Each small bit of persistent power you pick up propels you forward like a bloody snowball careening down a mountain until you feel unstoppable. But through that constant repetition, like being trapped in some kind of gothic-horror Groundhog’s Day, you’ll scrape together money, blueprints for new items, and Cells you can spend to unlock blueprints and buffs for future use.

And though it may sting when you have to say goodbye to those perfect turrets that helped you progress further than ever before - the ones that set victims ablaze and do double damage to burning enemies in tandem - or the tens of thousands of gold you’ve collected on a particularly bountiful run, the actual progression comes from unlocking buffs, skills, and weapons between each run that never go away - no matter how often you thrust your face into walls of spikes while trying to set a new land speed record in the Ancient Sewers. And just when I thought I’d dredged the best from that pool, in the very next run a shiny new toy would drop with glittering fanfare and I’d race to bank it with The Collector. You simply don’t know what you’re going to find, because it could be anything from a huge pool of equipment that’s delivered with perfect pacing. It’s what makes every run different enough to be consistently tense and surprising and what challenges the notion you’ve seen it all when you’re dozens of runs through. “The placement and order of its levels are Dead Cells’ skeletal frame, but the ever-changing layouts and enemy and item placements are the blood that pumps through its heart.

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