17 hours later after finally reaching the temporary end of an Early Access journey, I come across with a strong thought about this Steam game:

“Motion Twin gets it.”

The team behind Dead Cells went far past achieving a 2D Dark Souls-like or a Roguevania, presenting carefully crafted easy to grasp controls and a side scrolling aesthetic that exudes fun while barely having a moment where it gets in your way. Instead Dead Cells knows how to put you in charge the moment you move your character and realize how quick it is to respond to your own reactions, while giving all the tools to survive through its dungeons.

This game’s mysterious story begins with the introduction of its protagonist: A slime controlling an ungraciously posed decapitated dead body. Barely anything is explained letting the player appreciate the handcrafted pixelated look of Dead Cells in both its backgrounds and characters. A knight greets your character, commenting curiously on how this has happened before and how he cannot die while encouraging further exploration to seek answers.

Although silent, the expressive behavior of the protagonist reveals itself through detailed animations

Once the quick premise is set in place a gratifying responsiveness of the player’s movements becomes apparent, aided by good sound design and animation that become key for the player to understand the impact of each button they press. Soon enough this becomes important while progressing through cavernous sewers and sprawling castle areas by running, jumping, diving and rolling around platforms and traps, killing enemies to collect loot and the self referenced Dead Cells which are used to permanently acquire and upgrade weapons at the end of each level.

One shouldn’t be afraid of Dead Cells being unfairly hard compared to its peers in the genre, however it does the player’s attention. Despite the combination of being able to dodge at any moment with speedy movement and an array of possible means of attack turn him into a menace, the possessed character’s power contrasts with its paper resistance, only taking a few hits to entirely deplete its health bar and force the gelatinous protagonist to crawl back empty handed to the beginning for another go at it.

Thankfully Motion Twin understands the necessity for visual cues to allow quick assessments of the situation along with providing with the chance to turn around dire moments. Being aggressive after being hit allows to restore most of the depleted health through attacks if hasty enough, akin to Bloodborne, and enemies indicate clear tells of when they’ll attack so it is possible to immediately disengage from a combo to roll out of the way.

Motion Twin designed 50 weapons so far, all of them feeling unique and stylish

Furthermore the available arsenal turns into a pure joy of experimentation from combining 2 main weapons and 2 side skills originating devious strategies. Even though your headless protagonist starts out with a meager sword, quickly enough blueprints to unlock more weapons can be found along with dungeon shops and loot improving your offensive during each run. Such weapons can go from twin daggers that combo easily to electric whips to fight at a distance, supported by skills such as bombs, stun grenades or even summons. Each weapon and skill shows off the meticulous work into making their usage fun: Broadswords feel heavy and satisfying to hit with, whips are snappy quick long range assaults and even shields put an immediate halt to your enemy when properly parried. On the other hand being hit causes a dreaded crunch and panic attack in that brief split second of time slowing down and blood splattering on the immediate surroundings.

Even so, Motion Twin expanded upon how you attack by introducing a crazy variety of side effects that can be randomly applied to every weapon and skill. Each weapon possesses a basic function: Blades can bleed enemies for continuous damage, hammers stun enemies and so on but also stronger versions will contain random attributes, such as dealing double damage on poisoned targets or turning dead enemies into burning bombs. This variety of capabilities deepens the level of decision making during the game by strategizing your weapon choices to define your style and approach and the side effects compounding their combined synergy.

Shortly after beginning each run, I would find myself doing maneuvers such as throwing a magnetic bomb attracting nearby enemies into one place, set spinning saw blades at their feet to cause bleed damage, roll behind and backstab them benefitting from a bonus on the bleed status to finally finishing with them turning into frost bombs in their dying moments so I could clean up their companions with an auto aiming whip that worked better on frosty foes.

Elite Battles require you to use your entire arsenal to succeed

This can happen in a few seconds and it shows how Dead Cells incentivizes speedy play through quick skirmishes and sealed doors with hefty rewards that close up permanently after a total time of your playthrough has passed. However the game also rewards exploration through secrets hidden in breakable walls, treasure chests with rare items, shops, status upgrades and random elite versions of enemies with better drops, turning those quick bouts into high stake battles thanks to their improved speed, health and improved attack patterns forcing one to be at the top their your game.



Your unlocks are displayed in the starting area in a way that shames my house decoration

So what is Early Access about Dead Cells? Those beefed up versions of the enemies actually represent some of its possible flaws. While visually stunning in its character design and background work, most enemies have a basic appearance contrasting with the identifying features of non-playable characters. Far too many times one sees a variant of a green zombie covered in crystals and other enemies look more like an agglomeration of colors with few features to distinguish from one another. Elite versions would be indistinguishable from their normal peers if not for their slightly bigger appearance and their rank showing above them.

The variation on levels also turn narrower through repeatable playthroughs. Though randomly generated, every level has a basic layout that it follows. A straight line defines half of the level with some rooms to open it up a bit more, another always forces you to go to the other end to get a key then backtrack towards the start. This works in favor of the speed run approach however by the end of it I was eager to see how many more level designs Dead Cells could provide once it leaves Early Access.

At the end I feel like Dead Cells could become a game recognized and studied for the amount of small smart decisions it made along with a great care on both the visual and control aspects to inspire future games in the genre. If the full version of this game follows the path Motion Twin has laid out while ironing out the edges we could see a sleeper hit being released.

Get Dead Cells early because you’ll immediately think:

“Wait, this is Early Access?”