{"id":40,"date":"2021-10-22T23:58:26","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T22:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/?p=40"},"modified":"2023-04-06T14:01:13","modified_gmt":"2023-04-06T13:01:13","slug":"week-2-dev-entry-lenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/2021\/10\/22\/week-2-dev-entry-lenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 2 Dev Entry – Lenses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


Dead cells is a roguelite metroidvania (procedural generated with a 2D hack and slash side-scrolling gameplay) with incredibly fast and fluid combat, it can be unforgiving but ends up being quite rewarding. I will be analysing this game using two lenses from The Art of Game Design, a book of lenses by Jesse Schnell – The Lenses of Flow and Motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Dead Cells, your main goal is very clear, as you discover and unlock more parts of the game by progressing through each level, the common conclusion is that your goal is to reach an end of all the levels (Gameplay path is almost linear). There are some distractions like alternate paths early on but they’re inaccessible unless you have previously reached a certain milestone.
Skill is an important part of Dead Cells, having to learn enemy attack patterns and dodge their attacks perfectly on top of coordinating attacks to clear levels. Players struggling may find themselves working on permanent upgrades, improving their odds of survival in future runs. The player gets extra rewards if they reach the end of a level within a certain time or eliminate a certain amount of enemies(or the boss) without taking any hits. A player may even replay the first level multiple times to repeatedly unlock the speedrun chest and unlock upgrades using the given cells – they will eventually run out of things to unlock and need to find more blueprints through normal gameplay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A typical motivation issue with roguelike games is spending lot of time on a run just to lose and restart with nothing you previously earned. Dead Cells surpasses this by allowing players to use their collected cells(currency from defeated enemies and challenges) to permanently unlock new items and boosts, alongside various other unlocks through repetition and progression, there becomes a sense of continuity between runs which make each attempt feel like it’s not for nothing when they’re defeated.
As you play, there becomes a desire not just to progress as far as possible but to also unlock all the upgrades and new items as well from both finding blueprints and using cells, for instance you may unlock a broadsword which swings slower but does incredible damage with consecutive hits.
A motivation the player may have against unlocking items with cells is diluting their equipment pool with items that are functionally less effective or simply undesired by the player, fortunately the player may also disable certain items from dropping in ‘custom mode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dead cells is a roguelite metroidvania (procedural generated with a 2D hack and slash side-scrolling gameplay) with incredibly fast and fluid combat, it can be unforgiving but ends up being quite rewarding. I will be analysing this game using two lenses from The Art of Game Design, a book of lenses by Jesse Schnell –… Continue reading Week 2 Dev Entry – Lenses<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-bsc1a","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lloydmills.nuacomputerscience.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}