Dead Cells is a Metroidvania action-platformer with a rogue-lite flavor. If you can battle your way past the castle's keepers in 2D souls-lite combat, you'll be allowed to explore a large, ever-changing castle. There are no checkpoints, so be ready to kill, die, learn, and repeat. Tough but fair fighting, over fifty different weapons and spells, and, of course, the emergency panic roll to save you out of difficulty. Motion Twin developed and released Dead Cells, a roguelike video game containing Metroidvania and soulslike features. You control an amorphous monster known as The Prisoner in the game. You must battle your way out of a diseased island as the Prisoner in order to kill the island's King. You take control of a dead body possessed by the Prisoner's head, which comes back to the beginning of the game when you die. Except for a few permanent items, the Prisoner loses all weapons and upgrades when it dies. Through exploration of the randomly created levels, you collect numerous weapons, treasure, and other items, which you use to battle various mutated enemies. Swords, whips, and spears are common weapons that may be used to attack enemies from a short distance. The prisoner can also evade enemy strikes by dodging across the ground or jumping over them. The Prisoner can go across an enemy's area and attack from behind by dodging into their space. The Prisoner can also crash into the ground, immobilizing an opponent and making them open to further assaults. The combat in the game is similar to that of the Souls series, with challenging foes that have specific behaviors that you can master and regular player-character death. You may gather Cells from killed enemies as you traverse a series of dungeons and combat the monsters within, which could be used to purchase permanent items like more health potions or weapons that may be randomly found throughout a run. If you die before the end of a dungeon level, you will lose all gathered Cells. Blueprints may also be found inside dungeons, however, they must be brought out of the dungeon in order to be obtained. More weapons and items may be purchased from shops by acquiring Blueprints. You can earn a limited amount of mutations between dungeons, which are upgrades that provide unique advantages to the Prisoner's skills that persist until you die. On the inside of a dungeon, you can also locate secret Power Scrolls that raise the Prisoner's health points and the weapon's power, depending on the tool's weapon class. Each level is built randomly by combining predesigned parts in a random order, as well as placing monsters and items at random. In a single run, up to three boss characters can be fought, and beating the game's final boss unlocks Boss Cells, permanent modifications that can be activated to make foes more challenging. You get another Boss Cell if you kill the final boss while holding the most current Boss Cells.