![]() It’s tempting to call streaming a game a “group” effort, a collaboration between the streamer and viewer, but in this case, we did work together to see Dead Cells to the end. (Austin later claimed to be confused about how to use the boss’ abilities.) But it was exhilarating and rewarding, all the same. ![]() I was already pretty sure Dead Cells was one of my favorite games from 2018, but I wanted to have a complete run under my belt to be sure, and I’d decided to gamble all these checkboxes in front of an audience? I wanted to beat Austin, yes, but I really wanted to beat Dead Cells, a game I’d gotten distracted from after Spider-Man came out. Streaming is a weird balance between performing (the game part) and performance (the stream part), and it’s nowhere more of a balancing act than when you’re trying to drop one in favor of the other. The seconds go by, and Austin got picked, the son of a bitch. Huh? As it turned out, Austin had thrown himself into the ring. When I stepped into the arena, it showed the pool of potential finalists to be more than one-so, more than Natalie. That would restrict the number of people who could use the appropriate phrase to a small, trusted group of people watching. ![]() (To be clear, Waypoint’s chat is calm and cool, but there are always trolls looking for trouble.) We arrived at a solution: switch the chat to subscriber-only chat! But all that managed to do was encourage a bunch of people to subscribe, which, uh, thanks? The real solution was clever: sub-only chat where people exclusively speak in emojis, unless you’re a mod. We needed people to be cool, and Twitch chat is not that. Dead Cells doesn’t have traditional 'multiplayer,' but arguably, it absolutely does, thanks to some smart design." "Games hoping to have a vibrant online community should take note. But there was no way to guarantee Natalie this spot because it’s random. In reality, they can just flip on some stuff you wouldn’t encounter on a normal run, but it’s still neat, and varies up boss encounters that can grow stale. See, in Dead Cells, the streaming mode lets one viewer “control” the boss. Natalie demanded to be the final boss, too. A few rolls later, a few sips of my beer later, my weapon was fine.īut there was more. I steamrolled through the last major area with my finely tuned build, one that had me defeating mini-bosses without taking as much as a scratch, and I would be putting my future in jeopardy over a half-assed taunt. I like a good dare, and livestream producer Natalie Watson, who was mocking me in the chat relentlessly, demanded I roll the dice before the final boss. It might take a few chances, and suddenly, you may find yourself with very expensive garbage. That’s great perk if you never going to get hit! Not every stat immediately re-rolls, either. For example, this nasty business: a bonus providing 100% bonus damage to every attack…while allowing enemies to do the same. You also run the risk of producing a negative stat. I didn’t need to roll again, and every time you roll, it’s more and more expensive to try again. It could be better? It could do more bonus damage. My entire run was archived here, but the golden run starts at 41 minutes, 40 seconds: ![]() The streaming mode in Dead Cells, an optional integration with Twitch where viewers can influence a variety of in-game factors big and small, takes a sledgehammer to this balance. ![]() What’s comforting is falling back on what is in your control, and trying to manage those tools alongside the incessant chaos. Where the power-ups drop, which let you improve the three stats, is a little bit different. You generally know what’s in front of you, but each run, the levels are a little bit different, the weapons are a little bit different. The key to Dead Cells is constantly improving damage output as you near the endgame.) This is part of the game’s appeal. (In Dead Cells, weapons scale along one of three primary stats, so even if you really like a particular weapon, you may need to switch if it doesn’t scale. There are only a few constants on every run-running, jumping, dodging-and everything else is a question mark, from what weapons will drop to how those weapons scale. ![]()
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