Dead Cells: What the F*n!?

[Music] this torque is mostly all about again that I've worked on which is dead cells it's pretty implemented so we'll talk about that on some kind of post-mortem of this game but really gameplay oriented so first thing first let me introduce myself so my name is Sebastian by now known as midnight on Twitter everything I'm a game developer I'm a game designer also and oh as you probably noticed I'm French so I really observe wouldn't be too much of an issue so I will take extra care just to make me understandable but sometimes you may miss a few things also I've been making games for like ages literally edges and yeah youngmee's proud of me and I really love making games I mean I've been doing that for years and would like to do that for years again so that's very important to me and another thing which is important so you can understand a little bit more

this talk I really like to take care of lots of details such as game feel controls balancing everything which is invisible to the player but actually matters in the game so it will explain a few things after all so I do lots of games and um as soon as possible because I have a kid now so it's a little bit more difficult but if you have evolved or never done again you should definitely do one because it's ready even for someone with season under game making it's really a huge very important experience so you learn gods of the tons of thing about that so if you do game jams yeah yoku if you don't so I do work in a company which is called motion tween we've been talking about that a good in a previous talk which was all about co-op so we just be quick we've been making games since 2001 it was mostly web games web especially web free-to-play games you know it was by this time we're making a free-to-play games was actually cool or not too up because it was before

you know the KPI thing and the free-to-play aggressive techniques and everything it was way too cool free to play part we also tried to make a few mobile games it wasn't valued and actually almost diagnosed the process of doing that so we didn't have such a great time on mobile free-to-play we should probably have done of cranium mobile games and most people describe us because it used to be a joke ready like we put that on a website it was a Monty Python quote but most people describe us has been you know an anarcho-syndicalist co-op and we actually are table so it means we in this company we are based on free qualities first one is we do watch the same amount of time so it's eight hours a day five days a week and in the same office but that's also because it was a small change that we do that it's really important for us to communicate on everyday basis we also have the exact same decision powers very important because in any kind of decisions charge

of strategic decision arwing someone or deciding if this weapon should be like Opie on the next update or whatever like that everyone can actually take part in the debate and if you want to express something it has any kind of idea anyone can actually vote or just talk to anyone to give ideas and to share ideas it's always there's always someone in charge at one point so to make sure that we don't lose time talking it because we like talking that we don't want that to last forever I prefer making games and also the last but really not least we are all paid the same way so for example I've been in this company for 18 years it's almost in the beginning and I'm paid the exact same way as someone you say arrived three years ago so it's pretty important it seems like a super hardcore leftist ring it is in some way but it actually makes our wing people very very efficient because when you get a newcomer in this company he actually gets paid on as Sundays which empower

someone else after test period of course it actually makes people feeling and pull out really quickly and they are involved much much more quickly than in any kind of quest so it makes everything actually on day to day basis much easier to do let's talk about that service now quickly I actually did someone play dead cells in this room yeah okay I was stressed now I'm terrified so it's a good so that says as equally is what we call the old Vanya it's you know it's marketing but it actually explains things well it's basically you castlevanias that you can't play again and again so every time you die and get back at the beginning you have a fresh experience in some way so the vs. are different but not very different so it's pretty that castle vignettes that you can play again and again oh you have to know it was the last chance project as I said we almost died making mobile games and by this time because of the decline of the web the company was not in such

great shape so we had of course cache issues and everything and at one point we decided okay do we want to make mobile games or do we want to do something else and at one point we actually decided maybe you should just make a PC title you know maybe it's the last one so let's make something big and this was actually a good idea because we luckily we have survived this but it was really if this project did fade I think I will just be today making like a sad past small team of oh it was cool before so no it's not that today we spent about two years on earth making this game we spent about one year on ARF on giada access wing we are known said one year but we spent a little bit more because we had tons of interesting feedback and we also made the console port which was want something something planned at the beginning so it took about six months to make all the free consoles and so it was a little bit longer than expected but still not too far from what we announced it to player at the beginning one year

when are you on earth the game itself soared more than 1 million minutes which is an expectation and cool so we are really happy about that of course and about 60% as of 2 days on which is quite normal because you know the PC versions yoga access went live before one year before but the thing is yoga concert is really a big part of it and especially the switch so the switch is a thing today so you already know that so I won't elaborate on this so the game itself the game is based on three pillars the first one is obviously combat this game is all about killing stuff and not trying to get killed or trying not to get killed of course I'd say really all about that positioning in space avoiding attacks reading patterns from kidding but enemies it's also about progression and steady we want it to have the strong sense of progression that's a free to play legacy something that we wanted to carry on and also it's our ability ability also something that came for us

