Text/Isaac

It was officially released in 2018, and in the same year, it beat "Devil May Cry 5" to win the TGA Best Action Game Award;

In 3 years, sales exceeded 10 million, 4 large-scale DLCs were launched, and the Steam praise rate has always remained at 97%;

The god of side-scrolling action games, the temple of roguelikes, and the most successful indie game in France in recent years......

These are just some of the achievements of Dead Cells. The company that developed it, MT in France, is a very small team so far.

It stands to reason that such a legendary developer should be looking forward to a sequel. But after the launch of the new work "Windwalker", many old players of "Dead Cells" scolded and scolded, and many people gave bad reviews.

In all fairness, if you don't look at the overly shining aura of the previous work...... 89% praise rate of "Walker in the Wind" is not too low. As an action + roguelike game, it still has a lot to offer.

For example, in terms of art style, the game uses a very bright and colorful cartoon rendering style. The scenes in the game are basically floating islands, and with the cooperation of 3D top view + preset perspective rotation, this world is as delicate and lovely as a giant toy model.

At the same time, the game's character's mobility is pulled high, and the dodge is set to be a dash with a short CD - and no CD outside of combat. This design complements the scene with a "sense of fragmentation", allowing you to sprint continuously without brains when running the map, which is very enjoyable.

The art style can be regarded as a longboard of "The Wind Walker". However, its combat system is a little more subtle in comparison.

In combat, your character can wield two weapons and use either weapon at will during the combo. Each weapon has a different action mod and attack rhythm, and you can play a flat A combo such as light-light-heavy, as well as small skills such as charged heavy attacks.

On top of that, a key design is that after hitting a weapon several times, a large mark will appear on the character's head, at which point you can use the heavy attack of another weapon to trigger a cutting move that is basically invincible for the entire duration - in a way, this feels a bit like the switch in Jeopardy Zero. You don't have to worry about dodging interrupting your combos, as the classic Offset mechanic is also incorporated into the game.

Taken together, these elements make for a very simple, yet powerful combat experience: flat A→ dodge→ trigger cut-off moves→ remnant killing. In addition to looping the previous process, you can also release props at any time, and the overall rhythm is bright and smooth.

Of course, more importantly, the weapon design is diversified enough, so that players can explore the rhythm, feel, and characteristics of different weapons by themselves, and then combine their own preferences to develop their own dual-weapon combos. For example, the simplest one is to use the fish cutting knife with fast attack speed and fast trigger as a trigger to play the cutting skill of another weapon (as shown in the previous picture); The shield is more direct, and as long as you block an attack, you can directly trigger the hand cut.

Other spears, short swords, crossbow arrows, staffs, and darts are kunai...... The combination also has its own advantages and disadvantages. There are currently 12 weapons in the game, and while it's not that much, there's something for everyone. One of Grape Lord's favorite weapons is called the Rhythm Bow, which is similar in design to the rhythm piano in "Dead Cells", requiring you to fire at a certain rhythm, which has the feeling of playing a sound game.

That's right, the sense of sound and travel! Once you're proficient, you'll feel the word, the essence of the Battle Experience in Runner of the Wind. It's just that what you want to be familiar with is how to explore, build, and make good use of the rhythm of your own combos to deal with the attack rhythm of monsters and bosses. This is also its biggest feature compared to games like "Hades", which are also 3D top-down roguelikes.

If the design is so good, why are there still many people who give bad reviews? One of the important reasons is that, compared to the two longboards of art and combat, "Walker in the Wind" is really a bit stretched in the most critical roguelike and basic experience parts, and it can't even be said to have achieved a passing level.

On the one hand, the in-game and out-of-game growth is not up to standard as a roguelike experience. There are basically 4 ways to grow in the game: relics, enhancements, weapons, and props. One of the most critical relics is that the player starts with only three slots, and when they are full, they have to replace them when they get a new one. To level up a grid, you have to go through a very long period of out-of-the-box growth - but even if you are full, the genre that can be formed by this pitiful number is lackluster, and it doesn't have that much impact on the mode of operation and experience.

For weapons and props, there is no stable cultivation path, so you can only pick up or buy higher-level weapons as you like. In other words, if you're unlucky enough to blast your favorite weapon, you'll have to choose one of the low stats and unaccustomed combo mode to endure - unless you're already proficient in all of them.

And what about reinforcement? This part is basically pure numerical growth. But the values in the game are like filling in with your feet, even if you strengthen your HP three or four times, the mobs in the later stage can still kill you twice. Not to mention that "The Windcrawler" is not good at learning, but it seems to be stealing from "Elden Ring", learning a bunch of fast and slow knives and serial slashes...... As a result, the margin for error in battle is extremely low, and it is very easy to die violently.

As for the out-of-game design, it's even more humorous - due to the limited slots, the resources you have worked so hard to collect in the bureau and use them to unlock relics will instead cause the relic's pool to be chaotic, making it more difficult to randomly find what you want. It's like building a deck in Slay the Spire, and you buy a bunch of useless cards that you can't delete.

