Dead Cells developer Motion Twin has explained why it decided to move on to its co-op roguelite Windblown rather than follow up on its breakout hit.
I don't think it's a stretch to dub Dead Cells as one of – if not the – best roguelike games ever made. MotionTwin's first non-browser/mobile game propelled the developer to a new level of fame, with the game selling 10 million copies as of 2023. However, in 2024, the studio announced that it and co-developer Evil Empire (who led development on a majority of the post-launch content) would halt development on the game as Motion Twin moved onto Windblown and Evil Empire developed The Rogue Prince of Persia.
Speaking to PCGamesN, Motion Twin creative director Yannick Berthier explains, "We are driven by what we want to make," adding that Motion Twin is "a collective of individuals that are creative and want to create stuff." and that if "we were a 'business,' we would be talking about Dead Cells 2 right now." And while player feedback has put some pressure on the company (as Berthier explains, "Every post we do, we tend to have a few comments like, 'OK, cool, when Dead Cells 2?'"), the studio's creative team went with their "heart."
The Dead Cells subreddit tells a different story, however, as the top comment in the thread about this interview says, "No one asked for Dead Cells 2. We just didn't want Dead Cells to be unceremoniously discontinued," which is a sentiment found throughout the Reddit thread.
While the game came to an end in 2024, developer Evil Empire had plans for content into 2025, with a former longtime Motion Twin employee calling it "the worst imaginable asshole move." However, Motion Twin artist Gwen Masse told PCGamesN, "We felt that it was a good thing to stop updates for the game because we felt that we were at the end of an era."
The Binding of Isaac creator Edmund McMillen says he only made the genre-defining hit to try a "basic roguelike" and "get my feet in the water" before his real magnum opus.
