Dead Cells

Note: Video version here. The text below is a transcript of the shooting script. Some wording might be slightly different between the text and video. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ve said this a handful of times before, but I’m going to say it again. If there is one thing I took away from the internet’s collective game of the year discussions, it’s that I should have been playing Dead Cells all this time. So I finally did… and immediately realized how badly I fucked up by not playing it sooner.

Why didn’t I jump on Dead Cells while everyone else was raving about it? I *like* run based games. I don’t actively seek out a ton to play, but the ones I do choose to play usually end up engrossing me in ways not many games do. Spelunky, Enter the Gungeon, Moonlighter. These are all games I initially planned to just play on the side while focusing on finishing a different, larger game. Something to pick up and play on a whim to break up the long play sessions those bigger games demand from me. But it rarely ends up that way. Those run based games quickly took over my play time and became the main game I would focus on. They got me hooked.

Enter Dead Cells. I foolishly told myself the same thing. I’ll do a run here and there when I have some downtime between other things. One run became two, then three. Each time getting a little further. Before I knew it, I was spending hours at a time playing Dead Cells. “One more run” I would say to myself, no matter how late it was. Knowing very well that another run would easily be another 40 minutes *at least*.

I know my track record. I know my relationship with run based games. Of course this would happen with Dead Cells. So, again, *why* did it take me so long give Dead Cells a shot? I think the main reason is because of a certain way people talked about this game for a while. They referred to it using a term that’s thrown around a lot when describing game genres. METROIDVANIA.

Nothing against Metroidvania style games, but they generally don’t interest me unless it’s an actual Metroid game. So, of course, I see people describing Dead Cells as such with an added touch of “Souls-like” and I’m checking out of that conversation almost immediately. It wasn’t until I heard some more in depth conversations about Dead Cells where I started to see that calling it a Metroidvania isn’t completely accurate.

Yes, Dead Cells has the iconic style map. Yes, you get new abilities that open up new areas. But you’re not backtracking, and these abilities aren’t going to help you defeat any new kinds of enemies either. You can finish the game without any of these abilities in fact. Well, except maybe the Vine Rune. I think that one is necessary. My point is that not having these abilities doesn’t really stop your forward progress. They just open new paths for you to take during your next run. Which is definitely something you want to do to experience all of Dead Cells goodies, but you don’t have to.

And even the Souls comparison I find to be very surface level. Dead Cells shares elements with those kinds of games, for sure. Namely health flasks and an upgrade currency that gets lost on death. But I don’t think of Dead Cells as a game in either of those two genres. Yes I know the developers directly use these terms themselves to describe their game, but I see it more as simple short hand. Dead Cells takes characteristics from those kinds of games, but cleverly uses them to support its randomized, run based nature. Once I got past that mental block keeping me from playing Dead Cells in the first place, I found a near endless love for it.

Whenever I pick Dead Cells up, I don’t ever want to put it down. And a lot of that has to do with how great it controls. We talk a lot about this nebulous idea of “game feel,” but if there are any games that can really help put that idea into perspective, Dead Cells is one of them.

The mobility in this game is top notch. Running, rolling, wall jumping, and slamming onto enemies from above. Going in between all of these actions is seamless. There’s a level of polish in the interactions that makes every button press feel so responsive. I could always count on my dodge roll doing exactly what I wanted it to, even if I just barely caught an incoming attack in the middle of a mess of enemies. I could always tell how a bow would arc without having to second guess my shot. And the combination of sound effects and animation made sure that connecting attack gives satisfying feedback.

This great “game feel” extends to every weapon in the game too. They all have their distinct animations and attack speeds, but they all feel viable and useful. It isn’t a matter of good or bad weapons, it’s a matter of build preference and play style. I like playing fast and nimble. But slow and powerful is totally a valid build.

