Final Dead Cells content update, The End is Near, is now live

We’ve known for some time now that Dead Cells‘ The End is Near update would be the last the game officially receives, but the information hasn’t yet come home to roost proper. Dead Cells‘ 35th major content update is, regardless, now live, and we have to deal with that.

Setting the melodrama of a game wrapping up its post-launch support aside for a bit, Dead Cells is one of those ever-present indie sidescrollers that have been a mainstay for fans of the genre. Punchy and chunky in equal measure, this game has stood the test of time after its 2018 Early Access release ended up being a resounding success, and every big update has added something meaningful to the mix. The final The End is Near update is thus no different, outside of the context of it being the game’s grand finale, that is.

Dead Cells: The End is Near is now live, wrapping up the indie classic’s post-launch content coverage

It is a heck of a wrap-up though, I’ve got to admit. Totally free for all owners of the base Dead Cells game (unlike the delightful Return to Castlevania DLC), The End is Near aims to round off what few rough edges there still were in the game. To that end (ha-ha, I know), the crux of the new content are the Curse-based items, mutations, and enemies, as well as head customization, of all things. Here’s the bottom line:

• 3 new Curse mobs: Sore Loser, Doom Bringer, Curser
• 3 new weapons: Anathema, Indulgence, Misericorde
• 3 new Colorless Mutations: Cursed Flask, Damned Vigor, Demonic Strength
• Cursed Biome level effect
• 20 new Legendary affixes
• 40+ new unlockable avatar heads
• Slight rebalancing of The Bank level
• New routing options (e.g. the ability to roll both Castlevania-themed levels in one run)
• More accessibility options

An excellent showing, then, by Evil Empire, the studio working on Dead Cells over the past couple of years. Though this basically concludes the story of Dead Cells at this time, the important bit to remember is that the game fully supports Steam Workshop mods, allowing the community to continue releasing third-party content for the game for the foreseeable future.

Further, the future’s not grim at all for the people who worked on Dead Cells. The original developer, Motion Twin, is set and primed to release its next flagship project, Windblown, sometime in the near future. Evil Empire, on the other hand, recently pushed out the new roguelite Prince of Persia game which has loads of Dead Cells DNA if my experience with it is anything to go by. Oh, and let’s not forget that Dead Cells is getting an animated series some time this year, too, which is a wholly different kind of exciting. Keeping all of that in mind, it’s kind of hard to complain about Dead Cells winding down, I’d say.