How a Free Browser Game Turned Into Dead Cells

“Let’s make the game we’d want to play. Let’s make something hardcore, ultra-niche, with pixel art and ridiculous difficulty. Let’s do the passion project and to hell with the consequences.” It’s with this mindset that development studio Motion Twin set out to create Dead Cells, according to Steve Filby, the games’ Marketing Manager. Motion Twin was founded in 2001 and is based in Bordeaux, France. It was born from the ashes of another French game development studio called Kalisto Entertainment, which suffered greatly from the early 2000 financial crisis. Its management proved unable to rise to the difficult challenges the crisis posed, reportedly even giving out false information about the financial situation of the company. Eventually Kalisto Entertainment declared bankruptcy in 2002.

A handful of employees from Kalisto Entertainment joined forces and established Motion Twin. It was founded as a cooperative society, meaning all employees receive the same salary. It also means the studio doesn’t have a boss or traditional hierarchy. When it comes to the company’s business strategy and creative choices, all members have an equal say. This company structure allows for work-life balance and healthy labor practices. The only downside is, is that decision making becomes very time-consuming.

“When you go the Motion Twin paradigm – I come from a traditional working background – it just feels right. It makes sense. You’re doing it every day and you’re thinking: ‘Of course this is how you should organize life at work’. When you start telling people about it, people are saying that this is how they want things to be. We’re doing it, so they give it a try. You can tweak a few things in the way that a company is run and all of a sudden you have this intense feeling of ownership and responsibility and worth in what you are doing. A lot of people are looking for that feeling today.”

After more than a decade, the small team had developed over a 100 games, mostly free-to-play browser and mobile games such as Hammerfest, My Brute, Mush, Die2Nite, Alphabounce and Twinoid, the last being a gaming platform that houses many of Motion Twin’s browser games. Dead Cells’ fascinating and intricate history starts in 2012 when the developers set out to make a follow-up to Die2Nite, a multiplayer point-and-click browser game released in 2008. It features a cooperative survival system where up to 40 players have to work together to form defenses around a town. The game mimics time in the real world, giving players plenty of hours each day to look for resources and set up traps. When it shifts to the attack phase between 11 and 11:15 p.m., waves of zombies attack and the players find out whether their defenses sufficed to protect the town. While the whole game takes place in real time, it’s important to note that players wouldn’t necessarily cooperate in real time, since everyone was able to just drop in and out of the game during the defense phase.

The original French version of Die2Nite was titled ‘Hordes’, and in April 2012 former Motion Twin developer Sébastien Bénard teased on Twinoid that he was brainstorming a second game that was set in the same ‘Hordes’ universe, titled ‘Hordes Zero’. The core idea for the sequel was to make the attack phase more exciting by fusing it with a 2D strategy tower defense mini-game. During the day, players could leave their vehicle and explore a hexagonal map to gather resources for the upcoming attack at night. The tower defense mini-game would start once players returned to their vehicle. After each attack, they had to decide what to do next. Stay and face a stronger attack in a location they knew, or move on and find a new place to defend while exploring the map. In January 2013, it was announced that the game design was all set, a team was formed and development had officially started. Later that month, Motion Twin already launched a beta for players via Twinoid.

The plan was to make Hordes Zero compatible with mobile devices this time, unlike its predecessor. It’s also worth mentioning that Motion Twin decided to lean more towards a free-to-play model, since most mobile games were going free-to-play at the time. Hordes Zero’s website officially launched in June 2013. For the first time, fans could discover the visual identity of the game through art work, a logo and other visual details. However, it wouldn’t be long until the direction of the game would take a drastic turn, taking us one step closer to the Dead Cells experience we know today.

See, during all their beta playtests it became clear that, while the concept looked good on paper, playing it wasn’t actually that fun. The exploration and tower defense mechanics weren’t necessarily bad, but the multiplayer cooperation aspect wasn’t engaging enough when you were playing by yourself. Sure, the developers had fun when they were all playing at the same time in their office, but most members of the community were playing by themselves. As a result, Motion Twin decided to cut the slower parts of the game, namely the map and exploration phase, and instead make the much more engaging and fun tower defense mechanic central to the experience. Additionally, the modern day setting was swapped out for something more medieval looking.

