Dead Cells: The Game With The Greatest Indie Collaborations Of All Time

In a competitive gaming world where studios push the boundaries in graphics, gameplay mechanics, and the story, players are always left yearning for more, even after hours of grinding. To battle this, smart developers start experimenting with content that other larger studios don’t really delve into. In this case, Dead Cells did something that was already done before but took it to a new extreme.

Dead Cells is a rouge-lite dungeon crawler that has elements of RNG and a whole load of stats that hard-core players would love to dive into. The game has pretty balanced and repayable combat with a unique art style, but the real charm comes from its impeccable developers, who put their heart and soul into this game.

The game is filled with humorous dialogue and a great emphasis on its world-building. Although it might not seem like it, Dead Cells really does have a story, and it has a lot of speculation surrounding it.

For over three years, Dead Cells has received both DLC and free updates, which add tons of new and improved content with a fair bit of balancing in the mix. With these updates, there came a few updates that were something the fans could never have expected, a collaboration with other Indie games.

The first of these major updates, titled Everyone Is Here, surrounds many Indie games, including Hollow Knight Blasphemous, Guacamelee, Hyper Light Drifter, Curse of the Dead Gods, and Skul: The Hero Slayer.

Many players will notice that the only games included in this collaboration with Dead Cells include only Indie games, both extremely popular and successful. This could indicate the developers are going towards a more familiar approach, something Fall Guys and Fortnite were not fond of doing in their collaborations.

Unfortunately, players will not receive these characters the moment they boot up the game. They need to enter specific rooms where after doing some set of tasks, they will be awarded that specific game’s weaponry. This weaponry mostly includes:

• Hollow Knight: The Pure Nail is available to unlock. The weapon can attack upward and downward. Attacking downward while airborne causes you to bounce on your enemies, dealing critical damage.
• Hyper Light Drifter: The Hyper Light Gun marks its targets while also dealing damage. The Sword deals critical damage to the marked targets, increasing with the number of gun marks on the target. Sword hits also recharge the gun’s ammo, which doesn’t recharge passively, just like the torture you felt in its actual game.
• Blasphemous: Crush the Face Flask on your forehead, dealing low damage to yourself and transforming 35 percent of your missing health into recovery.
• Guacamelee: Channel your chicken spirit with the Pollo Power, turning into a chicken for a few seconds while firing several explosive eggs around you.
• Skul: The Hero Slayer: Smash enemies with a bone club. Hitting with the second attack enables a whirlwind attack that deals critical damage.
• Curse of the Dead Gods: Slash twice with a machete. The third attack uses the pistol to bump and inflict critical damage on nearby enemies. Holding the attack button charges a slow and powerful ranged attack.

This update is legendary, not only in content but in showing how different games can collaborate with themselves to improve on both their games and the one they are collaborating with. 

Most collaborations consist of entities that have almost zero connectivity to each other, often being other pieces of media. The newest announced Overwatch 2 feature update contains a popular anime called One Punch Man, something that fans enjoyed but kept puzzling over its bizarre nature of media.

After seeing the amazing update that Dead Cells presented to its players, they were not done, for what they planned next would definitely shake up the Indie community immensely.

The second and hopefully not the last of these major updates, titled Everyone Is Here Vol 2, surrounds many Indie games, including Shovel Knight, Hotline Miami, Katana Zero, Risk of Rain 2, Terraria, and Slay the Spire.

• Shovel Knight: The King Sceptor was one of the new weapons added, and you can mimic King Knight as you dash around and bounce on your enemy’s head.
• Hotline Miami: The Baseball Bat was the new weapon added, where you repeatedly bash into an enemy without mercy.
• Katana Zero: Not really a new weapon, but rather a new mechanic. Pick up random items off the ground and attack enemies with them.
• Risk of Rain 2: Throw a Hunter Glave, which bounces around, killing enemies and increasing damage on every new hitbox it touches.
• Terraria: Each melee hit summons a star targeting a nearby mob; it definitely gives out Terraria vibes.
• Slay the Spire: A new mechanic entirely, best explained in terms of cards giving out certain buffs.

All in all, there are over ten other Indie titles collaborating with Dead Cells and helping each other by giving more exposure to each game. It is truly beautiful to see how much love has been spewed into the game, but it does not end there.

Just recently, Dead Cells had the surprising reveal of their newest collaboration, and this one might be its biggest in terms of content. Castlevania was a popular 2D platformer where you take on demons, ghouls, and even Count Dracula himself.

In this newest update, you can experience the original music in a more furnished light, as well as old weapons and items that the original cast had used in their games all those long years ago. And finally, you can play as Belmont himself, which was a reveal like no other.

Dead Cells, unlike other games that do collaborations, decided to take on only those that fit its theme. Something incredibly bold but met with huge success. And seeing the number of franchises fitted into one, we can expect to see more features very soon.