While rogue-likes have been around since the 1980s?with the seminal Rogue often cited as the root?it wasn?t until more recent games like Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and Rogue Legacy that popularized the subgenre, pinning it on the games industry?s bulletin board as a destination to visit. But like flyers stapled on top of each other, filtering through them is exhausting, especially since a vast majority both look and feel the same. How do you know to go to Kevan?s party when Keven?s flyer looks just like Kevan?s" Thankfully, Dead Cells is not another Kevin, as it manages to be an accessible and addictive rogue-like that rewards you for understanding?and often exploiting?its systems, even if those systems are trite.
Follow Your Nose Like Toucan Sam There?s some semblance of narrative there: You?re an amorphous blob snatching desecrated bodies and parading them around to collect souls?or something like that. Whatever narrative that?s there barely lingers in the background, existing as mere window dressing and little else. This would be fine if Dead Cells didn?t force its faux-narrative onto you, as you?ll often encounter dead-ends that are nothing more than failed attempts at world-building. It even pauses the in-game timer when in these rooms, implying that whatever letter or suicide note found is somehow important. They never will be because you?ll die and the rooms will scatter because of procedural generation. So Dead Cells is the Transformers of rogue-likes, as...