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The weird zen of getting killed in Dead Cells (or how failure should be a circle)

With winter now approaching down under I've found myself adjusting a bit more to bunker life and able to get a bit more balance with my design work. In saying that I've had a little bit more time to play more games, watch new films  and glean new insight and inspiration which I'm going to want to start talking about more. 

So l'm going to write about Dead Cells.


Sometimes seen as Hollow Knight's other cousin, Dead Cells is also a metroidvania hack and slash platformer. 
It would be unfair to compare both art styles as each aesthetic is drastically different to the other but Hollow Knight is an almost like looking at a classical painting of greek mythology with  tolkeinesque ethrealism while Dead Cells is a beautiful sega megadrive mess of pixilated insanity. 


What sets them at odds apart however is how Dead Cells has set up it's Game Over in which there isn't one. 
Yes your mortal shell does shuffle off everytime you are slain but your character's conciousness is some form of lack for a better word a parasite  that latches onto a new body each time the game starts.

Yes, some form of currerency, upgrades and skills carry on much like any other game but the most important thing Dead Cells encourages the players to bring back each time they fail is that their experience and determination. 
In a way Dead Cells isn't about winning or losing but as an endless cycle of reincarnation as thought of in buddist philosiphy and/or Avatar the Last Air Bender. 

Dead Cells rethinks the experience of dying in games by forcing the player to become unattached to the items and weapons they pick up along the way and to focus on the progression the player can achieve by being motivated to try again. 
Finding and unlocking blueprints does allow weapons to randomly spawn but hoarding too many will clutter your inventory and the limited pool of storage available. 

You may think this would contribute to some sort of insidious gambling feedback loop and that it is greed that motivates players to start again and again but by penalising you for stocking up on too much gear Dead Cells asks you to consider risk vs reward but it also asks the player to figure it out by themselves.

In reality it is the sense of achiement of trying again and finally suceeding that brings players back to the table. 

The important thing in consideration to all this is that if we are going around and around in circles maybe change the angle to the right side up and it's a wheel and eventually it's going to get somewhere.


What we learned about Dead Cells:

-you are the Avatar
-Hollow Knight still looks better
- you can have your cake and eat it but if you drop your cake, go back to the kitchen and cook another one.
- don't buy spartan sandals
-failure can be a learning experience and it can be incorporated into challenging the way we percieve prexisting notions of motivation or something like that

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