Dead Cells post-mortem

[Music] so hello everyone and thank you for attending today so I know I'm a bit little bit off of the event because I'm will be talking about this again but actually it's a thing that I will be talking today it's also something that you can apply to pretty much any kind of gam so I will use the released recently release the title which is called L cell that sells as an example that's not like something you can adapt this to any kind of game as I said so first things first with this guy hey my name is Sebastian bin now so people do know me by the nickname of deep night on internet on Twitter on anything I do work in a company which is called dead cells motion Train sorry the text is again yeah it's pretty much the same thing now but yeah the company motion tween you actually we've been making games for like 17 years now and we've been working

on the web on mobile gaming for 15 years so we do have quite a bit of experience so from the mobile so we can't talk about that but that's not the point today and so we work it on a game which is called dead cells I will talk a little bit about this game a little bit more right after but just if you want to contact me I will show this again at the end but if you want to contact me feel free to just DM me on Twitter it's open or leave me an email if you have any question if you want to talk about anything if you want to invite me for beer whatever please feel free and the game was released like one months ago she want to get it is available on PC Mac Linux and all consoles except a little sweet yeah they told us it was dead already so we didn't push it on it so today I would like to talk about a thing which I call that I not personally but it's called columns problems the thing is with this term it's different depending on we are talking to psychic

marketing guy uses an ER or whatever but I will try to explain what colors are for me today and I will try to explain why our thing is very important for pretty much any game today so if you google this world it's also something you will have tons of different definition on this one so which try to explain what chords are for me so let's take a Mario game or whatever platform 2d platformer game and let's analyze quickly what the lutes are you have the very global first loop which is your start again you play it and you finish by dying or reaching the end whatever but you just play the game which is a loop in itself but inside this loop you also have smaller loops like you enter level you place this level and you exit up for your you'll die and you can repeat this loop multiple multiple time in a single playthrough you will have multiples play a level loop and inside this loop you have really small loops which is in a

Mario for example just break blocks and get roots from it if it's a shooter game you can for example shoot enemies and get points and score and if it's an adventure games could be asked question to people and get clues or information on your story so today we'll talk specifically about these really small things so in a nutshell chords are for me is a very basic thing that your player will do from the beginning to the end of your game it's really different from like saying the game concept or the USP of the game unique selling point of the game so idea about what's your actual things that your player will do in your game like breaking blocks on getting routes asking question getting clues whatever depending on your game so my definition of co-op is that very basic thing you do you actually do in the game from as a beginning to the end and why is it important that's a good question and I will try to explain the thing is for me a co-op very

important when you make any kind of game you when you understand what you will be able to what your player will actually do in this game it makes prototyping a little bit easier to do because you can actually focus and spend your energy and you I say mana you can spend your energy in a wiser way because you can okay you will probably like making an adventure game or an action game or pajama or whatever but you can also spend more time on the actual things that your player will have to do and that should be fun and sorts of useful to avoid this trap you know when someone is a team you are maybe three months away from the prototype phase and someone in team says okay this game is not fun right now but don't worry it will be fun when we have more content which is most of the time you do know that it's pretty much wrong so when this happened usually that's probably not the only reason but that's probably because you have a flow in your car oops and making sure that you're

very basic things that you do in the game is not actually not fun if it's an action game section part should be fun in itself it's not about your global thing just the actual actions that you will do so the goal here is to try to make your columns not perfect as good as possible at least because of course we we could work on a single thing for years and not making it perfect but just trying to make it as good as possible if it's platformer game make sure that jumping around is actually fun because that's what your player will be doing so let's talk about a bit of about dead cells so that cells up for this you will have sounds here so this is a tray of that cell so there's no some for us on on my computer so that is not very important okay

[Music] [Music] so this is the audio access trailer just

shows the principle of the game I do like this trailer more than the radius one because it actually explains but as well what the game is all about so that says is what we call this a marketing you know it's what we call the oven which is radio mix between a hog light and a Castlevania is pretty much like Castlevania that you can play and replay again which is different every time so every time you explore the level is different and and so on but this part is only as I said marketing for us this is just our explains again actually this game is basically just jumping around on killing bad bad guys this is really just it you do that from the beginning TV and so knowing that we actually did spend quite a huge amount of time pretty much I think art of the development something like this we did spend quite a huge amount of time just making sure that this thing jumping around on killing guys was actually fun because it's ready to carve the game we can make a nice hog vanya or whatever we can have a good crafting system we can have a good progression system but that's really

actually not the most important thing we've been on early access for one year and six months and we've been quite surprised because it it was actually quite successful and it took us by surprise so we sold on PC only it was on early access on PC steam we sold 1 million copies and we did a few also on unconcern on switch and everything mostly on switch to be honest so we did have quite a success you know so I don't believe in I don't pretend that ok there is some kind of magic recipe to make a good game or whatever but I do believe we can analyze any kind of experience and actually think what what were the things that did work in this game and maybe what could we take it to take from it and learn and as pretty much everyone before me told it what could we learn from this so today we like to try to analyze this so let's just take a basic thing in this game that is jumping between platforms that's some things you will probably do in this game like

