Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania

Return to Castlevania is the fifth story add-on to the action game Dead Cells, released in 2018, which combines elements of platformer, roguelike and metroidvania. It was developed by the creators of the main game - the French studio Motion Twin. According to the authors, it is both the largest and most ambitious of the expansions released. What's more, thanks to the developer's cooperation with Konami, it takes players to Dracula's castle from the Castlevania series, which served as one of Dead Cells main inspirations.

Plot

The game world features a portal leading to an imposing quasi-gothic castle, which turns out to be inhabited by vampires and monsters like werewolves and harpies. The monster hunter Richter Richter Belmont asks the protagonist of Dead Cells to help him kill the ruler of this fortress, Dracula. Alucard, the son of a vampire lord, also participates in the mission. Together with Richter, he helps the protagonist find his way to the throne room in the maze-like castle corridors, and also provides weapons (sometimes voluntarily, other times not).

Mechanics

There are a total of fourteen new tools of murder. Some of them are weapons iconic to the Castlevania series, reworked in the style characteristic of Dead Cells - the player can obtain, for example, the Vampire Killer whip. In addition, it is possible to unlock twenty outfits belonging to iconic characters from Konami's series - such as the aforementioned Richter and Alucard, but also Simon and Trevor Belmont, Maria Renard, Sypha Belnades and even Dracula himself.

The new equipment is meant to help the player tear through two new biomes, full of bloodthirsty creatures. They also offer three challenging battles against unique bosses - including Death and Dracula.

In terms of gameplay, the Return to Castlevania DLC is essentially no different from what the basic version of Dead Cells offers. The action is from a side, with the player traversing multi-level, mostly procedurally generated locations, fighting enemies with the help of weapons, traps and special powers acquired during the game.

By default, the death of the protagonist involves losing most of the progress and having to start the adventure from scratch, as it were. However, thanks to an optional mode - added by the Motion Twin studio as part of an update released some time before the release of the Return to Castlevania DLC - it is possible to continue the gameplay started after death. We then start at the beginning of the biome in which we died.

Technical aspects

Like the Dead Cells, the Return to Castlevania add-on is made in a colorful 2D pixel art style, reminiscent of graphics from eight- and 16-bit games - only that it is enriched with modern visual effects. In addition, for the expansion, Motion Twin studio provided more than sixty new music tracks, of which as many as fifty-one are compositions known from the Castlevania series.

Importantly, Return to Castlevania is not a standalone add-on. Therefore, to play it, you need to own the main game.