When Dead Cells creator Motion Twin sat down to make a new game – which very deliberately would not be Dead Cells 2 – the 100% employee-owned studio of just nine French developers could answer at least one question immediately. Its next game, the increasingly delightful co-op action roguelike Windblown, would definitely follow in Dead Cells' footsteps and start out in Steam early access.
"In the end, we did early access because that's how we work, I think, more than anything," designer Yannick Berthier tells GamesRadar+. "We actually did the private alpha even before, with a few hundred players, and we just iterate with them based on their feedback and suggestions. And we already put a lot of that stuff into the game, and I don't think we see another way of making games. We are not really keen to just work in a cavern and just release the game suddenly and it's supposed to be finished. We really like to be part of that process with the player from a day-to-day basis, and just make the game together."
Designer Thomas Vasseur says Steam early access "was always the plan. We did not imagine making a game without this process." Berthier says there was no meeting or vote, "it's just what we do."
Launching a game in early access lets developers get some revenue going much sooner than a traditional release would, and more importantly, and especially for Motion Twin, it also brings in a ton of player feedback that developers can act on while the iron is still hot, so to speak.
"I honestly think that if you don't do it, what you do tends to be quite theoretical somehow," Berthier says of early access, "because when you have players playing the game, it's the real judgment. It's where you see if it's working, yes or no. Is it really fun? Do people understand the, well, vision is maybe a big word, but the intentions we had? Are they working? So yeah, I think that's the most efficient way of doing things for us."
I mentioned that launching in early access carries the inherent hazard of showing players a worse version of what your game will eventually become, but Berthier says he doesn't see it that way.
"I think that, for us, at least, if we didn't launch the early access version, it would have stayed that worse version," he begins. "That's the thing. It's the early access that makes it better. Suddenly it challenges, really early, all the ideas and systems. And so you can make decisions quite early into the production. And so you're not trying to fix the game after it's released.
"Also, especially for Windblown, we are in a pretty long early access. It has been a year and we will not release until next year. So in total, that's quite a lot of months, but it's quite good, and we did it intentionally because that allows us to have enough time to include, digest, and understand all the different ideas and feedback, and also take decisions based on those to modify the game. I think that in the end, our game will be better, way better, thanks to that. So I personally don't see it as a danger."
Berthier acknowledges that some people, including some Windblown players, will respond to the early access build like, "Oh, that's cool, but there is so much missing. I will come back for 1.0." (I personally had a similar response to Windblown, just as I did Hades, Hades 2, and Dead Cells: this looks great, I'll come back for 1.0.) But in that case, Berthier continues, the game "created kind of a promise to them, that it really will be cool later on. So honestly, I only see that as something positive."
Vasseur reiterates the value of working with player feedback, the wind at their back, inspiring them. "When you are talking with the player, it fills the team with energy," he says. "I do not know how the guys [at Team Cherry] did Silksong for so many years without this energy. This is a mystery for me, because on Dead Cells, on Windblown, the players give you a lot. They talk with you. They want you to make [it] better. So you are always motivated. And that's a really cool thing in early access."
Berthier agrees. "When you get exhausted with the project, they are not. And then they empower you somehow. Every day, I mean every day, we receive really, really nice messages from them, and every morning I personally read those, and that's great. I mean, it's really cool."
Windblown has done quite well in early access so far, accruing over 8,000 89% positive user reviews on Steam, and the big 1.0 launch is planned for 2026. I asked for more details, but Vasseur and Berthier say they can't be more precise just yet, as it's head-down work mode at the studio.
