Hey everyone, Its been a while since our last post, which was for the Fatal Falls DLC release in fact. Dear god that's nearly 6 weeks ago... Why is time so fast?! Anyway, since then we've been in the game dev kitchen cooking up some spicy sauce to put in our regular updates this year. Our next one, 'The Whack-a-mole Update' is heading into alpha today (access instructions at the bottom of this post for the impatient). TLDR of the changes:

• 3 big, heavy, f-off weapons
• 3 damage-focused mutations
• Altered the difficulty curve (work in progress)
• The Collectors Intern - spend your cells in 5BC!
• A fix to stop all seed error crashes. We hope...
• Malaise balancing and UI
• Fatal Falls balancing
• UI & QoL improvements
• A ton of bug fixes (yes, including the Me, Jealous? Achievement not triggering)
• Random diet option

The highlights are explained a bit below, for the full picture you can read the entire patchnotes here.

New weapons

These are all Survival, one-slot and focus on smashing enemies with something heavy until they stop moving. The Big Axe - Sweep your way through mobs as you would with any massive axe. Apparently the last hit can be chained to become an unstoppable lawnmower-thing...
The Big Club - Roleplay as your favourite troll/ogre/giant ugly creature. Smash with the normal attack, or hold the attack button to charge up a downward hit on the head of your foe.
Tombstone - Kill enemies with a heavy dose of irony. Leaves a tombstone to mark your enemy's grave - why not plant your own death garden ^^

New mutations

Execution (colourless) - Instantly kill enemies with under 5% health (scales up to 15%) when you hit them with a weapon. Applies to bosses, for now... Barbed Tips (Tactics) - Inflict X damage per second to enemies, per arrows stuck in them. Point Blank (Tactics) - Close range attacks inflict X% bonus damage.

New difficulty curve

We're experimenting with a slightly new way of increasing the difficulty from one BC to the next: BC0: Health fountains in every transition. BC1: Health fountain every other transition, with one minor flask when the fountain is missing. BC2: No more health fountain, one minor flask in every transition. BC3: One minor flask after the first boss and before the second. BC4: No more health in any transition, enemies teleport to your position. BC5: No more health, enemies teleport, malaise added. We're particularly interested to have your opinion on that new formula, so don't hesitate to give us feedback!

The Collector's Intern

An enterprising Guillain has decided to put on a cloak and trade cells for blueprints in 5BC, so no more shifting down to 4BC to spend your hard-earned cells.

Seed error fix

We've worked some developer magic to maybe stop all seed error crashes... FOREVEEERRR! Essentially, if a seed error occurs when the game is loading the next level, then instead of crashing it will now start loading the level again but with a new seed. So we'll be trading crashes for occasionally longer biome load times, which we think is a pretty decent exchange.

Balancing

Legendary items now scale based on the sum of your two highest stats. Also, Legendary status no longer increases the item level. This is very subject to change and there is no visual indication of the changes yet, so bear this in mind please. Malaise no longer increases the movement speed of enemies, plus mobs can no longer spawn or turn into Elites in the first few seconds after an Elite aggros you. Bonus scrolls added in Fractured Shrines from BC3+ and Undying Shores from BC4+.

Quality of Life

Option to toggle "Hold to chain attacks" added in the Gameplay tab of Options. Item description and affix list scroll together in the Pause menu. When malaise increases, the changes are now shown by icons in-game. Cursed gems require a long press to be picked up. Access Instructions If you want to play through the changes, you can access the alpha like so:

• Go to your Steam game library.
• Right click on Dead Cells and click "properties".
• Select the tab "Betas".
• In the first dropdown box select "Alpha - Not for the faint hearted".
• Click close and wait for the upload to finish downloading.
• Start playing.

Bear in mind that everything is still being tweaked according to feedback, so some things may break, have strange interactions or just straight up crash the game. If you want to leave feedback (or bug reports) for the alpha - we now have a fancy form you can fill in. This will let us collect all the feedback in one place rather than spreading it over Steam, Discord, Reddit etc etc. If you really don't want to fill in the form then please continue to post in the usual places, we're not going to stop checking them out, but just be aware that we may miss things that are posted there. Cheers, Matt, EE & MT

• Official Discord
• Official Reddit
• Motion Twin Twitter
• Dead Cells' Facebook

[ 2021-03-05 09:50:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Roguelite? Metroidvania? Roguevania!

You grew up with the roguelikes, witnessed the rise of the roguelites and even the birth of the roguelite-lites? We'd now like to present for your consideration our RogueVania, the illegitimate child of a modern Roguelite (Rogue Legacy, Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Spelunky, etc.) and an old-school MetroidVania (Castlevania: SotN and its ilk).

Features:

• RogueVania: The progressive exploration of an interconnected world, with the replayability of a rogue-lite and the adrenaline pumping threat of permadeath.
  
• 2D Souls-lite Action: Tough but fair combat, more than fifty weapons and spells with unique gameplay, and of course, the emergency panic roll to get you out of trouble.
  
• Nonlinear progression: Sewers, Ossuary or Remparts? Once unlocked, special permanent abilities allow you to access new paths to reach your objective. Opt for the path that suits your current build, your play style or just your mood.
  
• Exploration: Secret rooms, hidden passages, charming landscapes. Take a moment to stroll the towers and breath in that fresh sea mist infused air...

Interconnected levels and progressive unlocking of access to the island provides you with a real incentive to explore your surroundings. Add in a degree of evolution for your character and permanent weapon upgrades and you can see where Dead Cells borrows from the long line of MetroidVanias that precede it.

At the end of the day though, it’s YOUR skills as a player that matter most! Roguelites are about constantly getting better, until what was an insurmountable obstacle becomes a walk in the park. Unforgiving combat wed to the absence of any kind of safety net makes for an adrenalin pumping ride each and every run and unrivaled replayability.

Dead Cells left Early Access on August 7th 2018 and comes with:

• 13 Levels - Each one with its own atmosphere, foes and secrets to discover.
  
• 4 Bosses - Made by the most sadistic of the devs, raised on the salt of the testers.
  
• 90 or so weapons and skills - Spears, swords, bows, freeze blast, etc.
  
• 4 special powers, unlocking new areas and paths (metroidvania gear lock items).
  
• 1 epic responsive, fluid and fun to play combat system.
  
• 1 Daily Run Mode Complete with leaderboards for lording it over your mates.
  
• Hours of fun (depending on your skill, anything from 10 to 30 hours or more).
  
• A few rage-quits, Ok a lot of rage quits… But you’ll git gud… Eventually.