the story unfolds like a mystery. There’s nothing too extravagant here in the narrative as the action combat is what takes center stage in a game like this.
ART & CHARACTER DESIGN:
The overall art design is quite reminiscent of classic games while still being able to establish its own unique and memorable take. The aesthetic matches well with the overall game as classic games back in the day were also challenging and employed souls-like challenges well before the term was ever coined. The other nice feature is the ability to unlock and acquire skins through playing the game. Allowing you to change the look and color of your character is a nice touch as I firmly believe the more a game allows the player creative expression the more immersive and intriguing it can be.
MUSIC & SOUND:
Similar to the best classic games, the music and sound in Dead Cells is well executed. The soundscape can be both epic and serene in different moments accentuating whatever is happening at the time. The sound effects also contribute to the ‘feel’ of combat making it very satisfying when you completely destroy an array of foes.
CHALLENGES:
The main challenge in this game is more a quality of the genre than the game itself. If you’ve played any souls-like or roguelike games you know the time and experience that is needed to understand builds, perfect your timing to attack and avoid damage and understand boss movements and mechanics. If you love this type of genre you’ll feel right at home. If you’re new or don’t enjoy this level of challenge it can be frustrating as dying, resetting and slow meta-progression are all innate aspects of the genre. There are some nice features that the game does employ to help ease that journey, such as the ability to practice certain boss fights and or acquire certain aspect buffs that are more powerful but come with some drawbacks.
CLOSING THOUGHTS:
With its visceral combat, challenge and exploration, this is one of the top titles in the genre. However, its not for everyone. Understanding the type of title you enjoy and those you don’t are essential to knowing who you are as a gamer. If you enjoy a souls-like or roguelike level of challenge this is a title that you’ll want to give a shot.
THANKS:
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GAME DETAILS
PLATFORMS: Consoles, PC, MacOS, iOS, Android
RELEASE: 2018
DEVELOPER/PUBLISHER: Motion Twin
GENRE/TAGS: Metroidvania, Roguelike, Action Platform, Pixel Art
TARGET AUDIENCE: Metroidvania fans that also enjoy roguelike mechanics
IMAGE CREDIT: Dead Cells
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