Today marks the fifth anniversary of Dead Cells on the Nintendo Switch in North America, and what a five years it has been. From humble indie beginnings to releasing a wave of DLC with Castlevania developers Konami, it is fair to say that the game we see today is rather different from the 'roguevania' (a phrase that we are still not 100% on board with) that lit the spark all those years ago.
Dead Cells left early access on 7th August 2017 and developer Motion Twin swiftly brought it to the Switch the following year. It is strange to remember a time before the game had any DLC, but this is how it was back in the early days — fortunately, the Dead Cells base game was enough to immediately grab everyone's attention.
We are sure that most of you will be familiar with the game's basic premise, but here's a brief refresher. You play as a mysterious creature capable of possessing corpses. Assuming the form of the Prisoner — a decapitated body whose head is now replaced by a spooky flame — you make your way through an unnamed island that has long fallen to ruin with the goal of killing its reclusive king. You (the creature) are immortal, though the body you possess is easily perishable, so each time that your body is slain you must return to the starting area and begin your run through the procedurally generated levels again.
A roguelike metroidvania hardly seems like the most original concept these days, but with gorgeous pixel art and a Dark Souls-esque combat system that was simple to grasp but difficult to master, this base game immediately saw us throwing a countless number of corpses at the island's maze-like corridors in the hope of reaching the end.
As with many games of this type, the end was not all that final — you can't claim to have really 'finished' Dead Cells until you have made it through the last level a good few times — but as the months went by, it became clear that the same was true of the game's content.
Motion Twin released Dead Cells' first free DLC a little under a year after its initial release. 'Rise of the Giant' set out to develop the game's lore, adding several new areas to the island like the Cavern and the Astrolab, but mainly expanding the story to explain who the Prisoner might really be and offering up some alternative endings. We won't spoil any of the major story beats here, but this first update ensured that the Dead Cells world was one that wouldn't be quickly forgotten.