thousands of times so really often so this is just a basic sequence a jump double jump and I learned something really basic let's now examine this feeling a little bit more and specifically if you look closely it's slowed down you will see the player will actually fall for some platforms and jump so that some things that's some kind of hidden trick and he missed but okay actually he landed so you see this kind of very small details it actually is the kind of thing that we did spend a huge really huge amount of time making sure that even basic things like jumping between platforms was actually fun and easy to do even for someone who is not familiar with our core platforming on this kind of thing so for example yeah we do use a just-in-time trick this one is funny because last year we showed the game at TGS at Tokyo Game Show and during the business day there was someone some Japanese guy who actually

tried the game it was like okay it's really fun and I noticed this small thing you know when you leave a platform we allow the gem for maybe two frames after leaving the platform and say that's a good idea to do that because it makes everything feels a little bit more smoother and I was really surprised because actually noticed this kind of small detail and it told us actually it was one of the developer of Castlevania Symphony of the night that was like okay and this kind of small detail actually make good games in my opinion because it makes something which is very obvious just jumping it makes it very easy to do and which is I think the key when you're making a platform game for example we do also have air control I really don't understand why people when you make a platformer game please don't make your double jump feature unlockable I don't understand why people would do that and double jump is not some kind of advance that features so just a quality of life issue so double jump or any kind of air

control if it's not about making realistic jumping or whatever if it's just a platforming game make sure that every key features are actually there at the beginning not something that you actually have to unlock after a few hours yes I'm looking at your ugly guesses also as you probably noticed we actually missed the platform we arrived a few pixels away from the actual target HR platform but okay we detected that and with reported the player because it's not funny to actually miss the player platform four five four five pixels or something so that's not the point it's not about making a very difficult jumping game it's just jumping them so we also tell about people on the wall so let's see a full sequence of just basic trotters all of the liver and let's see it with every kind of Alper activated so we jump it we climb we jump we grab we recall we reach again and we get rid of the reward which is very good so this

sequence is quite short it's intense it's very easy to perform you don't have to do any kind of funny trick to do that even any kind of failure can do that let's see the same sequence with everything any kind of Alper deactivated so we'll see all the cross so that we have in this sequence so this is the same guy okay so he has to jump because there is a cliff or yes to jump not single jump double jump because it's a little bit too add no wall claim of course so we jump we miss because you don't have any kind of teleportation double jump again okay we miss because there is no we don't help him to do is jump double jump in double jump man yep if I do and you see this last one specifically it's really felt like I should have succeeded and doing this very basic jump at some reason maybe because I was one big side away I just failed and was it fun I don't think so he's not what this game is about it's not about making difficult jumps just about jumping around on

exploring the river so the short version of this is you should try when you make any kind of game try to understand where your player is actually trying to do is he trying to jump on this platform is he trying to dodge an attack is he trying to kill enemies or as question or whatever is it mean to be a challenge I mean he's jumping bit with this to platform is part of the challenge it's just part of the floors again if no make sure you succeed because yeah this is not a game about jumping making difficult jumps on whatever is really just a game about exploring or vania it's a hope like kind of gam it's really not about making difficult jumps it's we we have no good reason for forcing forcing our player to fail on this very simple task the reason is that's something that we didn't anticipate that much when we release the game but now we can understand so that's why we want to share it

most of our reviews we have a little bit more today but about for this review we have pretty much all of them are positive and you know what they are not talking about those game yeah actually talking about the controls about the smoothness the gameplay and how it is to actually play right away when you for example during an event if you give the controller to someone it is like you play for 5 seconds and feels ok it's nice and most of our reviews are ready that it's not about odd vania or whatever it's really about this game it's just straight away and to play because we did put some huge amount of effort on these simple things jumping killings and avoiding attacks just a quick another example you know how many people do know Phoenix right i sat on a whatever yeah that's a great game so one of my of my all-time favorite but this game is very interesting because you know the topic of this game is really like boring a

it's mean it's so not only simulator just that often is that I mean suggest about reading text on trying to prove something in a court it could be nice but it's such a difficult pitch you know it's difficult to make a good game out of this and for some reason in this game you actually feel bad as you feel when you play Phoenix right for some reason at some point you feel like ok I'm just so good at this game and everything feels so right and there is a reason for this because it's actually made reading just reading the text fan on dynamic and if you observe this game ready closely and you should watch lots of long plays you will see how many attention to detail the did put in jazz displaying text on the screen so let's see a small and observe the texture speed for example yeah you have visual feedbacks flashes [Music]

it's getting erratic [Music] silence and this really and is getting really fast you see it was just basically displaying text it was something really basic that many games actually do but sit she managed to do it in such a cool way that you actually feel already badass just reading this it's almost like an animated sequence but they don't have that much animation frames or whatever it just did basically make sure they made sure that displaying the text was good and this is actually the topic of all this talk it's not about what makes a game feels good it's really just about putting effort well it matters in your game if it's a platformer game if it's an adventure game is it an action game is it whatever make sure that every

single basic action that your player will have to do from the beginning till the end all these columns are made as fun as possible because for us at least it used it is really the point that made I think that sells quite so success so thank you [Applause] [Music]