This new direction for the game was teased for the first time in August 2013 by Sébastien, who posted a mysterious message on the Twinoid forum that contained clues to all the upcoming changes. Two months later, the project’s website was updated dramatically, with previous artwork now smeared with blood and the game’s title ‘Hordes Zero’ covered in graffiti. The team posted more and more artwork and screenshots in the following months, showing off the new setting and updated gameplay. In April 2014, Motion Twin announced they had completed a fully playable version of the new and improved Hordes Zero. Now, players were dropped in an area they needed to defend. At the end of each attack, the players were given an option to either stay and defend the same area again or go to a new location. The more attacks you would survive as a team, the higher the score. However, in the end only one player could claim the title of Last Man Standing, giving the game a competitive edge. Keep in mind that Hordes Zero was still a drop-in-drop-out multiplayer game at this stage, meaning players weren’t always playing together at the same time.

Further development was shortly put on hold at this point to focus on two other mobile games, Uppercup Football and Braziball Puzzle. Both games were finished in June 2014, which is when Sébastien announced that work on Hordes Zero was back on track. Coincidentally, lots of important game conferences such as Gamescom were just around the corner, but because of the nature of the multiplayer gameplay, Hordes Zero wasn’t the easiest game to showcase in front of a group of people. Nonetheless, the developers were determined to show off their 2D tower defense gameplay in order to gather as much feedback as possible, as well as to get noticed by attending press outlets and publishers. Therefore, they quickly removed the multiplayer and free-to-play aspects from the game and turned it into a single player experience, making it much more appealing and easier to demonstrate at gaming events.

In August 2014, the devs then took this prototype to multiple game conferences, one of them being the Big Indie Pitch, a competition where indie developers have three minutes to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. They came in third place and this sparked their enthusiasm to take it to Gamescom that same month. Not only did lots of people there really like the single player experience, giving them a confidence boost, they were also approached by many publishers who were very interested in partnering with them. It was a clear sign they were on the right track. What’s more, they noticed at Gamescom that no one was able to easily pronounce the name Hordes Zero, prompting them to officially change the title to Dead Cells a couple of weeks later. The current version was far removed from the originally planned sequel to Die2Nite anyway, so changing the name made sense. As you can see from the updated website that went along with the title change, Motion Twin was still determined to release Dead Cells as a multiplayer game, despite the single player version receiving lots of praise.

From September until December 2014, the team held more alpha tests with thirty players and these trials garnered positive feedback from participants. In October, the studio even released two new videos to highlight the cooperative tower defense gameplay. This version of the game was built for four players, each controlling an ever-evolving character that took on adventures in a completely randomized house. In that house, players had to place traps and use weapons to survive waves of zombies. The goal was to outlast the other players through day and night cycles. Only the last survivor was crowned the winner. Unfortunately, they were once again faced with the major problem from the original Hordes Zero prototype: the game was only fun when everyone was playing online at the same time. It was clear that for Dead Cells to really work in its current form and become a hit, the multiplayer had to shift to 100% real time gameplay only.

This meant restructuring the whole technical backend. Even then, there were still some glaring flaws in the overall game design, including the Free-to-play economy that the game was built upon. To fix all this, the small studio needed a lot of time and a lot of money. Motion Twin was running out of both. By the end of 2014, the devs made the call to put development on hold until they could obtain government funding. Failing to achieve this meant killing the project entirely, anything else would have endangered the survival of Motion Twin. The application process for funding by the French government was long and involved stacks of paperwork. In the meantime, developers Sébastien and Thomas Vasseur started working on a web and mobile game called Monster Hotel. Fast forward to October 2015, when the studio received official confirmation that their government funding for Dead Cells was approved. Sébastien was very excited to hop back on Dead Cells, although he soon found out that wasn’t happening just yet.

Just as Monster Hotel was wrapping up development, Apple and Google contacted the studio to let them know they were very interested in featuring the game on their storefront, but only if several new features were added to the game. The team jumped at the opportunity, essentially halting production of their tower defense game once more, seeing that Sébastien was lead developer of both Monster Hotel and Dead Cells. It took the studio about a month to finish and release Monster Hotel. By December, it had gained a small playerbase and Motion Twin deemed it somewhat of a success. The studio was even considering continuing development to add more and more content to increase profits. However, a lot had changed ever since Dead Cells was put on hold a year before and developers Sébastien and Thomas were done making mobile games. Instead, they wanted to work on hardcore PC games. They even considered leaving Motion Twin altogether to start developing games on their own.

