Developers from French studios Motion Twin and Evil Empire have announced the release date of the latest update for the platform roglite action game Dead Cells.
According to a post on social media X, the 35th update, titled The End is Near, will release on August 19th. The authors also published its key image. “It will be a little strange that there will be no more updates after all the DLC we have released (and DLC too), but let’s be honest: this game will already last hundreds of hours,” wrote an Evil Empire employee.
The End is Near has been in beta since September 2023. The update will add a system of cursed biomes and content for them (three types of weapons, three types of enemies, three colorless mutations), 20 legendary affixes, more than 40 options for personalizing the hero’s head, balance changes, new transitions between biomes and accessibility settings.
In February, the creators announced the end of their “creative journey in the game.” With the release of the final patch, active support will end – only important technical patches can be expected in the future. According to them, further release of major updates would lead them into a “repetition trap” and would deprive Dead Cells of its “unique charm.”
The decision was harshly criticized not only by gamers, but also by Motion Twin co-founder and former Dead Cells designer Sébastien Benard. According to the developer, the authors committed “the most disgusting act imaginable.” He called Motion Twin “a bunch of greedy people”, and Evil Empire – the true creator of roglite action.
The studios are already focusing on their next projects. Motion Twin is working on the cooperative roguelike action game Windblown about protecting a flying settlement from the deadly Vortex, and Evil Empire is developing the platform roguelike action game The Rogue Prince of Persia. The second launched on Steam Early Access in May, and the first is expected before the end of the year.
Dead Cells was released on Steam Early Access in May 2017. In November of the same year, the game appeared on GOG, and in August 2018 there was a full release on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. A year later, it reached iOS, in June 2020 – to Android, and in June 2023 it received a PS5 version.
In 2019, the game received a free add-on, Rise of the Giant. The next four DLCs – The Bad Seed (2020), Fatal Falls (2021), The Queen and the Sea (2022) and Return to Castlevania (2023) – were paid.
Over the entire period, Dead Cells has collected over 132.5 thousand reviews on Steam, based on which its rating is 97%.