Dead Cells
Coincidentally, I was talking about Dead Cells with my brother last night, and I came to the realization that this game doesn't have nearly the amount of attention that it should be receiving. It's quite sad but unfortunately that's the nature of "early access / indie" games in this day and age. Hell if it's not a battle royale, good luck. Anyway, yeah I want to talk about Dead Cells because I know I've talked about the game a few times before, but never in an official themed style journal thing. I think it's also the right time to talk about it because at this point, the game has improved on so many different things that it's hard to wrap them altogether in one package, so I'll do my best to point out certain things that may have changed since the last time I talked about it.
First off, the music is still bumpin and it's actually gotten better as time goes on. It may be some subtle changes here and there, but especially in the first track of the game, you can tell it's gotten a tad bit more intense than it used to be.
This is the original as I don't have a very good way of showing the improved version. You'd just have to hear it for yourself:
Still a solid track though.
Anyway, along with making some subtle changes to the music, they also made some quality of life improvements that the game needed right from the get go. Things like making the controls tighter to how you can turn your trash weapons into money, to just small graphical changes. It all works together and the changes seem to be only improving the game. Especially the upgrade system.
It used to be back when the game came out that the ideal run was to take all Brutality upgrades to make yourself stronger. But nowadays it really depends on the kind of run you want to have. Do you want more defense? Offense? You can actually mix up the upgrades you get throughout your run to turn into a tank or a defensive player. In my opinion, this change was absolutely needed as it started making the game monotonous when you could just go with Brutality upgrades and make your character a total power house. Now it's more balanced and interesting. Plus, this also came with the inclusion of weapon types. Before, your weapons would be automatically placed into a specific category of Brutality, Skill and Health. Now your weapons can have a mixture of these abilities and certain upgrades will effect on those weapons that have those specific traits. So you can have a green and yellow item, or a green and red item, and the colors represent their respective upgrade types. It's an interesting way to create an all out combined build, or just focus on one trait. But luckily they give you that choice and don't force it onto you. Definitely makes the game way more fun and immersive.
The combat is still as fun as it has ever been and it really feel like the tightest combat controls I've ever seen in a roguelike platformer.
That GIF should give you a pretty good idea of what you can do. And that's just a tiny little fraction of what the combat is like. You can also get right up in there face and hack n slash your way to victory. Combine that with creative rolling mechanics and all kinds of ways to get out of trouble, the combat is still as fresh and immersive as its ever been.
So yeah, do I think this game definitely deserves more praise? Hell yes. Do I think the developers are doing everything in their power to make it great? Of course. I think this game could potentially be one of the finest examples of early access roguelike platformers that has ever graced the existence of Steam. I highly recommend it if you're into some fast paced fun roguelike platforming.