Last June, Dead Cells developers Motion Twin revealed its acclaimed rogue-like action-platformer was being turned into a 10-episode animated series, and a first proper trailer has now been shared ahead of its arrival this June.
Dead Cells’ TV series is the work of Paris-based animation studio Bobbypills – the team behind Dead Cells’ animated trailers, as well as last year’s excellent Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon spinoff, Captain Laserhawk – and whisks viewers away to a cursed island ravaged by a strange plague.
“After the island’s foolish king develops a remedy that ends up turning the population into monstrous creatures,” the official announcement revealed last year, “prophecies depicting a flame-headed hero begin to appear. As it so happens this beheaded hero is real, but saving a kingdom isn’t on his schedule and he just wants to be left alone.”
As to what that looks like in practice (the answer appears to be ‘crudely but enthusiastically animated’), you can see above. And if you don’t speak French, there are English subtitles too.
Dead Cells: Immortalis (as it’s titled in France) has been produced in conjunction with French anime streaming service ADN, and its 10 seven-minute-long episodes will air there on 19th June. An English version and worldwide release is due later this year.
Dead Cells has been a huge success (it’s now sold over 10m copies since releasing back in 2017), but there was drama earlier this year when Evil Empire – the studio responsible for its years of impressive post-launch support – revealed it would no longer be working on the game. The news original developer Motion Twin was pulling the plug on Dead Cells’ post-launch support took many by surprise given Evil Empire (which is now working on The Rogue Prince of Persia for Ubisoft) previously said it had a roadmap of new content until “at least the end of 2024”.
Former Dead Cells lead designer Sébastien Benard later called Motion Twin’s decision “the worst imaginable asshole move”, saying, “I wish the absolute best to [Evil Empire] for their next things, and hope people working there will survive this sudden economic cut.”