Dead Cells visits a greenhouse today in its Bad Seed DLC
I feel my head is burning
Splendid 'n' deadly roguelikelike platformer Dead Cells today launches its first paid add-on, Bad Seed. Rather than increasing the length of the game, Bad Seed increases its breadth, adding two new levels as alternatives to two early-game murderzones. The verdant Arboretum and sour Swamp have their own new monsters too. The DLC also adds weapons like a honking great scythe and... is that a lute which makes TWONG! noises when you twat baddies? I'm in.
"The two new levels and their monsters are alternatives to The Courtyard/Toxic Sewers and The Ramparts/Ossuary/Ancient Sewers, with the boss designed to be on par with The Concierge, so hopefully it'll spice up your early game runs once you've played through the core game," the devs explain.
Our Matt played a bit of Bad Seed in December and came away a little too pleased about being chucked at spiky walls by mushroom men. Strange lad.
Bad Seed is the first fruit of the curious new Dead Cells development arrangement. Dead Cells was created by Motion Twin but, when some of them wanted to move onto a new game and others wanted to stick with Dead Cells, ongoing development was split off in August 2019 to a new studio, named Evil Empire. As Evil Empire told Waypoint, the new studio also operates on a new business structure; Motion Twin are one of the few rare cooperatives sharing power and profits, while Evil Empire cast that off and went hierarchical. Evil Empire were formed from Dead Cells devs and Motion Twin do still have oversight, to be clear, so it's not a whole new thing - just unusual.
Evil Empire say that selling DLC will let them "expand the game even more," and I wouldn't say Dead Cells was ever poor value for money. The new game Motion Twin are making is a mystery for now.
Bad Seed is out today on Steam and GOG, priced at £4.49/€4.99/$4.99.
We declared Dead Cells the best action game only last week. Our Dead Cells review for 2018 is full of gushing praise too, if you need more.