Motion Twin, the studio behind the acclaimed roguelike Dead Cells, has responded to director Guillermo del Toro's public comments regarding the game's challenging nature. In a recent interview, del Toro shared his appreciation for the game but lamented its difficulty, particularly the roguelike restarts after failure.
The studio, in a statement provided to IGN, expressed both surprise and honor at del Toro's patronage. "We are surprised and truly honored to see that Mr. del Toro is a Dead Cells player," a spokesperson for Motion Twin said. "We can even help him right now: there is an Assist mode in the game!"
This Assist mode, according to the studio, allows players to resurrect at the beginning of the current biome or the nearest checkpoint, rather than being forced to restart the entire run from the very beginning. Motion Twin hopes this feature will address del Toro's specific concerns about the consequences of death in the game, which he described as wishing "for the elderly players" for a version without respawning. The game's inherent design often involves randomized maps and significant penalties for failure, core tenets of the roguelike genre.
The studio acknowledges that such features might be missed, noting that even experienced players can sometimes struggle to find accessibility options. The desire to find ways to save progress or mitigate difficulty is a common sentiment among players, as evidenced by frequent online queries about saving mechanics in various games.