Dead Cells' final stretch starts as Update 6 leaves beta
The end is within sight
Last week, we reported that metroidvania-ish platform roguelike Dead Cells had pushed its sixth major update - The Hand Of The King - to public beta testing. Having identified and smoothed out a few initial issues, developers Motion Twin have officially released the new content for all, along with their plans for the future of the game.
I said that the new Castle zone and the accompanying Hand of the King boss had a distinct endgame feel to them, and it would seem that assertion was on the money. While there may be some minor patches between here and there, Update 7, whenever it comes, will mark the end of core development, and Dead Cells' exit from Early Access.
In our previous coverage of Update 6, we covered the long and short of the new update, but Motion Twin figure that sometimes it's better to explain things in video form, rather than force people to slog through the extensive patch notes.
The development roadmap as mentioned in the video can be found here. The biggest, most important detail is mention that not long after the V1.0 launch of the game, a content-heavy chunk of free DLC is on its way. Unless a True Final Boss finds its way into the next handful of smaller planned updates, it seems that the Hand Of The King is going to be capping off the game until that DLC lands, although he looks big and tough enough to make the game feel pretty complete as-is.
More importantly, the V1.0 release of the game will include The Lore, capitals and all. Up until this point, there have only been the faintest bits of Dark Souls-ish story hooks attached to the game, so it'll be interesting to see how much more overtly they tell the story of The Prisoner and his gloopy, removable head in the framework of a larger, higher-stakes fantasy story. They hope to have all this and the free DLC squared away by the end of the year. From there? Who knows - I doubt anyone at Motion Twin has even dreamt that far.
Dead Cells is available on Steam or via Humble for £17/$20, minus a generous 33% discount on Steam as part of the Midweek Madness deals.