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Dead Cells
15 | ♥ 63
Release:
2018
Platform:
MobilePS4SteamSwitchXBox

I created Dead Cells, as lead game designer and lead developer.

More specifically, I was in charge of all the game design, level design (not the environment visuals), most enemies, all weapons & skills and all visual effects & particles. The game was developed using my GameBase codebase with the Haxe language and the HeapsIO engine.

The concept is born from the ashes of Hordes Zero, a multiplayer tower defense game for web & mobile, featuring coopetition (play together, but only the last survivor gets a reward). This early project even had a public Alpha version, but it proved to be a really big failure: not fun, no clear vision and tons of gameplay & balance issues.

An ingame screenshot of the last “tower defense” version of the game, before it was sliced down to a single player Castlevaniesque adventure.

We basically decided to cut every single aspect of the project that we were not confident with: mobile, cross-platform, multiplayer and last but not least, tower-defense.

This was a “last chance” move to save the project (and the company, we were not in a great shape) from obliteration. It was also the moment we decided to go “all-in” on Steam & PC, which was something completely new for us.

The final product is quite different from the original idea as you can see ;) We decided to call it a Roguevania, because it sounded cool, it was quite close to the actual game concept and because no one could stop us from doing stupid things.

One would say this change from Tower Defense to Roguevania was a good move, as the final game sold more than 5M units on all platforms and won the Best Action Game award, during the Game Awards in 2018.

A very early mockup of the game, when it was still a top-down tower defense in a modern world.

Early prototype

Tower defense prototype

Pre-production prototypes

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  1. Tostory.ai:

    As a poor high school student, I find the journey of game development quite fascinating, especially with something like **Dead Cells**. It’s inspiring to learn how the designer turned a failed project into something incredible. It makes me want to dive deeper into game design myself!
    March 28, 2025 at 11:18
  2. Anonymous:

    jogo muito griativo muito bom para as pessoas
    July 15, 2022 at 19:14
  3. him:

    wow
    March 29, 2022 at 15:54
  4. victor:

    I like your game
    March 14, 2022 at 04:00
  5. gök2:

    When I type the said name of the game, the game does not come out.
    March 13, 2022 at 16:21
  6. Valério da Silva Costa:

    e legau
    December 30, 2021 at 17:16
  7. m:

    The game is on steam and nearly every other platform just google dead cells.
    October 19, 2021 at 07:12
  8. diego:

    OI MEU NOME E DIO GO E QUERIA TAR JOGANDO MUITO ESSE JOGO
    October 11, 2021 at 13:34
  9. mehkhi:

    i want to play it looks cool
    September 2, 2021 at 23:50
  10. Shit:

    Where is the game?
    June 5, 2021 at 15:48
  11. dejereon:

    look awesome bruh
    March 11, 2021 at 15:39
  12. jose anderson:

    oi
    February 5, 2021 at 16:41
  13. Ebon:

    Good-game
    December 22, 2020 at 21:43
  14. ShalokShalom:

    Dead Cells at least uses the Heaps game engine and Haxe as language, yes.
    November 15, 2020 at 09:18
  15. LintfordPickle:

    An interesting read. Does your company also use Haxe for the game development? All the screenshots (even the early prototypes) have that really clean and polished look that your Ludum Dare entries share.
    Nice work
    April 22, 2020 at 08:25