Dead Cells

Dead Cells is a 2018 action-platformer developed and published by the French independent studio Motion Twin?, combining the run-based structure and permadeath of the roguelike with the interconnected exploration of the Metroidvania — a hybrid its makers marketed as a “roguevania”.⁵⁷¹⁵ The player controls an amorphous mass of cells that animates the corpse of a beheaded prisoner and must fight through a series of procedurally shuffled levels to escape a diseased island and slay its King.²¹¹ It launched out of Steam Early Access into full release on August 7, 2018, though the Steam store lists a release date of August 6, 2018.⁵¹⁵

Development and release

Motion Twin, described as an anarcho-syndicalist workers’ cooperative, developed Dead Cells after abandoning free-to-play web and mobile games to pursue the project.⁵ The game entered Steam Early Access on May 10, 2017, launching with roughly “30–40%” of the final game’s content.⁷¹¹ At announcement, the developer framed the design around making death “the new backtracking,” a phrase it used to sum up its ambition to advance the “roguevania” genre.⁷ It spent more than a year in Early Access, during which the developer expanded and refined it, turning what critics had called a promising Early Access standout into its full August 2018 launch on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One?, and PlayStation 4? for $25, with a preorder discount to $20.⁵ Preorders opened on every system except the Switch in the Americas, where they were held until July 18, 2018.⁵ A physical version from Signature Edition Games followed on August 17, 2018, in Europe and August 21, 2018, in the United States.⁵

The game was later ported to mobile, published on iOS and Android by Playdigious, sold for $8.99 on the App Store and offered through Google Play Pass, and redesigned for touch with a revamped interface and an optional Auto-Hit mode.¹³¹⁴ It continued to receive substantial downloadable content, including The Bad Seed, Fatal Falls, The Queen and the Sea, and a Return to Castlevania crossover pack, each adding new biomes, weapons, enemies, and bosses.¹³¹⁴ Post-launch development was later taken over by the studio Evil Empire?, with Motion Twin remaining associated with the property.¹⁹

Gameplay

Each run begins in the Prisoners’ Quarters, where the player selects from a starting sword, bow, or shield — of which two may be carried — and descends through a dozen biomes toward the final boss.⁶¹⁵¹⁸ Levels are not generated from scratch but assembled from a pool of pre-built “chunks,” so their overall order stays fixed while corridors, platforms, enemy positions, and item placements change each time; the effect is a familiar shape with unfamiliar details, likened by one reviewer to walking down an old school corridor and not remembering the spikes.⁴⁷⁹ Death sends the player back to the beginning, forfeiting all carried weapons, gold, and unbanked Cells, with no way to retrieve them and no way to backtrack once a lab door locks behind the player.¹²

Progression is built on the interplay of temporary and permanent power.¹ Cells — a currency dropped by defeated enemies — are deposited with a character called the Collector between biomes to permanently unlock blueprints, weapons, and mutations, while blueprints for new gear must be found in a run and carried alive to the next safe room to be banked.⁶⁸¹² Permanent upgrades purchased with Cells soften the sting of dying: a bottle that holds more health potion, or a bag that saves a percentage of the player’s gold on death.¹² Within a run, players collect Scrolls of Power tied to three color-coded stat categories — Brutality (red), Tactics (purple), and Survival (green) — each of which boosts the corresponding weapons and raises maximum health, with diminishing returns that encourage a mix or reward specialization.³⁸ Between levels the player may also equip up to three mutations, chosen for the remainder of that life.⁶

Combat favors speed and aggression, built around running, jumping, and a dodge roll that grants brief invulnerability and lets the player pass through enemies and hidden passages, much like Metroid’s morph ball.¹³ The player does not take damage from touching enemies, only from their attacks, and multi-kills grant a burst of movement speed.¹ Weapons are drawn from two weapon slots and two skill slots, and can chain into powerful combinations — throwing knives that make enemies bleed paired with a sword that deals extra damage to bleeding foes, for example.¹² Timed and “perfect” doors reward players who clear a biome quickly or without taking damage with extra treasure.³¹⁶ Metroidvania-style traversal runes — such as a vine rune needed to reach the Toxic Sewers — are won from elite enemies and open new paths and shortcuts across subsequent runs, though the game does not permit backtracking to areas already left behind.⁶⁸ A separate daily challenge dungeon sits outside the main campaign.¹

Narrative is kept deliberately sparse, conveyed through environmental clues, notes, and loading-screen vignettes rather than cutscenes; recurring elements include a plague called the Malaise and a King corrupted by his own mortality.⁸¹⁶ The game contains numerous references to other titles hidden in secret areas, including Gordon Freeman’s suit and crowbar and a Half-Life? headcrab.¹⁶¹⁸ Later builds added the ability to disable the roguelike elements entirely and play Dead Cells as a conventional sidescrolling action-Metroidvania, a rare option in the genre.¹⁸

Reception and legacy

Dead Cells was widely praised for its combat and its layered risk-and-reward loop.¹⁸ IGN’s Brandin Tyrrel called it “a triumph of shockingly good game design,” singling out its “breakneck motion” and its “staggering array of game-changing weapons and gadgets”.¹ Nintendo Life rated the Switch version 8.4, describing it as a meaningful fusion of the roguelike and Metroidvania genres, while noting a light sense of repetition across similarly structured levels.¹⁰ As of July 2026 the game held an “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating on Steam, with 96% of 43,814 reviews positive.¹⁵ On mobile it drew a 4.7 average across 128,000 reviews on Google Play and a 4.8 across 12,000 ratings on the App Store, where it was named an Editors’ Choice title.¹³¹⁴

Dead Cells - Animated TrailerIGN

The game’s design draws openly on established templates. Motion Twin marketed it as a “soulslike,” and it cites the Souls series for its death-and-upgrade cycle and its recovery of lost health by striking back after being hit — a health-bar idea taken from Bloodborne?.⁴⁷ Its combat was likened to that of the Souls-inspired Salt and Sanctuary?, and its procedural approach was contrasted with the from-scratch level generation of Rogue Legacy?.⁷¹¹ Its aesthetic and structure invited comparison to Castlevania? and to the run-based design of Spelunky?, and its roguelike-Metroidvania blend placed it alongside contemporaries such as Hollow Knight? and Hades.³⁹ Reviewers also grouped it with Rogue, from which the wider roguelike lineage descends, as a formative influence on its die-and-repeat structure.⁶ A 2023 Return to Castlevania crossover formalized the Castlevania connection, adding Dracula’s Castle, characters such as Alucard and Richter Belmont, three new bosses including Death and Dracula, and dozens of series music tracks.¹⁴