for the front of key to play to why free to pay before we have always been making games that you can play for hundreds of hours so we wanted to have something like that but all these four aspects are nothing compared to one very important thing which is parameters you know parameters is like the old things that everyone wants in the game but no one wants in the game and and when we decided to make a promise oriented game it actually made lots of things we it changed lots of things again so yeah making my parameters game is all about embracing this idea okay you're going to kill the player it will be sad you will have to start naked at the beginning so you have to make sure that's actually a good experience which on the paper doesn't seem like one but anyway we'll try to do that so internally the paradis is was obviously very odd topic actually at one point we even we were not sure to want to make a permadeath

game so it could have more classic castlevania type of game but because we were a small company it was not possible for us to make like 15 hours long title with tons of unique content that was not something because we were just eight people and at the beginning we just had one graphic artist to make everything at one point zero two which was well more but so it was definitely not possible to make a single not Pramod s game for us so at one point someone had this idea of maybe maybe we should make do this as part of the progression in this game maybe we should consider that dying should be like oh yeah I died so I can do something new and this is actually defined what substance this was very great idea great idea internal years that we had not to brag but yes it's really everything first things that was changed was we don't have any kind of backtracking between levels so it means for example you start the first level which is a prison if you exit this level and go to the promenade

which is the second one you cannot go back to the prison and if you want to play again the prison you actually have to die to get back at the beginning again so you cannot get back between levels you can do whatever you want in a sega level but no backtracking another aspect it's making sure that each one counts in some way the way we did that is using the so called you know dead cells in this game when you kill someone you probably will get dead cells blue dead cells these dead cells so it can be used in a shot that you will see from time to time which is called the collector and this shot allows you to invest your cells and to actually make progress on something such as unlocking a new weapon a new skill or whatever and it's pretty about investing says the thing is if you die you lose yourself but if you die you keep this progress so it's really your goal is basically to get that cells invest them so they are stuck in this bar so you actually make progress every time you play and at one

point maybe after two or three runs you may unlock your weapon or unlock the skills that you have chosen to invest on so it's pretty all about that making sure that you this on this one wasn't useless at least you make some progress on something and maybe you have unlocked something and also we do have you know it's still castle vanished things so we do have material funniest things in this game so for example this is a basic wall map of the game at the beginning so you just start on the left on the prison's first level and then you move to the promenade and after that you go to the one part and you have a boss and so on you continue who's again but at one point in the Sudan level in the promenade you will get a new skill which is permanent and this skill allows you to grow vines out of the ground and to build ladders at specific point points that were before that inaudible you cannot it's like next holiday that you can build specific places so it allows you to which places that were all locked before that but the thing is with we do

use that in the slave dominate but if you actually want to have new content you actually have to get back to the prison because in the prison if you have this skill you will unlock a new access to a level which is called the stools and it allows you to actually have a new pass you have total prison which you can now go to the sewers Fuzhou sewers and this is the idea you know it's unlocking skill and making sure that you can use them but when you die when you get back at the beginning and the same goes in the sewers you have a new skill which allows you to teleport yourself and you can use that in the promenade so obviously you cannot use it right away but if you die and get back to the beginning oh you are excited in some way because you are new things to do and maybe there is a level that you can now access in a different branch and it's all about that making sure that your skills are used through death and also very important point we add lots of debate and discussion about this internally it's making the loop between dying and

starting over over really quick we just have basically like 10 seconds because we have a loading screen but when you die you get back in action 10 seconds later you don't have to press anything you don't have to say okay I will do another one you don't have any kind of stats screens that may might take a little bit too long it's really just okay you died you get back in through section because it wasn't that that's important you just get back into action so it was very important and something that actually made this there's a little bit easier to get along with another point which was affected like a lot by super ominous it's to control why because in a primer this game you will die like a lot and you will get back at the beginning and the last thing that we want to player to actually fear is dying for stupid reasons and we don't want to play actually feel like I was about to join where I fell in lava and I died sorry you see it's a combat game it's

