Dead Cells adds daily challenge mode and new abilities

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Embark on a headless sprint to the top of the leaderboards

Dead Cells, the excellent rogue-like Metroidvania, now has a daily challenge mode that you can replay as many times as you want to compete for a spot on the leaderboards.

Daily Run gives everyone the same level and loot, and is already alive and kicking: apparent hardware enthusiast GTX1080ti_Prime is top of the pile. Your ranking is based on the score you achieve rather than the time taken for your run, and there's a separate leaderboard for first runs only.

You only get access to the mode once you've reached a certain milestone in the game (developer Motion Twin isn't saying more than that), and you can only use items you have unlocked in the base game.

The mode was added in an update released for the early access game on Thursday alongside a new ability that lets players sell unwanted items lying on the ground and a speed boost that makes you run faster if you kill multiple enemies in a short space of time.

Also, gold has been rebalanced so that instead of keeping a certain percentage when you die (permanently) you just keep a maximum amount. It's one of the player suggestions that have been added to the game—other brainchildren of the community have been flagged in the patch notes too, which I like. It means that players know their feedback is directly influencing the game in tangible ways.

There's a host of other smaller changes, including a new Items Altar that asks players to choose between two gizmos, plus weapon balances and bug fixes.

If you haven't yet played Dead Cells and you're a fan of Spelunky and its ilk then it's worth checking out. It's got a headless protagonist and snappy combat, and Shaun enjoyed what he played of a previous version back in May.

It's £13.99/$16.99 on Steam.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.