NOTE: Console versions (including Switch) will come as soon as we're through certification, usually 2-3 weeks.
Hey all!
Today we’d like to present for your consideration update number fourteen: “Who’s the Boss?” I’d also like to mention that we’re doing an AMA over here tomorrow for anyone who has questions and such. Now, to business:
Here’s the VLOG version of most of this post:
https://youtu.be/GDLS0bNgTTo
Who's the Boss?
This update brings a bunch of new content to the game, in the form of monsters to kill and new weapons to unlock! The idea behind the update is relatively simple, bosses are challenging and killing them should be rewarding.
We find it frustrating when we fight our way through an hour long run, make it to The Hand and promptly get rekt in 10 seconds flat. To take the sting out of the injustice of it all we’ve added in some new monsters based on each of the bosses. You’ll find them in the levels immediately preceding the boss they’re based on and they’ll be equipped with one of the most deadly or uncharacteristic attacks of their master.
For example, here we have the Sweeper, whose main function seems to be viscera cleanup detail. You’ll find him in the ramparts tidying up, waiting to send you off to the bin or finally teach you about the flame attack of the Concierge...
One of my favourites is the Automaton, because I always get slammed by the Time Keeper’s dash. The Automaton will appear out of thin air, rapid dash across the screen and leave you wondering when the hell we added that to the game. Hopefully you’ll get good at recognising when she’s coming then rolling to safety or introducing a shield to her face. (and yes I’m aware my screenshots are rubbish).
Weapons:
Moving on to the weapons! Which is after all the fun bit… We like the idea of winning feeling good. You want the first time you make it past the Time Keeper to be special. So we’ve added a weapon based on one of the attacks of each boss, which you’ll of course unlock when you beat the boss in question.
The Pan:
This gets it’s own heading because it’s literally been a year since the requests started coming in, and you’ve been very insistent on the subject of the cooking equipment... “pan when?”, “can we have the pan?”, “when are you going to give us the pan?” and so on. So here it is!
Note, the pan slap is pretty much the reverse of the dagger…
Mutations:
This update adds support for the glass cannon melee tactics build. It’s not as safe as a survival build or a ranged tactics loadout, but we’re really trying to provide a bunch of different ways to play the game based on what you like, rather than just having one meta that makes sense at all times regardless of the items that drop.
And theeeeen?
That’s pretty much it, except for the usual quality of life and bug fixes which you can see over here on the patch notes site.
What's next for Motion Twin and Dead Cells?
In other news, a lot of people have been asking what’s next for Motion Twin, so here’s the deal…
The majority of the Motion Twin team are working on the next game, or at least making a whole bunch of prototypes and brainstorming about what the next game is going to be. There’s no firm direction yet, but we’re testing new technology, weird and wonderful game designs and a whole bunch of different art styles.
(this was a proto that didn’t make it…)
Once we come up with something that keeps everyone up at night dreaming and scheming then we’ll get cracking and go through the whole process of building and releasing a game again.
Meanwhile… Some of the Motion Twin team decided it would be best to keep on keeping on with Dead Cells, for financial reasons (obviously) but also because we’re not done with DC… There’s a STACK more ideas we’d like to try and so far the community that has formed around the game is awesome and keeps wanting more, so that’s a very good reason for us to keep working on the game.
So, given that Motion Twin is a workers co-op and that this makes growing beyond 8-10 people quite difficult, those of us who wanted to keep Dead Celling decided to start another company to do just that.
And so Evil Empire was born. In fact it doesn’t really change a terrible lot, three of us have been working on Dead Cells since the beginning and we’re all still in the same office as the rest of the Motion Twin team.
Motion Twin retains complete creative control over the game and everything that we do is subject to their approval, though we’re obviously here to suggest cool new things and bring new levels, monsters and items into the game.
What this all really means is that there will be more Dead Cells, a second Motion Twin game and eventually a completely new IP from Evil Empire, so hopefully it’ll be a win win for everyone.
Will anything change?
Nope, the whole thing stays as it was, well hopefully we’ll get better at trying to sim-ship console and PC, gathering feedback and generally not pushing game breaking bugs into the game, but otherwise, you can still hit us up via Discord, Reddit, here on Steam or the other social networks.
Also we'll put out a road-map ASAP.
Fan art:
As usual we finish this broadcast with some most excellent contributions from the community. Enjoy!
By Alseiz
By jumpyclumps