Dead Cells is a video game that is loved by many. It gained popularity incredibly quickly on launch and became one of the best rogue-lite games of all time. From a 5-star rating on Steam, to an IGN score of 9.5 to a Metacritic score of 89. For those not familiar with the video game world, all of these are incredibly hard results to achieve. Dead Cells was supported for many years after its launch with patches, updates and hefty DLC packages that all brought something new to the game. It is a game that I myself have over 100 hours in and haven’t conquered half of what the game has to offer. With all of the previous information in mind, how do you think Dead Cells the board game stacks up against its video game counterpart? To cut an inevitably long review short: surprisingly well!
Unless stipulated, any further mention of ‘Dead Cells’ will be in relation to the board game. And just a small note, I played the deluxe kickstarted edition so pics may not be 100% representative of the retail version.
Info Dump…
Now for context I have put more than 60 hours into Dead Cells and have seen most of what it has to offer. It would have taken a lot longer if we hadn’t unlocked the 2 secret characters as they are totally OP in comparison to the base characters (one of which is a Kickstarter exclusive). And we mostly ignored the limited communication rule. Both of these will be discussed in more detail later on, but I feel like this information is vital to know. Not a lot of people want to (or can) dedicate so much time into one board game.
The reason you will spend so much time on this board game is because it is a rogue-lite board game. A lot of people are claiming it is the first rogue-lite board game. But I have neither the interest nor the spare time to research into that claim. What I do know is that Dead Cells plays on the systems in place in its video game inspiration to create a board game quite unlike any I have personally played before. The game expects you to fail. A lot. But as you play the game you will collect cells from defeating certain enemies or doing certain actions. And these cells are used to unlock permanent upgrades between runs. This means that every time you set up a session of Dead Cells, you will be in a better position to win than the time before. The cells are spent on the brutality, survival, tactics, and the well decks. Which each give you access to new cards for your deck, passive abilities, upgrades for item slots etc. Meta progression like this is what makes Dead Cells stand out against all other games.
There is a lot that I love about Dead Cells. The highs in this game are incredible, but there were also some low points where I would have stopped playing if it were my own personal copy of the game I was playing.
Combat…
The bread and butter of Dead Cells is its combat system. For the most part, it is very simple. But it does take a little bit to get used to. There are 3 turns to every combat and you will collectively play 3 cards no matter what the player count is. I played it exclusively at 2-players and the ruling is whoever has the first player token plays 2 cards. In a 4-player game, one person doesn’t play a card, how this works with the limited communication rule I could not tell you. Your deck is comprised entirely of cards you can only play during combat. And each card will have an action or attack (or nothing) on the spaces for turns 1, 2 and 3. When you play a card, you need to declare which turn that card is being triggered on as not everything on the card will be used. This can make for some tough decisions when you are trying to figure out if you want to save a card that can poison a stronger enemy further on or use it for its loot action right now to secure a scroll for the team. More on scrolls later.
The best part about combat is when you start to upgrade your deck with new cards and purging base cards permanently between runs. Also experimenting with prioritising different players with certain coloured scrolls during runs for run specific builds. All of this feeds perfectly into trying to craft a team of characters that play well together and are fun and interesting to play. For example, before we unlocked the extra characters (in which there will be no spoilers here) we were running a tank that generated lots of shields and a fire heavy pyro that burned all enemies. We prioritised any defensive cards to the tank and the heavier hitting offensive cards to the pyro. Which made for some really fun runs.
I do however wish the layout of your cards were different to the layout of the enemy cards. This is because you have to declare what action you are using on what turn, but the enemies don’t. The enemies use every action and attack symbols on every turn space. This is a minor thing but it is jarring at first. The other issue I have when it comes to combat is the freezing action. Every single icon on the cards, be it an attack, loot, burn, mark, poison, bleed etc all happen on the turn the symbol is printed on. But not freeze. Freeze works by its own set of rules. Freeze freezes the next action on another card on a different turn. And it confuses me still after so, so many hours. It also doesn’t click in a 2-player game very well. It freezes the next action on a player’s active card. But in a 2-player game one player will have 2 active cards. So, which one does it hit? It is small niche situations like this that we struggled to find reliable information for.