It’s at that moment the whole team started evaluating the direction of the company and came to the conclusion that competing in the increasingly complex mobile market required more investment. More than they were willing to make. “It just wasn’t working. It wasn’t happening. It took us way too long, spending way too much money on it. We realized that we actually didn’t want to do that anymore. When you’ve been doing it for that long, it’s a very difficult decision to make, to say ‘Okay, we’re just going to throw away everything that we know how to do and make PC hardcore games’, potentially for consoles as well.”

So, in the beginning of 2016, the team at Motion Twin decided to take the ultimate leap of faith: to change the aim of their company entirely by focusing all its attention on Dead Cells and Dead Cells only. For this to work, the game had to be something every team member was excited about. Sébastien remembers a meeting where someone asked if anyone actually likes tower defense games. No one raised their hand. It was an awkward moment according to Sébastien, but it ultimately motivated them to start developing something they were actually passionate about. Dead Cells would become something entirely different and ultra-niche. The team knew the project would be a risk in terms of interested players. They made a series of changes, following their gut feeling and taking away parts of the game they deemed unnecessary. Multiplayer became single player, free-to-play went out the window, and graphic artist Thomas even suggested – and eventually succeeded in – getting rid of the tower defense mechanic altogether. The project that started out as Hordes Zero, had now entered its second and final iteration.

The stakes couldn’t have been higher. With the company’s drastic change of direction, Dead Cells needed to become a success for the studio to have a chance of surviving. On top of that, they had to do it fast as the studio only received enough money from the government to fund development for one year. The developers figured this might be the last game they’ll ever make. Dealing with different targets, different marketing tactics and a different game, the team was under a lot of pressure to succeed in twelve months. The upside to it potentially being their last game was the freedom to make whatever they wanted, not a single idea was off the table. Being huge fans of Castlevania, Sébastien and Thomas wanted to make their interpretation of the legendary 2D action platformer and fuse it with roguelike mechanics. The rest of the team was immediately on board and so now, development on Dead Cells the roguelike action game could finally start.

One of the most notable features is probably its permadeath system. Its motto ‘Kill. Die. Learn. Repeat.’ immediately sets the tone and expectations – there are no checkpoints. Learning your enemies’ patterns is key, or you’ll die and be sent back to your cell, and have to start a new run. With every death you can unlock new items or levels. With every run you can make different choices, take different routes, and ultimately choose how you want to play. Designing the controls in such a way that the player would not get frustrated when dying again and again, and integrating a sense of fairness, was important to the team. They wanted the player to realize what they did wrong, so they could correct themselves during the next run, instead of blaming the controls for their death. 

Another essential mechanic of the game is the randomized dungeon resets. Level generation proved very tricky according to Sébastien however. “It was the time of No Man’s Sky and everyone was traumatized by huge levels with no actual meaning. The real problem with random generation: it’s all about getting good results. It’s really complicated to explain to a computer what a good result is. That is something that actually takes a lot of intuition, a lot of feeling. It is not something the computer can actually understand. So making sure that you translate these rules in some kind of algorithm, that is the difficult part.”

While it was difficult getting good results using procedural generation, it was essential for Motion Twin because they simply didn’t have the time nor enough developers to do everything by hand. It initially seemed to work well, adding more replay value as well as placing more emphasis on the player’s instincts and reflexes during combat, rather than simply memorizing which room comes next. The unfortunate tradeoff was that level design now took a big hit, making everything illogical, chaotic and leaving the player with no feeling of consistency or immersion in the world. The developers knew there had to be a middle ground. That middle ground had already been achieved by games like Spelunky, Faster Than Light and Left 4 Dead. Therefore, Motion Twin started watching as many talks and post mortems as possible about what they did right and what they did wrong. Afterwards, they came up with a system that uses about 50% procedurally generated and 50% hand-crafted content. The underlying philosophy upon which the system is built is to create dramatic peaks and relaxing breaks to ensure an interesting pacing to keep the player enthralled.

To make sure players wouldn’t get bored of the same old sword, the developers crafted over 50 different weapons, so players could experiment with an endless amount of combinations of weapons and skills. They made sure each weapon and skill was in some way unique in design, animation and use, which allowed for more gameplay options. This would lead to a more personalized game experience, would allow players to fight different monsters in different ways and randomize drops every run. The team kept adding to the game, eventually moving more towards an action platformer inspired by games the developers loved playing, such as Dark Souls, Binding of Isaac, Rogue Legacy and Diablo 3, just to name a few. Motion Twin also took inspiration from the Engineer class from Team Fortress 2, where the use of turrets and other buildable items strengthens and upgrades your character. As mentioned before, the team was also influenced by The Binding of Isaac, where items play a big part in the overall game experience and the choices the player makes.

