As Dead Cells creator Motion Twin gears up for the first public demo of its new co-op action roguelike, Windblown, soon to be followed by its Steam early access launch on October 24, 12DOVE spoke with two members of the small team about their vision for the game. Windblown follows seven years of stellar updates and expansions for the studio's breakout hit, long shepherded by co-dev Evil Empire after it was founded and expanded by former Motion Twin staff as the mothership pressed on with other projects while maintaining creative oversight. Will Windblown follow in its update-heavy footsteps?
I asked Thomas Vasseur and Yannick Berthier of the worker-owned studio of eight (for comparison, Evil Empire boasts of 70 employees and three projects on its website) if they want Windblown to have a long tail of support like Dead Cells. Berthier replied first: "If we can, why not? If we are lucky enough."
Vasseur was keener still. "I really wish it will be longer," he said. "Because it's multiplayer, it's co-op, and we have a ton of things to do and a ton of things to say in this game, I think. And yes, I really hope this will be longer than Dead Cells. That would be great."
In a follow-up comment, a PR representative for the game added:
"When [Vasseur] mentioned his hope to support Windblown for a long time, potentially for longer than Dead Cells, that was a comment reflecting his own personal wishes. Motion Twin is obviously looking forward to the open future of Windblown but right now their focus is on the game's EA release and developing the game in tandem with the community."
On Windblown's Steam page, Motion Twin lays out plans to stay in early access for "a minimum of one year" while the team prepares updates packing more equipment and biomes, additional polish and multiplayer stability, and balance adjustments based on player feedback. In our interview, Vasseur stressed that integrating player feedback during early access is vital to the studio's development process.
12DOVE will have more details on Windblown in the days ahead. For now, you can read our Windblown hands-on impressions, which spell doom for the free time of fans of Dead Cells and action roguelikes in general.
Dead Cells is regarded as one of the best roguelike games of all time for a reason.
