Recent reviews by Quoise

(This review has a Roguelike Aspects reference table, see further below)

Picayune Dreams' Steam page does not do justice describing how visceral this experience is. Past its surface, the short story is quite grounded with human to Eldritch horrifying moments.

Most of the story is presented through these data reel memories, while some are embedded in boss dialogue. So far, I've read most of the boss dialogue thoroughly, it's quite charming at times amidst the vast expanse of space.

Contrary to my initial impression, the defining gameplay's graphics and UI are really well-polished.

There is quite decent room for skill and build expression. Decent buy for Vampires Survivors', Touhou/Bullet-Hell and roguelike players.


I've had some experience with Vampire Survivors (VS) and Touhou. To VS-style game, the metaprogression uses a "class" system and skill trees that leave planning feel intentional and immediately impactful. To Touhou, my getting hit has never felt unfair: bullets and hitboxes are clearly illustrated on-screen (with customized settings.)

Although not needed, knowing to either graze or route enemies/bullets from either games instantly felt rewarded.

As a roguelike, you still get your classic rerolls-bans and routing to adjust around your build. There's a statue that lets you completely reset one of your weapons' and its levels. Weapons typically scale from leveling-upgrading them and a stat.

Build and Weapon choices often felt intuitive. Though the Weapon text descriptions are presented (I believe) is the item's programming code itself. Neat aesthetic though.

There are no metacurrencies except XP for limited Skill Points. There are "meta-unlocks" in the form of Suits (classes), item Upgrades unlocks (weapons or stats) and Overdrive difficulties.

Let's explore this Fire/Status Effect build synergy I may go for.

Here, we have two (and only) items that deal fire damage in this game that do synergize and may try to find.

• Flame Thrower: shoot outs flames, setting enemies on Fire
  
• Fire Lighter: % chance per any weapon damage tick to inflict Fire status and universally increases Fire damage

Inexplicitly, due to Fire Lighter's effect, this could also pair well with weapons that deal damage every tick like the Eye2 low, but constant damage piercing laser beam.

Perhaps, we chose Flame Thrower here unimpacted by our baseline/negative Cooldown stat. Or we needed a consistent way to clear enemy waves between boss phases.

Any "perks"-equivalents is usually granted through Loadout and limited skill points. We may have built towards Fire knowing we had:

• Salt the Wound: +10% on enemies with status effect
  
• Matchstick: Start with +1% Ignite chance.

Despite being non-status, we may also take some nifty quality-of-life to run-changing Loadout skills:

• Meal to Go and Carrot Juice: healing 160% of our max HP over the course of a run.
  
• Plan and Execution: increases our Flame Thrower's flames size (and other weapons') when standing still
  
• Rerolls
  
• Statue Modifications: the Drill pickup and Statues interactable extensibly allows for extra builds or stats in drastic ways; or just supplement extra surviability. Essential.

In our early game, we could relocate skill points towards health modifications that even grant invincibility. Perhaps towards Black Hole refreshes that may completely trivialize a whole Boss' pattern we're unfamiliar with.

If confident, even all-in into a Critical Hit build with no health mods at all.

Or gear it for that Flawless no-hit unlock.

Writing this in-case some mechanics break or help a buy.

YOU WILL NOT MAKE ME SLEEP--

ok maybe i will

[2025-04-17]

11/10 game, would've been my current game of year if I could.

Fun roguelike citybuilder with various challenge and very strong replayibility (1 hour runs). Basically the StS-equivalent in its innovation and genre. Strong mastery of the game requires readjusting your planning, reading and roguelike or RTS-management experience.

[VERY PERSONAL CAVEAT] My only---mild---complaint is the lack of accessibility and UI animation settings. Little perturbed by the lack of no reduced UI animations setting or no options for hover tooltip elements' pop-in (in that regard, I prefer instant and right-click to leave pinned.) The game's own UI/UX is very excellent though and intuitive to read through quickly: it's genuinely nice that these tooltips already provide extra information like the current effect bonus.

In a single run, your main objective is to (usually) reach the reputation cap of your colony to win. However you do this, you are granted multiple routes, wherein higher difficulties you are encouraged to use a combination of these routes: deeds (think "bounties"), high resolve of villagers ("happiness" stat), crates, glade events "crisises" and through cornerstones (your roguelike relics, ranging from a weak, yet potent +1 extra grain on harvest to gaining Reputation upon selling 60 worths of goods.)

Within your own run, you're expected to manage your resources, to adapt around the cornerstones you roll and gain: building shelters, complex foods, raw and refined building materials, your trades and exploring glades while completing harsh, but high awarding glade events. The extent this game provides through the roguelike element of cornerstones and buildings, that constantly adjust the way you play and plan ahead, is very encompassing and interactive with its own systems. You are somewhat timed against the Queen's Impatience, which is the contrasting lose bar to the Reputation winning bar.

