Jeremy Winslow

Dead Cells

Playstation Lifestyle

August 5, 2018

7

While rogue-likes have been around since the 1980s—with the seminal Rogue often cited as the root—it wasn’t until more recent games like Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and Rogue Legacy that popularized the subgenre, pinning it on the games industry’s bulletin board as a destination to visit. But like flyers stapled on top of each other, filtering through them is exhausting, especially since a vast majority both look and feel the same. How do you know to go to Kevan’s party when Keven’s flyer looks just like Kevan’s? Thankfully, Dead Cells is not another Kevin, as it manages to be an accessible and addictive rogue-like that rewards you for understanding—and often exploiting—its systems, even if those systems are trite.