Heya friends,
Hope everything is going well for you! On our side, the first month of 2018 has been an opportunity to reflect on the past year and the crazy journey we began with you 8 months ago, when we launched Dead Cells into Early Access. It's definitely not the same game we started with, and we owe the community for many of the improvements we’ve implemented since then.
It's now time to lay out what's left to be done before coming out of Early Access. Of course, everything is subject to change, we're only humans in a world full of uncertainties, etc. etc. you know the usual disclaimers, but here is how the things are planned for now:
We're almost done with the development of the last level and the final boss of Dead Cells (before the release). We're reopening the Alpha Branch soon to let the most dedicated players take on the game breaking bugs and bring us the first batch of feedback we need to tweak these two majors additions. Then, the content will be made available on the Beta Branch, opening it to more players and letting us polish it until it’s up to our usual standard of completion.
From here the team will be breaking up into smaller tactical strike groups. We’re close to V1.0, but there are still stacks of things to do. Some of us will be working on the next “mini updates” that will be coming out between now and launch. Some of the devs will be completing the Mac and Linux versions of the game. Pretty much all of us will have a lot of QA work to do. Finally, there will still be some of us working on new content. Let’s take a look at the details.
After the 6th update goes live in March we’ll push 1 or two (depending on time) mini-updates that will contain some extra content that we’ve been working on; challenge room re-works, more tinkering with the Forge mechanic, UI and cosmetic changes, balancing, QA updates, bug fixes and all of that other good stuff that will help us move towards something that we can call “finished”.
This also when we will be looking to finally bring the game to the Linux and Mac communities, as promised. We hope you can forgive us for having to reschedule the release of these builds until much closer to the end of the early access, it was done to keep us from losing time maintaining multiple builds.
Some lucky beggars (next round is on you by the way) will be focused on finding clever ways of implementing the lore of Dead Cells for the 1.0 release. We're still experimenting in order to find the right process of telling the story without messing with the pacing of the game. This will probably take a while and is the last major missing piece of the puzzle.
But wait! It doesn’t end with 1.0. We think we’ve shown that we’re committed to doing Early Access right, but we’re also all about doing games right. So, as we approach the final release, we’ll have some of our guys hard at work thinking up our first free DLC content addition. And by content, we mean playable, explorable, fightable content. This will come soon after the V1.0 release of the game and did I mention that it’ll be free?
Here is a TLDR; version of the roadmap to make sure we're all on the same page. We’ll also mention some events we wish to attend, so you can come insult us or buy us a beer, or even both, depending on where you side on the whole "Dead Cells coming to console" deal.
February: Opening the Alpha branch (and then the Beta branch in the course of the month) to the player willing to test the 6th Update.
March: Release of the 6th Update. Team breaks up into tactical assault teams. Some take the plane for San Francisco where we will be attending the GDC.
Mid/Late April: Release of the first mini update. We will be in Boston for the Pax East and London for the Rezzed expo.
May/June: Linux and Mac builds available.
Q3/Q4 2018: Release out of Early Access.
2 to 4 months after the release: Content heavy Free DLC
Beyond: No idea, but if you got some, put it in the comments!
Finally, to address the concerns that porting the game to console will slow down the dev. We’ve always had a technical team here working behind the scenes on optimizing the game and making sure our tech works on all the different rigs out there. We’ve hired an extra technical developer, so he and another technical team member are responsible for making the console things work. This means that the gameplay guys, the team that has been building your levels/bosses, the same guys in charge of finishing the game, will be free to continue doing their thing without having to slow down for anything other than gameplay related issues (or life, one of them is expecting their first kid in March for example). Seeing the reactions… Well, it maaaaaay have been a good idea to mention that last week when announcing the console version, so apologies for the undue heart palpitations.
Now to finish up on a high note and draw attention to the great people out there who fill our days with cool drawings, funny memes and awesome comics.
Peace out,
The Motion Twin Team
Community Highlights
Dead Cells' icons for Twitch, done by Cyanmigou for our streamer friend
Peeve
An awesome comic by Life In Aggro!
Dead Cells Fanart, by daemonstar