Each weapon is taken from the game and transformed into Dead Cells’ fast-paced action combat. This was trickier in some games than others! I still don’t quite understand how they managed to get a deckbuilder game into Dead Cells…
It was tricky, but I learned a lot from the first indie crossover update. Bring a weapon from another game into Dead Cells, make it fit the feel of the game, make it different from the 150+ other weapons and skills in the game, and how that weapon is represented in the source material. Respecting dolphins is, not surprisingly, very difficult. It’s also a fun challenge for the development team.
But the inspiration and ideas I got from working with source material that I love and have played with for hours really helped make my work easier. We often share experiences and work with people we know. Here’s how this update happened, thanks to the community in the indie development scene.
To expand on this further, we’ll have to go back to the first Indie Crossover update coming in November 2021. Hollow Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, Guacamelee, Skul: The Hero Slayer, Blasphemous, and Curse of the Dead Gods.
The idea started with a conversation in the break room, “Wouldn’t that be cool?” I quickly realized that the indie scene was very open, friendly, and supportive. Most people know each other to some degree, so why not reach out to other studios directly? Well, we did just that and had multiple enthusiastic responses in a matter of days. It was as easy as that!
After months of bouncing ideas back and forth with them, we ended up releasing an update without really knowing how people would receive it. Since its release, it has become our most popular non-DLC update, releasing over 30 updates. It turns out that indie gamers love to see other indie games supported…
Of course, this is a very fun type of update as you get the chance to bring elements of your favorite games to Dead Cells in a unique way. But the fact that the visibility of the first update was so great really convinced us to do a second crossover update. We helped our audiences increase their knowledge of the game with our first update, and their audiences became more aware of Dead Cells.
This is a big problem as not many gamers (especially console players) are familiar with more than one indie title unless they are really into indie games. Hopefully, the ratings and player base for these types of games will grow.
This is part of the aforementioned supportive vibe of the indie scene. The indie space rarely has aggressive competition. People here are always happy to see other studios succeed, and actively want that success to happen.
To emphasize this point, the guys at Re-Logic who made Terraria, an indie game, are still 11.th best selling game of all time (At least according to Wikipedia), we’re excited to be a part of this update and will be bringing Dead Cells content to Terraria in the near future. We’d be pretty shocked if we wanted to, but in this area, it seems like it’s natural for us to cooperate and help each other.
That said, we love independent games and want more players to be exposed to the creativity and community they offer. We hope this update will allow more players to actively participate in the indie scene through the game they already love.
