Dead Cells

Dead Cells is a 2018 action-platform game developed and published by the French studio Motion Twin. It began in Steam Early Access on May 10, 2017, before its full release on August 7, 2018, for Windows, macOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Motion Twin described its structure as “RogueVania”: a combination of roguelike repetition and progression with the exploratory, interconnected design associated with Metroidvania games.

The player controls the Prisoner, a sentient cluster of cells that inhabits corpses on a plague-ridden island. The character repeatedly escapes a prison, dies, and returns through another body, allowing the game to make failure part of its fiction as well as its gameplay loop. Runs begin in the Prisoners’ Quarters and branch through changing routes, including the Promenade of the Condemned, Toxic Sewers, Ramparts, Black Bridge, Clock Tower, and High Peak Castle. Major bosses include the Concierge, Conjunctivius, Time Keeper, the Giant, the Hand of the King, and the Queen.

Weapons, skills, mutations, and randomly generated level layouts vary between runs. Permanent upgrades are purchased with Cells, the resource dropped by enemies and carried until it is spent at transition rooms. Blueprints unlock equipment or improvements after being found and delivered to the Collector. The game also uses Boss Stem Cells, difficulty modifiers earned by defeating the Hand of the King under increasingly demanding conditions. Higher Boss Cell levels alter enemy placement, health, and available rewards.

Dead Cells received extensive post-launch support. The free Rise of the Giant update, released in 2019, added the Cavern biome, the Giant boss, new weapons, and further story material. Paid downloadable expansions followed: The Bad Seed in 2020, Fatal Falls in 2021, and The Queen and the Sea in 2022. Each introduced new biome paths, enemies, equipment, and bosses. In March 2023, Motion Twin and Evil Empire released Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, a crossover expansion made with Konami. It added Castlevania locations, Dracula as a boss, Richter Belmont, Alucard, and music drawn from Konami’s series.

Evil Empire, originally formed to continue Dead Cells development, handled much of the game’s later content. The studio also released the animated trailer series Dead Cells: Immortalis in 2024. In February 2024, Motion Twin and Evil Empire announced that updates would end after the 3.5 patch, titled The End Is Near.