The hook, line and sinker of Dead Cells — why it’s so hard to put down
Update: I asked the developers about my conclusion from this piece during an AMA and the awesome guys actually answered:
So it’s official, then, their experience designing free-to-play games helped MotionTwin design the life-and-death loop of Dead Cells that keeps me playing the ruthless roguelite platformer for hours on end. I’m extremely grateful I could verify my hypothesis like that and I stand by the conclusion from this article.
I don’t even like roguelikes.
I appreciate the good ones, those with interesting mechanics or gimmicks. There’s only ever been just one roguelike/lite title, though, that didn’t make me go “this would make a great game if it had predesigned levels, persistent progress and checkpoints” and it was Nethack. Until now.
I’m in love with Dead Cells. It really is as good as they say it is, and then some. I had my reservations about it being a roguelite instead of a regular metroidvania, but I swallowed it whole: hook, line and sinker. This is what inspired me to write this piece — I’m not going to go into much detail on why the game is great, there’s plenty of reviews out there. What fascinates me, is how this game reeled me in where others failed to hold my attention.
What’s so different about Dead Cells that many other roguelites lack? How is it that I don’t mind its vicious cycle of life and death and can’t help myself but keep on trying, iteration after iteration?
Well, for starters, it introduces itself extremely well.
The first time you launch the game it begins with an NPC right where our protagonist, the green slime, emerges from the prison hydraulics, after being God knows where. All we see at this point is a very short, cryptic dialogue, but it’s enough to pique the player’s interest. As we run off into the distance to inevitably return here after an unfortunate demise, we’re teased with more vague fragments of a mystery. The first few iterations in Dead Cells are predesigned like this, actually. Each time we respawn the dialogue quips are a bit different. The beginning of this level, Prisoners’ Quarters, sometimes changes as well, so we can see it evolve around us and be curious about how it’s going to look the next time we pass by. We’re actually looking forward to respawning, cause it progresses the story.
This means that in the first few iterations, the player is positively reinforced, rewarded with story exposition for dying. That’s the hook.
One of the things Dead Cells is famous for, is its merciless difficulty. I went in fully expecting to get my teeth kicked in from the very beginning. The first encounter, though, is a slow, shambling zombie that telegraphs its attacks so hard it could just as well send postal pigeons instead. It’s a cousin of the first Goomba from Super Mario Bros. — a basic, weak enemy that teaches the fundamentals of the game. In fact, all monsters in the Prisoners’ Quarters serve this purpose — they slowly teach the player their simple patterns. If you figure them out, that’s it — you’re at this game’s version of the bonfire, the shop where you buy unlocks and persistent upgrades. The first encounters in the game are thus very manageable and only require an understanding of the basic mechanics.
To really understand why this is brilliant design will take another paragraph, but you might’ve already guessed where this is headed.
As you keep playing and beat a different iteration of that first location time and time again, you gain competence at the game, mastery of its control and of the enemy patterns this level demands of you. You start using advanced tactics and you discover the versatility of the falling attack, which speeds up your descent, damages monsters and crashes doors where you land (it’s an absolutely brilliant multi-tool in the player’s vocabulary). The moment it all clicks really feels magical.
At that point, one look at a configuration of monsters in an area lets you plan your run through it in one long, deadly combo. Even if it turns out there are more monsters in immediate vicinity than you initially thought, you easily adapt on the fly. Dead Cells enables the player to achieve the state of flow very fast, and it really feels amazing to see your skill at the game improve so dramatically. You begin to just race through this first area at a breakneck speed, each time getting closer towards the next unlock or upgrade once you reach the shop at the end of it.
Let’s call that the line Dead Cells uses to pull the player in. Once the starting area stops providing more story beats and settles into a repetitive form, there no longer is an apparent reward for death. Now we need something more than just a hook to keep the players going. What better way to reel them in, than designing the first and arguably most repetitive level in a way that makes the players feel great about themselves? When you’ve just had your behind handed to you yet again, the option to restart is always enticing, even if just for those first few moments of satisfaction.
