Nintendo Switch Online users were granted a free game trial of Dead Cells at the end of January, a game I had on my wishlist, but had never really looked into very much.  You see, I had heard good things about it and wanted to place it in my list to remember for later, but I hadn’t done much research beyond that.  Until now.  Dead Cells is a roguelike-Metroidvania with procedurally generated levels.  And this is one of those games that features permadeath, meaning you lose practically everything whenever you die.

Your undead character, the Prisoner, has two weapons, alongside other abilities that damage nearby enemies for a limited time.  The Prisoner moves pretty quickly and is pretty fun to control, despite a rather weak double jump.  Along the way, you can get stronger by upgrading your stats with scrolls, by finding increasingly powerful weapons, and by choosing other upgrades called mutations, such as one that allows you to deal more damage with combos.  Although any progress you make in the aforementioned areas is undone once you die.

During my first attempt, I died fairly early on when I stupidly failed to heed the warning signs and opened a cursed chest.  This curse meant I had to defeat 10 enemies without taking a single hit before it could be lifted.  And do you know how many enemies I managed to defeat before my inevitable demise?

Zero.

Fortunately, I did last a bit longer during my second attempt and even managed to reach the Promenade of the Condemned.  After multiple visits to this place, I finally managed to progress to The Ramparts, which features towering castle walls against a sunset (the game has some very nice pixel art, by the way), and only two visits were required before I managed to progress to the Black Bridge, where I battled my first major boss.  I did pretty well for my first try, but I did ultimately meet my demise.  My next set of tries, however, revolved around a new location entirely, the Toxic Sewers, which is an alternate path if you don’t feel like going through the Promenade of the Condemned, which was a pretty cool discovery.

Eventually, I reached the Black Bridge again, defeated the boss, after which I found another branching path, Stilt Village and…Fractured Shrines, I think.  I chose the former, but I didn’t last long, with my main struggles revolving around those larger enemies with the cannons.  After that, I was ready to end my trial period and take a break.

Dead Cells is a rather addicting game.  While losing most things upon death is annoying, what kept me going was the progression offered by the permanent upgrades and the randomly generated levels, making every playthrough a bit different.  As for the first point, you keep certain permanent abilities (most notably, I learned the ability to sprout climbable vines at certain spots and the ability to teleport between these statues), and you keep anything you spent dead cells on.  You see, between every level, you meet the Collector, who allows you to spend the cells you collected on permanent upgrades, such as health potions and the ability to preserve a certain amount of gold every time you die.  This helped to make my loss of progress feel just a little less catastrophic.

And again, the randomly generated levels are a must for a game where you’ll be revisiting the same locations over and over again.  Not only does this prevent the game from feeling stale and repetitive, but you never know what you might find.  (It reminds me of my time with the Spelunky demo.)  Early on, I encountered a very familiar bench.  I suspected this was a reference to Hollow Knight, a suspicion that was confirmed when I sat on it and received a very familiar weapon, the Pure Nail.  I also found some hidden portal by accident, which took me to some place with some tricky platforming, but I got a decent reward out of it.  And one time, I managed to get this bizarre ability called Pollo Power where I could temporarily turn into a chicken and shoot explosive eggs at enemies.  Neat…

There’s a chance I’ll buy the full game in the future, though this is not currently that time.  In case you’re intrigued, however, dear reader, Dead Cells can apparently be beaten in as little as 14 hours, though 100% completion reportedly takes closer to 90 hours, making the $24.99 price tag seem more reasonable, though I’ve seen it go on sale for $12.49.  Dead Cells can also be played pretty much anywhere, as it is available on all major consoles, PC, and mobile (for $8.99).

Banner image from official Steam page