With its specific art style, Dead Cells looks iconic. The art team opted for highly saturated colors in the background and character design, making new elements stand out, keeping the player alert, and consequently, allow for a faster reaction time when a new threat pops up. The complementary color palettes contribute to the confined feeling players experience when playing the interior levels, differentiating the outdoor and indoor areas. Warm environments are constantly juxtaposed against the mutated creatures that have taken over the island. For example: good characters are enveloped in a warm glow while enemies are surrounded by cold colors. Brilliant sunlight vs. grim dungeons. A beautiful forest vs. bloodied traps and torture devices.

The overall use of color also helped Dead Cells stand out in the landscape of similar hardcore games, where traditionally highly contrasted and low saturated palettes are used more often. “We wanted to say something like; “we can do difficult, we can do frustration, we can do that feeling of achievement when you beat a particularly difficult boss”, even though it’s happening in a strangely vibrant colorful world. We wanted to prove that a violent, cryptic ambiance does not necessarily demand desaturated colors. We wanted something that doesn’t take itself too seriously.”

The locations and backgrounds were inspired by the Isle of Skye in Scotland, more specifically the iconic Celtic architecture from the 10th to 13th century. Its cold and harsh style and more organic details match the alchemic aesthetic and lore. Alchemy serves as the overarching theme for lore, gameplay, biomes, monsters, and more. The art team used specific materials like copper, glass and magical runes to transport the player to this alchemic world, while also using it to differentiate the background from crucial gameplay elements like a power upgrade, teleporter, or a chest.

Impressively, the devs draw all the normal maps by hand. Normal mapping is a 3D texturing technique for designing lighting and texture on backgrounds, characters, or any other visual elements. Normally, they are generated in 3D software or through Photoshop plug-ins. But the team found the result too flat or blurry. Instead they drew the normal maps themselves, directly in Photoshop. Though it was a time-consuming process, it allowed the artists to play with volumes more easily, to place emphasis on certain elements or tweaking opacity parameters of various layers.

When it came to character design specifically, the team didn’t want their protagonist to look basic and was inspired by Earthworm Jim, a side-scrolling platformer with an elastic-headed hero. It resulted in the creation of The Beheaded, a character with a smoke-filled head that possesses corpses to advance through levels. Since the game already incorporated an alchemic aesthetic, this perfectly fit the brief. When artist Thomas started working on Dead Cells, he was still quite new to drawing and animating pixel art. “I can shamelessly confess I wasn’t an expert animator and I was still pretty much a newcomer to pixel art. Looking back, this last part may actually have had a lot of positive impact on the final rendering of Dead Cells, as I never felt tied to conventions and traditions of  the ‘old-school pixelart’ style.”

During the first year of developing Dead Cells, Thomas was the only animator in the team. It was up to him to design and animate every character, monster, animation effect and most of the backgrounds, so creating a quick 3D workflow was crucial. He did not have the time to hand draw each frame. When designing animations and models, Thomas started by drawing a 2D pixelart model sheet. This formed the base for the 3D skeleton of the character, created with 3DS Max. He then exported it to filmbox format. Since the in-game height of the character was only 50 pixels, Thomas chose not to spend too much time on it and kept the 3D modeling basic. To create a pixelated look, the team developed a homebrew program which rendered the mesh in a very small size without antialiasing. Key frames were used to create the animations, much like 2D animation. The goal was to use as little frames as possible, adding interpolation frames before and after. VFX were used to give the pose-to-pose animations a sense of movement and impact.

He would then export every animation and its normal map to a png, so that he could render the volume using a basic toon shader. Animating in 3D proved to be more advantageous than the traditional 2D process. Adding new assets, such as weapons and armor, to an old model or reusing assets, spared Thomas hundreds of hours of work. This workflow was born from a previous project called ScarKrow. In 2015, Thomas, Yoann Laulan and Mathieu Capdegelle created this fast-paced, violent platformer game to enter the Ludum Dare game jame. But the project didn’t turn out as expected, since the team couldn’t keep up with the workflow pace. After the competition, Motion Twin allowed the team to continue working on ScarKrow, which meant they had to find a more efficient workflow.