The Rest of the Game…
When you are not duking it out with the denizens of the dystopian, malaise-soaked island, you will be interacting with the location boards and upgrading your abilities between runs. The location boards function as an overworld of where your characters are. You get to choose the route in which you take, choosing to land on combat, elite combat, merchants, or chest locations. When you lose a run you will get to spend your gained cells on a variety of options. There are 4 decks of cards you can spend on that will each benefit you in a variety of ways. No spoilers here specifically but they can include new cards for your decks, new cards to slot into your main board to give you certain boons etc. This main board is also the host to the runes that you will collect along the way. These runes will be familiar if you have played the Dead Cells video game. They open up new routes and give you new ways to interact with the systems in place in the game. They are in place to give you extra benefits but honestly, they also function as potential targets for a run that can help the game from feeling stale. All of this gives Dead Cells a really smooth cadence that promotes that ‘just one more run’ feeling.
Unfortunately for me, after so many hours in the game, a lot of these systems become just that – systematic. There aren’t a whole lot of routes to take on the location boards. After more than 60 hours playing, I think I used the merchant locations maybe 2 times due to never having any economy. The last rune that we unlocked, we should have unlocked dozens and dozens of hours before hand. We found it after technically beating the entire game, but we just never came across the rune due to bad RNG.
During the runs however you get to try and min max your characters. These are done primarily with finding scrolls that you get to upgrade your abilities on your character boards. This is a lot of fun as each upgrade grants your abilities a significant boost. Playing Dead Cells at 2 players means that you will have ways to fully kit out both characters if the right options are available. In higher player counts, I imagine each player characters will be lowered levelled, but there are more cards in play during combat. This expands the options available to take down the enemies. This is a self-balancing system to some degree.
Final Thoughts
I think it is obvious that I love this game. In fact, I recently did my top 100 list and Dead Cells managed to squeak in amongst the top 5. And it is because I love this game, that the smaller things that irritate me personally feel like bigger issues. I also just straight up adore the Dead Cells IP. I think anyone who enjoys the video game will find plenty to love about the board game, so long as they have a history with board games. I do not recommend this for a video gamer who does not have much time invested in board games though. This is a game with a lot of moving parts and I imagine it will be too much for anyone new to board games.
The thing that irks me the most about Dead Cells is the limited communication rule. I see it as a frustrating way to make you play the game for longer. It works in games like The Mind and Hanabi but not in big, sprawling cooperative games like Dead Cells. We played without it and we are about 60 hours in and still have things we haven’t done yet. You can play the game with this rule in place if you wish, but the game will feel very tedious if you do. Runs will likely end very quickly. All the time.
Some of the best moments of Dead Cells are the boss battles. Each of these bosses changes up the combat in diverse ways. This gives the players extra rules and challenges to overcome in order to gain the rewards for defeating them. And defeating a boss marks the end of a run. After defeating them for the first time you open up a new starting point to start a new run which keeps the game exciting and fresh. And opening up more of the game is such a great reward for finally managing to overcome the challenge of the boss. I do wish there were more bosses though as there are only 3 in the game. I hope the developers release some expansions with more areas and more bosses to keep the game fresh and exciting. There is plenty left for them to explore. All in all, I think Dead Cells is a fantastic board game. It has a few little flaws, but they come from my love of the IP and knowledge of the video game. I think not only is Dead Cells a great game to dive into, especially those into cooperative games, it is also a trend setter. I can almost guarantee that the success of this board game will spawn a whole slew of further roguelike/rogue-lite games. This is because giving the player a way to interact with the game in-between actually moments of playing the game gives it a more complete experience than simply being a game unto itself. Check it out, I think Dead Cells is a real gem in the hobby that is worth checking out.
