Dead Cells took fans by storm with its frenetic gameplay and gorgeous visuals, and now the franchise is getting a brand new board game. Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game will hit Kickstarter in the Spring, and is being brought to life by Scorpion Masqué, the publishers of Decrypto and Turing Machine, and the stellar design team of Antoine Bauza, Corentin Lebrat, Ludovic Maublanc, and Théo Rivière (also known as Kaedama). The game was developed in collaboration with Dead Cells creators Motion Twin and Evil Empire studios, and it will be a cooperative rogue-lite experience for 1 to 4 players. Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game will be demoed at the Scorpion Masqué stand at the Cannes International Game Festival from February 24th to the 26th, and you can find the Kickstarter page right here.
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Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game will be a dungeon crawler that embraces the original game’s Metroidvania elements. Players will have to choose the right path as they make their way through the biomes, and just like in the original game, players will lose all their equipment and gold upon dying, but they can still spend the Cells they collected to purchase mutations that can help them move forward in the game.
The Motion Twin team and Bérenger Dupré, Brand Manager at Evil Empire said “Ever since its release, we’ve received a ton of offers for board game adaptations of Dead Cells, and to be honest, we doubted that conveying the feeling of a solo video game through the board game medium was relevant, or even possible. We didn’t want to do it just because it would be cool to see our indy game end up represented in a pile of derivative products. But when Scorpion Masqué and Kaedama approached us with their prototype, we were amazed to see, 1. That they were real fans of Dead Cells, 2. That they had really captured the spirit of the game and succeeded in conveying the energy and speed of Dead Cells in a board game, and 3. That the game was super fun! We gave them carte blanche to make the game with our total confidence, and we have no regrets!”
Manuel Sanchez, Head of Studio at Scorpion Masqué said “Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game is a project that I have a very personal connection with. As a matter of fact, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of doing a board game adaptation of rogue-Lite and Metroidvania video game concepts since 2016. When I played Dead Cells years later, it was a revelation to me: everything I’d been looking for was there, in a crazy and hilarious universe.”
“No Scorpion Masqué project has ever been as crazy as this,” Sanchez said. “A platform like Kickstarter allows us to offer this game the way we imagined it. So it is with high hopes that we press the button this spring to offer you the fruit of 7 years of rumination and collaboration. 2023 is the most exciting year in the history of Dead Cells, and we are proud of our contribution to making it a reality!”
The Kaedama Team adds, “The entire Kaedama team is thrilled to be able to collaborate with Scorpion Masqué, Motion Twin, and Evil Empire on this project. We are all big fans of Dead Cells and have spent (too) many hours playing the game!
Working on this adaptation is both a great pleasure and an honor. Being able to adapt a video game that we love is a real childhood dream come true.”
Are you excited for Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things tabletop and gaming with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