Inspired by King of Fighters, Blazblue and Guilty Gear, the art team eventually opted to use 3D animation instead of 2D animation in Flash. This made everything easier, as Thomas didn’t need to redraw each frame anymore. Instead he could use the same animation on various models, could automatically generate the interpolation frames to get smooth animation and retakes were quick and easy. This entire process allowed Thomas the flexibility he desperately needed to get his work on Dead Cells done in a timely fashion. All the assets eventually ended up in their game engine of choice called Heaps, which was made by Nicolas Cannasse, one of the co-founders of Motion Twin that left the company in 2012.

Development had now entered the year 2017 and, as expected, the studio was almost out of money. In order to get the additional funds needed to complete Dead Cells, to create buzz and to receive immediate feedback from players, the studio wanted to release Dead Cells in early access on Steam. Many industry colleagues recommended against this, as the fear of an indiepocalypse had been spreading in the industry for a while. In 2015 it was said too many indie games would create an oversaturated games market, eventually causing it to collapse. Despite this, Motion Twin decided to release their game on Early Access anyway, realizing they didn’t have much to lose. Fortunately, this ‘indiepocalypse’ never actually happened.

The team made sure the first version for Early Access, while only about 30 to 40% complete, had tight combat and gameplay controls that players would appreciate. “The road to Early Access and through Early Access is littered with the bodies of failed games and failed developers who have then been smashed and blacklisted for their poor practices during development and so I was like, if we’re going to do this we have to have something super solid, super polished, and super satisfying to play. We have to have that core gameplay, that core vertical slice.”

On May 10th 2017, the early access prototype of Dead Cells successfully launched. Huge amounts of positive reviews flooded in via Steam and the developers very quickly realized they were on the right track. Financially, it meant the team was able to keep the company running, which was a huge relief. Motion Twin set out to release updates over the span of twelve months, but it ended up taking fifteen months instead, because of the overwhelming amount of feedback. During these fifteen months of early access, the developers first focused on fixing critical bugs like malfunctioning boss rooms, addressing important balancing issues and adding more game mechanics such as the elemental update, in which players can use the elements to destroy enemies, for example when using an electric weapon in water.

The community was not shy about giving feedback. They wrote full essays on Reddit and debated online, coming up with ideas left and right. While the team didn’t necessarily use all ideas, it did help them to find which issues needed fixing. Sébastien estimated that 40 to 50% of the features in the final game were drawn from feedback during early access. It allowed the developers to improve the game to the preferences of the gaming community, making Dead Cells effectively a community-driven game. The team even received feedback from other industry professionals, for example on the ‘Forge’ mechanic, the Blacksmith’s workshop where players can invest cells to improve their chances of getting good gear drops. However, an earlier version of the Forge allowed players to buy upgrades for specific items.

“Some of the feedback we got was from a dude on Twitter called Celestalon, who just so happens to be one of the lead designers on Hearthstone. Celestalon pointed out that the Forge made players feel locked into builds, taking away the fun of experimentation. It took away the fun of learning to play with items and playstyles that you probably wouldn’t use. I sent that to Seb via Twitter and he sent something back via Slack saying, ‘Aw, the bugger! I know he’s right too so now I’m going to have do something about it.’”

On August 7th 2018, after 450 days, 79 updates and 9 major titled content updates, Dead Cells version 1.0 was finalized and released. The full game was described as ‘the perfect example of Early Access done right’ by PC Gamer in 2018, proving that an early access release had definitely been the right choice. Motion Twin decided to release Dead Cells in early access at the price of 15 dollars, but eventually set their price at 25 dollars for the full version, which is more expensive than the average indie game. The developers not only deemed it important to make sure the price was fair, but also to communicate to the community why they charged this amount. Making the game cheaper in the hopes of selling more copies wasn’t the answer.

“We were charging that amount because we’re sick of developers shooting themselves in the foot and charging like $5 for their game when it is worth more. The fact that Hollow Knight is out for $15 is a travesty – that game is easily worth the same price as our game. I feel they are doing themselves a disservice but they’re also not helping the rest of us. It’s not just them – I don’t want to just pick on Team Cherry because they are great. We were like: ‘We know we’ll discount the hell out of the game all the time because that’s how the world works; we think it’s worth more than $7, so we’ll price it higher’. Again, it’s about saying: ‘Hey, we worked our butts off on this. If you want to support us and if you liked the game, buy it at full price. We’ll be stoked, that’ll allow us to make other games in the future.”

