Dead Cells' 'final major patch' brings to an end 7 years of development, which included 35 updates, 5 DLCs, and 2 studios.

Dead Cells has had a great run. The excellent roguelike, which first appeared in early access back in 2017, received its "final major upgrade" today. It added a number of new features, weapons and customisation options, as well as bidding a fond goodbye to fans.

Update 35, The End is Near, was announced at the beginning of this year and released today. The journey with Dead Cells is over for both the original developers at Motion Twin, and the people from Evil Empire who took on the game five year ago.

In the Steam patch notes it reads "Thanks for everything," a statement by both dev teams. "Thanks for all of your passion, dedication, and feedback." Dead Cells would not be what it is without you. The team also thanks past and current devs from both studios, who have played the game. They then point to their new games - The Rogue Prince of Persia or Windblown - and head off into the evening. Friends, Dead Cells has been completed. It's over. You don't need to go home, but you can't remain here.

What does the final update do? It does a lot of things. In the "TLDR" section, right at the top, developers highlight "New additions that are based on Curse, one of our most iconic mechanisms." These additions include "3 new mobs" and "3 new weapons", as well as 3 new mutations.

The game also features "40+ new head" options to customize your protagonist, "new routing", which allows you to explore both Return to Castlevania Biomes in one run, and "more accessibility options."

The team wants to stress that the new Curse stuff is optional. If you're not sure, Curse is Dead Cells' term for the status effect that allows a single hit from anything to instantly kill you. It also stacks. If you have 10 stacks of Curse you will need to kill 10 opponents without being hit to remove them.

The new enemies are all Curse-dealing, so they're limited to their own Cursed Biome. You can either venture into the Cursed biome if you are brave enough, or you can go to one of your plain-jane Biomes if you are not. Also, "Cursed Biomes only spawn in Runs with a level 2 or greater Boss Cell (boss battle biomes will not be cursed). It seems fair to me.

I haven't played Dead Cells for a while but now that the game is capital-D done, I'm tempted back in to see what the developers have been up to since I set the game aside a few years ago. They are likely to be eager to move on and try something new.

I think so anyway. When news broke that Dead Cells development was ending, at least one previous developer wasn't too complimentary about it. Sebastien Bernard, a former Motion Twin designer, suggested that the situation was not as rosy as it was portrayed. Benard writes: "I would just say that [Motion Twin] made the worst possible asshole move towards Dead Cells and [Evil Empire]." "Having seen the real situation behind the scene, I can honestly state that I'm glad I'm not part of this any longer. The official statement is a total marketing bullshit. The way this situation occurred is on a different level.

We haven't heard anything since then. Evil Empire is still working on The Rogue Prince of Persia, and the game feels pretty good. The studio has at least landed on its legs regardless of what happened.