The highly acclaimed indie roguelite side-scroller, Dead Cells, is about to wrap up shop, from the looks of it. While it’s been known for some time now that Dead Cells‘ Update 35 will be fairly sizeable, Motion Twin has just announced it’ll also be the game’s final content update.
According to Motion Twin’s latest Dead Cells blog post on Steam, “Update 35 for Dead Cells marks the end of [their] creative journey on the game.” Having been released from Steam’s Early Access program back in 2018, Dead Cells has received dozens of big content updates, one free expansion pack, and four major paid DLCs over the past five(ish) years. In 2019, Motion Twin spun off a smaller support studio, Evil Twin, to support Dead Cells with this breadth of post-launch content, but this team, too, is just about ready to move on from the project.
Dead Cells’ Update 35 is the game’s final official content update
“After an incredible 5-year collaboration in bringing additional content to Dead Cells’ live-ops, Evil Empire will be pursuing new adventures and we can’t wait to see what they come up next,” says Motion Twin’s announcement. “This comes after much reflection, especially following the awesome success of the “Return to Castlevania” DLC last year.”
The studio is, as per its own admission, afraid of falling into the ‘more of the same’ trap with Dead Cells, and there are fewer and fewer ways for them to keep the game fresh with so much content having already been produced over the past couple of years.
With 10 million copies sold since its inception, Dead Cells has been a crucial aspect of Motion Twin’s success, and it shouldn’t be surprising that the IP will keep being leveraged for times to come: “Stay tuned for more updates about the Animated Series, the Board Game and… the Beheaded appearing in another world?!”
Keeping all of the above in mind, however, this move has certainly been telegraphed well in advance. The official title of Update 35 is, after all, “The End is Nigh,” and Motion Twin did announce an all-new game not too long ago. Indeed, the new title is decidedly not a Dead Cells 2, but an all-new 3D action platformer known as Windblown.
“OK, so, imagine [Dead Cells] downed like 312 energy drinks, and then slammed its fist into a 3D button. We then thought what if we made a game that was… absolutely absurdly fast. Almost silly levels of fast,” said Motion Twin about its next flagship project. Promising stuff, certainly.
To circle back, Dead Cells‘ Update 35 does not currently have an actual release date: “We are all hands on deck trying to figure this out, so please look out for more updates in the future,” said Motion Twin on the topic. Update 35 is currently in alpha testing, and it’s going to add a handful of new weapons, assorted items, and tweaks to the game’s massive roster of content.