The game received positive reviews from critics, who praised the combat style, randomized level design, weapons and items. The game was also praised for its addictiveness. Its level of difficulty, which was compared to Dark Souls and Diablo, permadeath, changing levels, and rewards push you to keep playing and make the experience gratifying.

The beautiful visuals, pixel art style and sound design were also praised. Most negative criticism Dead Cells received, concerned the game’s plot, which critics found to be lacking or unclear. Because The Beheaded is mute, the interactions with npc’s are limited to a series of bodily motions. Very little story is laid out for the player. The majority of the plot is learned through environmental details and hidden messages which players must actively search for in secret rooms, dungeons or alchemic workstations. Even the developers admitted they didn’t have a clear storyline in mind. “To be fair the story is more lore that is pieced together as you progress in the game, because we’re not good at stories and because we focused on the gameplay rather than the story, so often we deformed the story to fit a mechanic we liked.”

A year after releasing on Steam Early Access in 2017, Dead Cells had already sold over 700,000 copies. Launching the full game in the summer of 2018, it quickly became a commercial smash hit and sold six million copies worldwide by November 2021. In 2018, Dead Cells took home multiple industry awards, most notably ‘Best Indie Game’ at the Golden Joystick Awards and ‘Best Action Game’ at The Game Awards. Now carrying the weight of a big and popular project on their shoulders, the team was even more ambitious.

With its seemingly unending stream of free post-launch content, the game stayed fresh, dropping new updates that fundamentally changed how the game is approached and played, all without players having to drop a single dime for it. Aside from those updates, multiple paid DLC’s were released as well: ‘The Bad Seed’, ‘Fatal Falls’ and ‘The Queen and the Sea’, all featured new biomes, weapons, enemies, game mechanics, and more. Since the release of Dead Cells, Motion Twin has stopped working on Twinoid, their community platform and portal for browser games. It led to a decline of players, and the games have not been updated since Adobe Flash Player’s end of life in January 2021. However, a group of loyal players has announced to save Twinoid and created a platform called Eternal Twin with Motion Twin’s blessing. There, they’re recreating as many games as possible without using Adobe Flash Player.

In August 2019, Motion Twin started a new studio under the name Evil Empire, consisting of a group of employees who wanted to continue working on Dead Cells. Motion Twin’s now-former head of marketing, Steve Filby, runs Evil Empire. This allows Motion Twin to move onto a new project, though it does still continue to participate in creative decisions concerning Dead Cells. The two studios even still share the same open-plan office space, allowing them to easily share ideas and show each other their work.

In contrast to Motion Twin’s praised cooperative model, Evil Empire was founded like a classic company. In traditional video game companies, some employees have more financial investment in the studio, which could pay off when the studio produces a hit or when the company is sold. A cooperative model combats these traditional corporate structures, trying to level the playing field. But Evil Empire wanted to scale beyond ten employees, thus opting for a more classic company structure. “The aim of the Evil Empire team has always been to grow and to be able to go past the 8-10 person limit of the Motion Twin model. The co-op model comes with a bunch of constraints. There’s a stack of work, emotional costs and a whole lot more that’s hidden below the surface. It’s definitely not for the faint-hearted or someone looking for a cruisy 9-5. When you have to defend and justify your every idea to each and every member of the team, you have to be very motivated.”

With Evil Empire continuing to work on Dead Cells, Motion Twin can focus on the next project. A sequel to Dead Cells is not in the cards, as the studio has confirmed. “In terms of a sequel, we know for sure it’s not a good idea to dwell on your success. If you create a big hit, it’s best to use this energy to make something different. I don’t think we’ll make a Dead Cells 2.” But what will the team be making? In 2019 some very early concepts of multiple rough ideas were shared with PCgamer, such as a Sekiro-inspired third-person combat game. They also revealed beautiful pieces of concept art, showing a robot and his loyal dog traveling about in an apocalyptic wasteland. “We are already going through ideas that we might want to do and asking ourselves ‘can we do that?’ Anything can be possible, maybe we’ll be making the next ‘Skyrim.’ I don’t know what it’ll be.” If Dead Cells is any indication, we can only expect big things from Motion Twin.