Several parts, none of which were done well, and the result was: although the in-game combat of "Walker in the Wind" is cool, there is not much change before and after, and there is a lack of qualitative change in the experience, and it can basically only rely on the player's hard concave operation. As a roguelike, the more you play, the more boring it becomes, which is simply the biggest shame.

On the other hand, "Walker in the Wind" does still have too many flaws and flaws. For example, although the form of the map is novel, it is actually too simple; The amount of content is too small, and it can only be forcibly dragged out by perverted values and long outsider cultivation; And although the painting style and special effects are gorgeous, they do have the problem of too bright and light pollution, and it is easy to produce visual and mental fatigue after watching too much.

There are so many problems that even considering that "Walker in the Wind" is still in the EA stage, it is really not enough to watch. Not to mention comparing it to Dead Cells, which is already extremely complete, deep, and smooth......

But guess what? The original sin of "Walker in the Wind" is not only compared to God, but even seen as the culprit who "sacrificed" "Dead Cell".

This story is a long story, and it starts with the team of "Dead Cells": the MT team is very special because they are not ordinary companies, but serious "cooperatives", both logos and systems, are very well-established - everyone in the team has the same decision-making power, and votes on big and small matters. The shares of the team and the revenue from the project are also shared equally by all members. Sounds unbelievable and unimaginable, right?

However, there is no perfect system in the world, and cooperatives can only try to be equal, but it is difficult to withstand the test of many things.

After MT developed the game and completed the second DLC, a test arose: some members of the team wanted to abandon the follow-up development of Dead Cells and move on to a new title; Others can't let go of this brainchild and want to keep doing it. However, it was really inappropriate to talk about conflicting opinions, so Steve Filby, the original marketing director of MT, left MT with a few people and formed a new team to be responsible for the follow-up DLC development and operation and maintenance.

Interestingly, this new team was named EE – Evil Empire. It does not follow the path of MT cooperatives, but abandons the so-called equality and returns to the traditional system of distribution according to work. The meaning is self-explanatory.

EE official website

In the five years since, EE has done its best for Dead Cells, releasing 4 DLCs for the game, updating and improving many contents for free, which have been well received by players. They still have a lot of plans, they have drawn a bunch of pies, and even said that they will launch Chinese-style weapons to give back to Chinese players in 2025. It's easy for any veteran Dead Cells player to understand that they're a group of people who really love the game.

However, in February of this year, MT abruptly halted the follow-up development of Dead Cells, and EE had to say goodbye to the game they had been maintaining.

The players don't know, and MT hasn't announced the exact reason. However, Sébastien Benard, the former main designer and master of "Dead Cells" and one of the founders of MT, opened a group on MT on the Internet, revealing that they forcibly suspended the development of "Dead Cells" in order to make way for the new work "Dead Cell".

For the full announcement and article information, please check Station B @ Mystery Voice

Column published on February 14 of this year

If what he said is true, MT's approach is really inexplicable, and it is not very kind. Because as a partner, they actually didn't mention the EE team on the store and other pages, but used the power of the IP side to stop the development. And many players also found that the announcement of "Windwalker" was suspected of rubbing off on "Dead Cells...... All kinds of deeds, both open and secret, have made veteran players hate MT to death.

Of course, Sébastien Benard's statement is only one-sided, and it is not yet possible to fully confirm it. And from an absolutely rational point of view, MT does have this decision-making power. You can't expect every gamer to be like Eric Barone, the author of Stardew Valley, who is willing to spend his whole life making a game.

Eric Barone's statement: "I have a lot of ideas for Stardew Valley. I feel like I can do this for the rest of my life, constantly improving, adding more content, fleshing out existing content. ”

But such a legendary work, which has accompanied many veteran players for six or seven years and tens of thousands of hours of gameplay, is also EE's heart, and it must have hurt countless people emotionally if it was pinched off so sloppily and meaninglessly.

The biggest soul torture is: for a semi-finished new work, sacrifice the follow-up development of a generation of masterpieces, all this ...... Is it really worth it?

From the perspective of the industry, there may be an even more impressive layer - a small team can often share weal and woe when it has not yet succeeded, and maintain a high enthusiasm and fanatical R&D atmosphere. But as the saying goes, don't suffer from few, but unevenly. After success, the team's opinions will be divided, and the distribution of benefits can be equal, but it is difficult to achieve all fairness. Over time, ideals will inevitably be crushed by reality.

This is not only the story of MT and EE, "Dead Cells" and "Windwalker", similar situations have happened to many domestic teams.

For example, the owner of a game company once told me that when he first started his business, his team often worked overtime all night, but everyone had the same goal and didn't feel tired. But after a product is made, the mentality of the people who come in again becomes: this company makes money, I want to come in and make money - not make money after making the product first. And when the original core team was broken up and distributed, and a lot of structural problems eventually appeared, it was too late.

It is said that later, many old employees asked him when they left: "Why is it that I am very tired at the beginning but happy, but then I am not tired, but I am not happy?" ”

This kind of story will definitely not be the last time it happens. Because making games can be such a beautiful and dangerous thing. It is not only about the thinking of R&D and design, the collision of creativity and thinking, but most of the time, it will also make creators have to endure the test of human nature and face those more complex things.

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