The game appears to be divided into three divisions: the 1 hour runs (colonies) that scale up to a chosen difficulty and modifiers you succeed with reputation; the world map where you start your colonies and move towards the seal, your end-destination marker for the current cycle; and the cycles system itself, which awards you meta currencies upon the end of one cycle and opens up future world maps after completing progressively harder seals.

One of my favourite aspects being, that once you're familiar with the cycle systems, you may notice the years in your colonies accumulate to your current cycle: so in that instance, as meta rewards are the same for a run despite its duration, I started to speed up my colonies to within a five years span so I can either build up "cycle-specific" resources and make the end-cycle rewards real juicy. This is long before you start even playing with the difficulty setting, starting your runs at various biomes, world events, and world modifiers.

That said, although I played a lot of roguelikes at this point, I have not needed to access any tier list but have read up a guide or two. Most of the cornerstones and buildings are provided in a way that you "usually" wouldn't be only taking this one cornerstone: perhaps instead picking +1 wood production is mainly relevant in the early game, i.e.

Shout out though to Hooded Horse's own in-game quick-access encyclopedia, the Hooded Horse Wikis and official discord community, their resources are incredibly helpful.

Good luck, viceroy.

don't mind me, just waiting for applay's tekken 8 library guide to update

Niko feels unease!

Fun game.

Please let me date Werner, thank you.

dis game too scary for me

Pre-amble:

Please note this is a Dead Cells DLC first with Castlevania elements and not the other way around. If you're buying Dead Cells just to reach the content of this DLC, you will find enormous difficulties and frustrations doing so if you don't find any of the roguelike aspects of this game fun.

Essentially don't get a Dead Cells DLC if you don't want to play base Dead Cells. It will not fix any user issues or challenges with the base game.

Please just play a Castlevania game if you only want Castlevania without the roguelike challenge or progression system. Provided you still would like to touch the Castlevania content and play through vanilla Dead Cells content, there is no shame in using aspects and assist mode (like enabling respawn on death) just as the devs intended with the vanilla game.

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Actual review:

Good content addition that's accessible at the base difficulty of the game. Though not as value-for-the-cost as the other Dead Cells DLC's, it still probably adds like like 20-100 hours minimum of replayability.

Minimal story if any, much less-so than other DLC.

Good music, good enemy variety, weapons and outfits to play with. Plays akin to the other DLC's but with a good challenging final boss for the run. Some enemies do appear to be reskins of existing enemies albeit with changed AI and animations (aspects of vanilla Dead Cells was already based off of Castlevania so this is to be expected.)

I'm not sure what the other reviews are talking about reaching the bosses taking the entire run (which understandably take up to an hour or 20 minutes for the first boss of two), but you can always refight the bosses in this DLC in the practice range (takes 1 minute to get to) without having to play through the whole runs, once encountered. Boss rushes (5-20 minute modes) are an option too and you can encounter them there with even alternative more challenging versions of the boss.

I find them easier than the Queen DLC bosses, but provided Castlevania's feels similar to Hollow Knight's endgame bosses. I know a many handful do find Dracula and [censored] boss to be harder than the other bosses in the game. They do offer quite a challenge, though
I certainly thoroughly enjoyed learning them.

Most of the popular characters' outfits like Simon, Richter, Alucard, Maria (and even Sypha or Trevor) are locked or hidden behind certain locations just as the outfits in the base game and other DLC does with their's. Those characters costumes are already unlockable at the base difficulty (0 BC) and I'm happy Evil Empire made them this way. Otherwise only the variants of boss outfits (Dracula and [censored]) and Hector's outfit are locked behind higher BC difficulty.

There is an easter egg minigame that's only reachable at the end of the run in the final DLC non-boss stage with 1CC per run: losing in it does not make you lose your DC run, however only one outfit and one weapon are tied to the minigame. The mechanics were a lot more satisfying the second time I played it once I understood it. Haven't touched it though since getting the unlocks when, well, the whole Dead Cells game itself exists, but it is a cool amad to the classic Castlevania series when you find it.

If you're having trouble finding unlocks, I highly recommend using the official Dead Cells wiki.gg for locations and supports.

I've only encountered one visual minor bug though this only occurs sometimes in-between hostile biomes with no real effect on gameplay (beheaded would be out of position before being yanked by chains for a certain part of the DLC.)

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Conclusion:

This is a great addition to Dead Cells' run variety and for people that already love the game, I basically recommend this (and other DLC) to all Dead Cells players to get eventually. Those that have touched Castlevania games in their childhoods will likely feel this is Dead Cells' love letter and amad to its origins.

And again, this is still a difficult recommendation for people that have only played Castlevania or consumed Castlevania media. It does not extend any meaningful Castlevania storyline or characters arcs beyond a few lines of dialogue. If anything, buy base vanilla Dead Cells first if you have no previous roguelike experience and use assist mode if you need it.

Thank you for your time reading this review.

the cells are alive, literally unplayable

bnuuy