Superb "roguevania" action platformer Dead Cells leaves early access in August
UPDATE: Final release date announced for PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.
UPDATE 10/7/18: Developer Motion Twin has announced a final release date for its excellent "RogueVania" platformer Dead Cells: it will leave Steam early access and launch on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch on August 7th.
Dead Cells has been available on Steam early access since May last year, and its full version 1.0 release will see the game receive its long-awaited story update, pulling back the veil on the world's still-mysterious lore. A larger content update will follow post-launch.
Come August 7th, Dead Cells will be available digitally on all platforms, and a limited standard and Signature Edition physical release is due for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC too.
Last but not least, a gorgeous, deluxe double vinyl edition of Dead Cells' soundtrack is incoming, and that's available to pre-order right now.
ORIGINAL STORY 10/5/18: Developer Motion Twin has announced that its superb Castlevania-inspired rogue-lite action platformer Dead Cells will leave Steam Early Access and launch in full release form on PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch this August.
Dead Cells, which offers a glorious mix of procedurally generated platform exploration and deliciously crunchy combat, entered Steam Early Access exactly a year ago today. Since then, it's received a multitude of consistently well-judged updates, expanding and refining the wonderful core experience with new systems, environments, weapons, and bosses.
Motion Twin's latest update, known as the Baguette Update due to certain localisation mishaps, arrived earlier this week with a batch of primarily system-based improvements designed to nudge Dead Cells that much closer to its version 1.0 release state.
The newly overhauled Forge upgrade system, for instance, no longer lets players upgrade specific weapons; instead, they can now invest their cells to unlock a guaranteed percentage of weapons dropping at higher quality levels. The previous system, says Motion Twin, was "kinda locking people into only one build and a few weapons. Since the variety and fun [is] mostly down to playing with different weapons, it made the runs feel a little too repetitive."
Elsewhere, the Baguette Update adds Legendary weapons, which are a guaranteed drop after boss fights and have a small chance of dropping when looting standard or elite enemies. Legendary drops are chosen from almost the entire pool of items, and are extremely powerful (with a lot of, sometimes exclusive, affixes), scaling with your higher stat.
The new update also introduces an NPC that enables you to spend gold to sharpen items by one degree (from + to ++ or from ++ to S) and to re-roll a weapon's affixes. You'll also find a reworked challenge room system, numerous balancing changes, and a new UI. Full details can be found over on Motion Twin's latest Steam post.
The Baguette Update, says Motion Twin, is the first of several smaller patches coming to Dead Cells before its lore/story update arrives at launch in August. A larger content update will follow post-release. The developer also notes that August will bring physical editions of Dead Cells (alongside the digital versions) to Switch and PS4, courtesy of Merge Games.