GAME ON!

Mind-blowing

Dead Cells Side-scrolling, Platformer, Roguelike

Game is a sword and sorcery affair with a difficulty cranked to eye-watering levels.

uly and August are dry months in the Triple-A gaming field. This is mainly because they arrive between E3 and Gamescom, two of the biggest gaming expos in the world where the industry’s biggest players show off the titles they plan to cram into the months leading up to Christmas.

The upside of the likes of Ubisoft, Activision, EA and Square Enix keep their powder dry, though, as it gives indie titles a chance to shine, and right now the indie game shining the brightest is Dead Cells.

Playing through Motion Twin’s colourful game, one can tick off the influences at a rate of knots. The game borrows from titles like Metroid, Castlevania, and Spelunky. But the game casting the largest shadow over Dead Cells is

Dark Souls; much like From Software’s grisly series, Dead

Cells is a sword and sorcery affair with a difficulty cranked to eye-watering levels right out of the gate.

In Dead Cells, players begin life as a puddle of goo slopping out of a trap door and then shuffling over to a decapitated husk, which they then possess. They are then handed a couple of rather lacklustre weapons and tasked with setting off through a dungeon filled with traps and creatures that will kill them.

Players will be killed ... a lot. And because Dead Cells is roguelike, once they die, players will find that all of the dungeon’s enemies have been reanimated and they’re back to being that same pile of goo falling out of the trap door right at the beginning of the game. Not only that, but the game’s levels are procedurally generated so the dungeon’s layout has now been changed.

This happens every single time the player dies.

Now if readers are scratching their heads as to why anyone would put themselves through this experience, there is some good news. As they progress through

Dead Cell’s subterranean hell, players will be able to pick-up gold, new and better weapons (or buy them from the level’s shopkeeper), and unlock special powers and abilities.