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Dead Cells
ActionPlatformer

Dead Cells

Developed by
Motion Twin
Published by
Motion Twin

$24.99

View on Steam ↗Official website ↗

Dead Cells is a roguelite, metroidvania inspired, action-platformer. You'll explore a sprawling, ever-changing castle... assuming you’re able to fight your way past its keepers in 2D souls-lite combat. No checkpoints. Kill, die, learn, repeat.

Consensus
S85.1/100
Steam players97% positiveOverwhelmingly Positive183,874 reviews
Metacritic ↗89/100Users: 8.3/10
OpenCritic ↗89/100
VG Insights estimate ↗≈2.6M copies · ≈$40.1M gross

What creators say

PepperHead

S
View full ranking →

Part 1 (Sep 2023) · #4 of 9 in that tierWatch the moment (0:38:55)

Tier list Part 1 (2023)

Dead Cells is a fast-paced action roguelite where you always play the same character and build each run around the weapons and gear you find. He considers it very popular for good reason, with distinct weapons, great balance and superb game feel. He also praises the developers' constant stream of updates and DLC. He disputes the metroidvania label but still calls it one of the best action roguelikes and places it in S tier.

Liked

  • Every weapon feels distinct, with its own animations and clearly careful design
  • Excellent balance: almost any weapon is viable for a successful run
  • Game feel is outstanding; you are fast and feel powerful, cutting through enemies
  • Each run feels unique even with few passives, since weapons carry the variety
  • Developers keep releasing updates and DLC, adding bosses, biomes and weapons
  • Developers published a talk explaining how they designed it to feel good

Disliked

  • Marketed as a metroidvania, which he disagrees with; it is effectively a standard roguelite once the traversal abilities are unlocked
  • Only three to four hours of ability unlocking gate the world traversal, after which the metroidvania element fades
  • Few unique passives, so variety relies almost entirely on weapons

What players say

A 2D roguelite action-platformer with Metroidvania-style exploration and fast, souls-lite combat, where each run through a procedurally assembled castle ends in permadeath and permanent unlocks.

Dead Cells is one of the most acclaimed roguelites ever made: 97% positive across about 184k Steam reviews (Overwhelmingly Positive), Metacritic 89 and OpenCritic 89 from 150+ critics, plus multiple Best Action/Indie awards in 2018. Players and critics agree the combat feel, movement, art, music and build variety are best in class. Complaints center on the unlock grind, same-y repeat runs, hard-to-read hitboxes and two-hit deaths at high difficulty, and especially the way DLC content is visibly gated inside the base game. It left Early Access in August 2018 and has sold over 10 million copies. Content updates ended with Update 35 'The End is Near' in 2024 after Motion Twin cancelled further Evil Empire work; the game is now in bug-fix-only maintenance, which still draws some community resentment.

Players love

  • Fluid, responsive combat with very tight controls and animation; often cited as the genre benchmark for game feel
  • Huge weapon, skill and mutation variety that supports many distinct builds (e.g. crit, brutality, tactics scaling) and run-to-run experimentation
  • Strong roguelite loop: each death unlocks blueprints, runes, and shortcuts so failure feels like progress
  • Exploration with rune-gated secret areas and hidden details that reward curiosity, blending Metroidvania ideas into runs
  • Beautiful, vibrant pixel art with fluid animation, and a well-regarded soundtrack
  • Boss Cell difficulty tiers (BC 0-5) let players scale challenge and add new enemies and mechanics, giving endgame replay value
  • Assist Mode lets players tune difficulty without disabling achievements; widely praised as true accessibility
  • Runs well on low-end hardware and Steam Deck; many free updates and cheap, well-liked DLC (Queen and the Sea, Return to Castlevania)

Common complaints

  • DLC zones, doors and achievements appear inside the base game with buy prompts, which many reviewers see as pushy and as making the base game feel incomplete
  • Unlock grind: weapons and blueprints must be bought with cells/souls repeatedly across runs, so the grind is seen as the content
  • Fixed early structure means the first biomes are replayed constantly, so runs feel repetitive despite procedural layouts
  • Hitbox and move-cancel inconsistencies: weapon visuals larger than actual hit areas, tiny enemy hitboxes, and attack animation lock-in make some deaths feel unfair
  • Enemies attacking from offscreen or through walls and occasional glitches are reported as cheap damage sources in later difficulties
  • Weak, sparse narrative and lore that many players find underdeveloped
  • Some weapons feel weak, gimmicky or are hard to make viable, narrowing the builds that actually work at high difficulty
  • Controller rebinding limitations and achievement restrictions on some options cited by a few reviewers
  • Some players find combat floaty and the game simple or shallow in build composition, with rewards for successful runs not satisfying enough to keep grinding

Can feel tedious

  • Repeatedly grinding the same early biomes just to fund blueprint unlocks
  • Dying at high Boss Cell difficulty to two hits after a long run, where a single mistake wipes the run
  • Buy prompts for DLC content interrupting fast runs, including timed door challenges
  • Luck-dependent weapon drops that can leave a run without a workable build
  • Runs that feel deflating after the early game: ramping back up after each death feels barely worth it to some players

What's unique

  • Roguelite and Metroidvania fusion: permanent movement runes open new routes in later runs instead of a fixed world map
  • No checkpoints, no level-up stats: power comes from picking weapons and three-color scroll upgrades within a run (brutality, tactics, survival)
  • Player-controlled route choice between biomes each run, with a nonlinear branching castle
  • Curse mechanic (one hit kills until you clear enough kills) as a voluntary risk-reward system
  • Originally designed as a 3D project by Motion Twin and reworked into pixel-art 2D, which fans credit for its animation quality
  • Long post-launch life: five years of free updates, crossovers (Castlevania, Hollow Knight, Hades, etc.) and mobile/console ports

Players want

  • Less intrusive DLC presentation (or hiding DLC content/prompts for non-owners)
  • Faster or less repetitive unlock economy so the meta progression feels less like a grind
  • More variety in early-game biomes and route structure so runs diverge earlier
  • Clearer, more consistent hitboxes and animation-cancel rules
  • Better balance for underused weapons and more build-defining synergies at high Boss Cell levels
  • Deeper story and lore delivery and more bosses (base game has few bosses, per critics)

Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.

Steam tags

AdventureAction RoguelikeMetroidvaniaPixel GraphicsRogue-like2DSouls-likeRogue-liteDifficultHack and Slash

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