not it's not a platform game but still it's you know it's a sites call of you it's a 2d platformer it's action but it's still a platformer game so we always ask this question is that forming for example to be a challenge for example if you take super meatboy as an example yes platforming is part of the channels all about jumping and getting killed and getting back into action really quickly it's all about that but that search is really combat oriented platforming it's just a mean to move and to avoid enemies and to position yourself and it's not our core platformer game so when we ask you this question it was really useful to many points is it mean to be a challenge I mean this is a player supposed to die on doing this and if the answer is no yes we just make sure that we're succeed let's see that into action now we have just the basic situation here also player is on the left side and he wants to join to the right side so let's see is that James yeah that was

super intense but maybe you're not sure if you have noticed shootings that actually did happen in the draw a short sequence let's see that again but this time in slow-mo so we can have time to actually notice all the stupid things that actually happen let's see the same sequence normal it starts run he's about to jump Oh before he jumps and you he was definitely about to miss its platform because the fit we're not on this target platform but for some reason it actually which is platform and that's lots of thing like that we actually do which are behind the curtain that actually make sure that so classic said succeed in doing what he wants to do first thing this one is very common thing but when you don't have that in again including 3d games it suddenly feels really awkward this idea is if when you leave a platform and you're about to fall from a platform what should you give you like two or three frames to jump anyway because we understand that you want it to jump like unless split second and you really

missed but yeah it's not mean to be challenged so okay you can jump you can you can do that so we are low jump right on the last time and also we teleport you for example if we see that you are like five pixels away from the target platform or we understand that you want it to go where we for example check if there is lava or are you pressing the right button or stuff like that and we try to understand well it actually trying to get it to this platform is it and if yeah we just teleport you because it's not fun to miss for five pizza and if you're really too far maybe we'll use extra animation like when with what we saw in this video which was like watching and getting up which is like a small time energy also ready too far we just allow you to climb also platform which is slow so for speedruner it matters but for most players just well I just survived on this platform to a shot but I did it and that's very important

because as I said it's not part of the game and it's all about understanding play intention here we try to figure out what is trying to do is it part of the challenge if not we try to make in succeed or we help him in to succeeding oh yes about the double jump thing you know and we decided to unlock so double jump right away from the beginning it's not something which is locked in any way you could decide to lock you know but double jump for us is really like a quality of life it's not about something which is very strict or whatever it's all about giving your player ways to adjust and less to anticipate so it just really a quality-of-life thing so yeah you might want and what in a game block double jump future beyond something but a pro tip here so let's see a full movement sequence your player is trying to get to twist on the right is moving jumping double jumps when you do get to treasure

yeah it was yes something that really happens a lot in this game you just move around and try to get something let's see the same sequence but this time not in slow-mo but we'll disable any kind of LP on this gap I mean like everything you don't have to just in time you don't have you just have your jump double jump and that's pretty much it so let's see how it actually happens now so the player starts to run now there's no collisions hope you are to jump okay it's to I you have to double jump oh you cannot climb on world so rights to are you again okay okay this one is easy no okay it's becoming annoying so with the virgin I understood okay this one is tricky and yeah you you saw this this last one especially it was like really really unfair and luckily the guy didn't die on this one but if he if he was dying maybe it's a 10-minute long run it

would feel unfair it's really all about that you know it's funny all about making sure that it doesn't feel unfair at any point and this particular last example everyone feels like oh it's okay it was really maybe a one pixel away or something and if it was no not a present experience and the same goes for combat actually even if it's combat oriented game if we say to player that we cheat like you lot to actually make them win combats they will say like we will come with pitchforks on everything and they will kill us definitely but we actually do that but thing is this one is a little bit more tricky because we try to make sure that no one noticed so for example let's take a basic situation you have a SWAT in your end you have an enemy behind you and for some reason you attack on the left and not on the right so you missed and but to attack this guy

that's something that we can actually detect we just see your bearing about to swing your squad but you're not facing the right direction that's stupid because the enemy is right behind you so we just actually turn you around for free and you know thing which is great we have this fing the brain and the brain is trying to explain everything and most pleasure will actually just press the it button then the right button and some of them will press the right button first then the it button but in every case the brain sees something happening on screen maybe the timing was not perfect maybe he attacked before turning on but the brain says okay whatever I did that and it's video it really works like that it's pretty actually for the one you're on are for the access I think we maybe add to people noticing this thing it's the kind of hidden trick that it actually makes life yeah because missing the enemy by attacking the wrong direction it's just

