Dead Cells

I tried to give Dead Cells a shot. I could not get into it. This game has been making waves ever since early release on Steam. It's an action-platformer roguelike. (Roguelike basically means that most things in the game are procedurally generated and randomized, and death means you start from the beginning again, usually not totally from scratch).

The roguelike aspects are surprisingly harsh. As you progress and die, you still have to constantly navigate through early rooms. It makes everything seem remarkably pointless. Even if you manage to make it really far, you still get pushed way back to the beginning.

Honestly it felt like I was playing a normal metroidvania/platformer but as a “hardcore character” from Diablo (where death deletes your character). Playing through the starting areas over and over again is an absolute chore and gets extremely tedious.

Dead Cells also has a steep learning curve. It took me a while to get a hang of its punishing gameplay. But even after that I was getting annoyed. Losing to a boss only to have to play 10+ minutes before you can try again is obnoxious.

The art is pixel art which I think works well. You need pretty tight precision for the gameplay so the jagged edges are helpful. The game does a lot with little pixel particles which I liked.

I didn’t like Dead Cells at all. It needs to drastically lighten up on the roguelike elements and have less punishing combat mechanics before I recommend it to anyone. There’s other games that scratch the same itch without making the player jump through so many hoops. Try Hyper Light Drifter. I don’t recommend this.