Furthermore, this mechanic extends beyond just this starting area. As Dead Cells gets more and more difficult, it’s usually by introducing a new enemy or two. You overcome that challenge by figuring out the best way to fight those new monster types. Sooner or later, the Promenade of the Condemned is just as easy as the starting level, then the Ramparts also becomes cakewalk, and so on for the entire game.
Death is a downer, and seeing how often it happens in Dead Cells, it can be downright frustrating. If you choose to begin again, however, you can vent this frustration by making a cathartic, deadly run through the levels you’ve already mastered, that will also let you get closer to another persistent upgrade. It’s an addictive pattern that keeps you playing well after the initial sense of wonder dissipates. You’ll know it works if you find yourself suspending gameplay sessions in the safe area before the one that you’re still having struggling with.
This element of Dead Cells’ design also contributes to the perception that you’re actually making persistent progress by making player skill the gateway to new levels. The game has no checkpoints, yet it always feels like you’re stuck on something particular. In this way the locations you’ve already figured out mechanically, once beaten, kinda stay beaten.
That’s part of what, for the purpose of this piece, we can call the sinker. Though Dead Cells is a roguelite by design, its air-tight mechanics mean that your progress, as you grow in skill at the game, feels persistent. The locations preceding the one where you’ve just died become playgrounds for self-expression. You cut through them like a hot knife through butter, and in this way the game also reassures you that, yes, you aregitting gud. That keeps you hoping that whatever you’re stuck on, you will finally persevere (and hot damn if that faith isn’t necessary in a game as ruthless as this one). It’s also what gives meaning to the fact that Dead Cells is a roguelite — if it was a regular metroidvania this effect would be lost.
Even when it seems like you keep running face-first into a concrete wall, Dead Cellsmakes sure there’s always a carrot at the end of this stick. Persistent upgrades get exponentially more expensive, but they’re still there for you to bank your cells in, so step by step you’re always making meaningful progress by just playing the game. It’s also possible to randomly encounter an interesting or funny lore scene that you haven’t seen before. Then there are bonus goals you can strive towards, like the time-locked doors in each level that only open if you’ve been fast enough in previous areas.
To further keep the player interested, in a brilliant fusion of metroidvania & roguelite idiosyncrasies, using persistent new powers allows you to progress to alternate new locations in your next run. The levels are effectively grouped into tiers and, once unlocked, you can mix & match them to compose your own favourite path through the game.
At this point, the game designers at Motion Twin probably let out a sigh of relief: hey guys, I think we’ve got it. They set the hook to keep that initial player curiosity for as long as possible. Then they made sure we’ve got plenty of positive reinforcement to keep on playing. Finally, they used the best elements of the RogueVania format to make the players feel they’re making progress even when it’s microscopic at best.
It’s the secret sauce they brought to the genre from their experiences as browser & mobile game developers (in very early game design documents, Dead Cells was meant to be free-to-play). With their past games they learned how to create feedback loops that engage the player and they used the very best practices to greatly enhance what, at its core, is already an awesome game.
Comparing a player enjoying a game to a fish on a hook might not seem like a pretty picture. We’ve come to associate addictive game design patterns of free-to-play games with the very worst aspects of manipulation. Dead Cells, however, shows that it doesn’t have to be all bad. After all, when we play a game or watch a movie, we trust the creators of what we consume to influence us and manipulate us to create an entertaining or moving experience.
As a fascinating series of tweets has once shown, a lot of games secretly manipulate us to enhance our enjoyment — to make us think we’re alive thanks to the last sliver of health or that through sheer luck we killed an enemy with our last remaining bullet. I’m pretty sure Dead Cells has some more tricks up its sleeve as well (I don’t believe that finding more and more high-level gear on my way to the boss I couldn’t previously beat was entirely through chance). What it uses them for, though, only improves my enjoyment of the game, and if other developers learn from it I might actually start playing roguelites more.
That’s how a medium evolves. No matter where the influence comes from — if it seems interesting, try it, if it seems to work, use it. Bottom line is, it’s great if used for players’ enjoyment, and not to milk them for more cash.
So, basically, don’t be those guys.