I was completely in control of every action I took. That helped make the learning curve much smoother and less intimidating for a game where I was expected to die a lot. And I did. But I inched my way closer to the next area with every run. I could feel myself getting better at the game as I played it. That amazing “game feel” is what enabled that.

But there’s more to Dead Cells than how it feels, of course. There’s also how it made *me* feel. There’s an excitement that came with seeing, feeling my skills improve. An excitement and sense of accomplishment that the game shut right down once I got too cocky. As if to say “nah motherfucker, you ain’t hot shit. That was just the second area.” But in return, Dead Cells gave me incremental goals to work towards. To build me back up to feeling like hot shit.

I broke up my goals into long, medium, and short term. Kind of like you would do at a bad corporate self help event. The long term goal was as simple as getting the next rune. I didn’t want to just beat the final boss and put the game down. I wanted to get through every unique location the game had at least once. To do that, I needed all the runes. But to get them, I had to be able to take down elite versions of enemies. So, in the short term, I wanted to better familiarize myself with the patterns of specific enemy types. Doing that naturally led into finishing levels faster and with more cells and blueprints in my possession.

Which leads into the mid term, where I would be working on spending my cells efficiently to unlock those blueprints and trying out new builds. For example, I instantly gravitated to the health flask upgrades, but because of their high cell cost, I knew it would serve me better to unlock more weapons and the ability to randomize the starting weapon options. The decision making process of where to spend my cells was a big part of the enjoyment for me. And once finding a set of abilities, mutations, and weapons I felt I could master in a run, I got my new rune and started the cycle again for the next area or boss.

Since I’ve touched upon weapons and builds a couple times now, let’s dive little deeper. The variety of weapons and tools Dead Cells gives the player is immense, but not overwhelmingly so. You have to put in the work to unlock them. And like I mentioned earlier, I don’t think there are any truly bad weapons. Everything is viable depending on your play style, and Dead Cells encourages you to experiment with different builds until you find a few that you really like.

Again, I’m incredibly fond of playing fast and loose. Quick melee weapons like the various daggers and swords. I throw in the ability to go ranged with bows and bombs. I don’t use shields because I’d much rather jump around and doge roll. But that’s just half of it. The other half of my preferred build is survivability. Despite my propensity to quickly deal with enemies, I take my time going through each level in its entirety. I wanted to pick up every power up scroll I could to increase my health and damage output. And then supplement that with mutations that make each scroll’s power up even more potent.

Dead Cells will reward you with a good weapon and a boat load of cells for speed running through levels, at the cost of all the scrolls you would pick within the level. And that was a deal I wasn’t willing to take. I am much more content with my longer runs. It actually added to my sense of accomplishment when I reached the final boss. Once I could consistently make it to the final level, all that time spent became suspenseful build up to my last confrontation. And if I didn’t defeat it then, I made it a point to slightly alter my build for the next run. I tried getting rid of my bombs earlier in the run and replace them with traps. I reminded myself not to get too attached to a weapon just because of its damage output.

Eventually, I made it. I finally beat the last boss for the first time, with a some moral support from a good friend. It was exhilarating. All that build up paid off as a huge rush of adrenaline. I felt like I could do anything now. Which of course, Dead Cell *still* challenged. Asking me to do it again, but at a higher difficulty. And the feedback loop from before starts over yet again. Back to making personal goals, back to unlocking even more new weapons. And I am more than happy to be in this loop again.

There’s more great things to say about Dead Cells. I love the music, I love the look of its pixel art, and it has this weirdly sarcastic attitude that I’m really into. But the main thing I want to get across is how my enjoyment of Dead Cells is centered on “feelings.” Both in how it feels to play, and all the the positive feelings I experienced in return for embracing that.

I think Dead Cells is incredible. There’s no fault large enough in this game that I feel is worth mentioning. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but I’m also not gonna sit here digging for a negative point solely to balance out my overwhelming positive sentiments. My enthusiasm for Dead Cells knows no bounds, and I think that says enough.