not fun we don't want that to happen especially in combat again and the same goes for example 400 weapons we have a slight auto aim which is of course more obvious but this one as few tricks for example if you have a very fast weapon fastball will have a priority on small enemies so as we are low on HP or whatever or maybe a big enemy with low on HP or this kind of stuff maybe it's really close commute you so we have priority system on targets it's really different from using for example a very slow a powerful longbow like a sniper or something in this case we just want you to eat two big targets you don't want to eat some crappy trash mob you just want to focus on eating is a big target so it's really all about that making sure that we actually understand what the player wants to do and making sure that it feels like it was actually in power he was in control and you manage to do everything let's see if combat sequencer full combat sequence in slow mode so we can see everything happening so we break the door by holding dive on it the enemy

is not dead so we press like sweet on this guy in the middle it has more HP so we text me to do more its but you see on the right there is the archer if you shoot at us so we can say and we move to this guy clicking into the world and this guy above is flown bomb on so we get behind him we kick him and if force on its friend and when someone fallen everyone in this game it acts like a grenade he has special damage something that we added which was really hidden but it feels intuitive you have an enemy for him another one he actually takes lots of damage from that so you see this sequence is actually maybe five seconds long in real time and lots is happening inside this sequence we don't want jumping to be an issue we don't want the player to actually mix so platform so we ready teleport team like a lot we don't want an attack to miss because there are free more enemies in this room so we don't want this single attack to

miss especially because it was a killing blow so we have lots of thing like this happening and it's really really important one thing that we actually noticed when we made that it actually allowed us for much more difficult changes again it allows us to make much much more difficult combat on everything because it was all about strategy and less about actually actual controls or platforming or what it was really all about just thinking what's happening what I'm going to do and thinking split-second and something that reacts also discovered which was very surprising that will make our next game ready based on this thing muscle if you actually talk a lot more about controls and game fields on how the game plays right on everything as I do that before talking about the actual gameplay which is a game design you know like but still easy to play you talk about that moss which is very important because yeah we had many positive reviews and sorry about that okay just a

small off-topic thing but she all the access win on to things when we've been to early access you know it was by this time everyone was talking about the apocalypse and many people just told us you should do an only accessory we should do something else and actually it went fine and people were really really helpful and all the feedback especially the negative one we're really grateful on early access and smart things that we did I think I don't know from I don't remember from who who actually bought that but it's when we make visual patch notes we I write every single line which is based on community feedback and it could be something like of course a blog report but also a new feature or new gameplay change or something because it actually makes the community quickly understand that they are really having a strong impact on the game because they do have most of our patch notes on maybe 50 50 of your suggestions on what map so it's really really important doesn't cost anything it really makes a change and oh this one I just read it from the

guy from sanosuke known ones early access is very likely show you basically have to repair you your debt you have maybe giving them to your debts make videos short gameplay video to introduce them mix make your show your other access to show make sure that is dynamic and if things are burn and everything because it's more shows on a better it's more marketing tool than anything else yes we will gather feedback but at the same time you have to think about the dynamic it has to be interesting for players you have to have them changing things every maybe single moments on something like that quick takeaway I will just say when you make a game so don't matter what kind of game you're doing pretty all about taking care of details and especially if it's not the curves again this game that's not a platforming game it's a combat game super aggression games as I said stuff like that you see but it's not our core platformer but still because platforming

is part of the game but don't we don't want that to get in the way of the player we just actually take extract actually much more care about controls for example than anything else because we don't want that to be like an issue in any way and also because of the parameters maybe you recognize those games you know they're like really great and especially Prince of Persia was defining title for dead cells but I did play them all of them again many times in front of the night especially and you know what and when I played them again actually I didn't had such a great time yes actually they were good by certain but now you know by modern standards they just don't compete anymore and this is a very important point when you make again what worry if you have any kind of fatal inspiration or whatever it's truly important method as you remember please please don't make a shitty junker of just because it was like that but this time it's not it's really not fun and

lots of thing I've evolved and play all about getting the feelings that you had from this game and transforming back into your game not copying things because it's really not interesting okay so thank you everyone and if you have any question please feel free to ask [Applause] yep hey how's it goin thanks for the talk thanks for the game in your talk you mentioned how platforming wasn't the key challenge of dead cells so wanted to make it as breezy as possible however in my playthrough I noticed the fall damage was pretty punishing and so it basically led to this pattern of I just the ground slam negating it I just ground slammed everywhere I went so oh sure so the ground slam move we're pressed down an attack yeah it negates

