Dead Cells

I know what you’re thinking: “All these reviews and none of them rogue-likes or true indies”

I hear your please and come to your aide, it’s been a minute since I’ve written on the blog but I’m going to drop in occasionally with games from the road less traveled and the market less visited.

We’ll kick it off with Dead Cells

Dead Cells is a side scrolling rogue-lite platformer that, as of writing this, remains in its developmental stages. I’ve been eyeing it for a while but seeing it on the Steam Summer Sale with a next-to-nothing price tag I snagged up that mother and haven’t regretted it.

As best as I can tell, you play a sentient piece of algae that occupies the husk of warrior of the far eastern themed persuasion. Whenever this husk is destroyed, you return back to the start and occupy another and try again, but there are things that carry over to aide you in your next walkabout.

Enemies drop two forms of currency: Coins which can be used at the vendors to purchase items and power ups that you’ve unlocked during your runs, and cells. Cells are collected and spent at the end of each zone to unlock and upgrade weapons and powers, you cannot progress to the next zone unless all cells are spent. If you die, all cells are lost, and you will die.

The colorful worlds range from long lost forests, to toxic sewers where poison damage runs rampant, to fog shaded docks where undead corsairs look to blow you a new algae butthole. There are two weapon slots and two power/throwable slots for the character and a very large, ever expanding arsenal to get you through your runs relatively unscathed. Spears, swords, bows, and shields with special attributes will randomly be at your disposal on the weapons end. Where grenades, thunder bolts, turrets, and throwing knives to name a few lay in wait on the powers side.

The game adds an extra challenge for speed runners, as there are randomly placed doors throughout a playthrough that permanently lock after a certain amount of time and are only accessible if you speed through the zones, giving you little time to farm and even littler time to strengthen up for the challenges ahead. Should you encounter one of these timed doors and they’ve been locked, it will tell you how long they’ve been locked for to give you an idea as to how fast you need to be to get to it next time.

There have been several patches since the games release and content like weapons, bosses and zones continue to be added and I’ve honestly had a fun time with this one. Very similar to Rogue Legacy in its replayability and enjoyability. The ONLY flaw for me is the predictability of the boss fights and that they are the least challenging part of the game, BUT as a game that continues to pump out content, I cannot be mad at that because boss fights do not shape up the majority of this every pretty experience.

Will you hate your life because of this rogue-lite? No. I’ve played far, far more brutal games. But it’s definitely a nice rogue-appetizer.