fall damage so it kind of just created this play pattern of everywhere I go in the game I'm ground slamming and I was curious what thought went into the fall damage taking into account that that's part of the platforming and not really part of the difficulty you're going for oh yeah did this move because we wanted to have an extra tool for the player at one point it was maybe we wanted to make that something locked behind some kind of challenge or whatever but we decided to make part of the game because it really added a little layer of extra strategy it allows you to for example to get quickly to the ground because you have only made a weapons so you don't want to get too far from the enemies it was really added for that and yes it did change a few a few things about the world design but actually not that much it was really all about giving tools for advanced players actually we don't explain this tool in any point since again we don't have any kind of tutorial or whatever we just want this to be discovered accidentally because it's not important but it can be really useful when you're on advanced players you massive player will actually use it but

maybe after four or five hours of gameplay so it's really meant to be like that thank you okay thank you for your talk it was very fun to watch to like your game and I wanted to know how to are you about to give the feeling that you need to grind and you know restart a lot of game to win this game it's a big program with rock-like with yeah you know understand so what about making sure that you have new content every time you play you know it's really like a free to play thing to make sure that every time you die you can get back at the beginning we want you to have something fresh to try for example is a good example is the vinyl phones that oh this ladder is that something that to quickly see in the first level you have these green things on the ground you cannot do anything you don't have any kind of no tutorial explaining what is it and at one point in the promenade you actually get the power to make this green thing turn into a vine so it's all about making sure that you notice this

thing before just like you know Metroidvania so when you get back to the prism you say I saw this thing in the prison I died but I know there is something like that in the prison let's go there and there we will be one day in this world is a new liver this is a very important small loop that we spend quite a lot of time thinking of this particular one because we wanted to have a okay something strange solution okay I unlocked something a new level as a reward a new pass it's really all about that making sure that the plea understand quickly the loop of the game and he understands her okay now I see every time I die I might have something new to do and at one point son loading weapons but it could be unlocking pass so really taking care of the very first one to make sure that he understands everything and yeah this blow mining moment ways okay I can do that now and it makes everything else after that what Molly thank you you said you put things in the game to make the game easier like

the jumps in the top and jump mechanics did that game design actually make it hard to do other things like make the bosses easier or did that make it worse in any way possible is because most of us is except one is not at all about platforming in most boss home you don't have much platforms so it's really didn't change much anything in front of bosses actually the most important thing and issues that we had is about the world climbing thing because you could choose bosses like this but there's some things that we are trying to address even as of today but just didn't change much actually because the bosses happened after fall of the fourth level you have time to get used to the controls so when you reach bus it's really all about combat and positioning and the first one is actually a one d boss it's not a 2d it's really one dimension so you just have to think I am on the left happens right I have to avoid attack some of them are both side so you have to so it's video about having very low learning curve even it's really still

really odd and most player do do say that so it's really all about making sure that the learning curve is no didn't unpacked anything because we don't have platforming during bosephus so we do have not on the last one so it should be fun thank you okay thanks for the talk great game have just a question about the balance in the gameplay there is like mechanic you can use sometimes some people say it and exploit some people say it's math thing it's like hanging on the rope and some enemies they can't reach you at that point and then you you scatter your tactical weapons not something you intentionally let in the game for people to feel smart anyway or is it just something you couldn't fix at the last time it's actually both I did play like

a lot of the Division one and you know I do play towards most of the time I really like this kind of gameplay and you know it's really all about thinking is it breaking the game transcription which is important if it's not is it a decent way to play and to answer that we actually have a whole internally when for example like when I design weapons and I make gameplay choice it's all about considering that each combat takes two seconds see that and everything is defined around this idea so the DPS and everything is balanced along this two seconds so when you fight an enemy it lasts two seconds if you use a very strong risky weapon at such a very heavy weapon we actually allow you to make that in one second so you just want to touch the enemy but it's more risky because you have a long casting time but if you use for example a hunch weapon or cheesy anything to read or something like that actually to combat win the last three or four seconds it's really all about that if you want to take your time it's fine you will miss a few elements in the game so time those or challenges like that but it's all it's

really all about okay embrace the ideas a tree which is anyway yes I will do that if you want to fight that it's difficult because they will always find new ways which is especially if you have ladders if you have tourettes or stuff like that so it's video but embracing that and making it part of the gameplay so for example turrets have like 100 DPS fights weapon will have maybe 120 and very powerful slow one we have about 200 so it's really all about balancing numbers to make sure that combat lasts longer thank you okay so sorry we can continue to discuss outside because we are out of time well thanks