Can the Dead Cells Team Save Castlevania?
Rose Belmont is 23 years late to the party. Castlevania: Belmont's Curse opens in Paris in 1499, the city on fire and monsters pouring out of a castle on the skyline, with Trevor Belmont and his daughter walking into it together. It is out this week for $29.99: Steam lists Wednesday, October 14, and Nintendo's Switch release is Thursday, October 15. Konami publishes. The people actually making it are Evil Empire and Motion Twin, the studios behind Dead Cells.
That last fact is where the arguing starts. Dead Cells is a roguelite: die, lose the run, start again on shuffled rooms. A Castlevania built by that team could easily be a skin stretched over the wrong skeleton. We have not played the full game. Going by the demo coverage and the first review, we think it is the real thing, a revival built on Castlevania's own bones.
The skeleton is Castlevania's
The most important detail in the pre-release coverage comes from games.gg, which reports that Belmont's Curse is not a roguelite and that Evil Empire built crafted maps in place of procedurally generated runs. That keeps the series' core promise: a castle you learn room by room.
The rest follows the old rules. ixbt.games, summarising Famitsu, describes bosses that hand over Arcana, powers that unlock new abilities and new areas. Konami's store page says defeated bosses, Death, Medusa and Carmilla among them, are sealed into Rose's tarot cards, and it promises new faces too, including Joan of Arc as a boss. Impulse Gamer's hands-on hit a locked door needing three keys, one from the first boss and two from bosses still ahead, and predicted plenty of backtracking. That is a Metroidvania map doing Metroidvania things.
The whip is the new idea. Rose can latch onto anchors, platforms and even enemies to pull herself across gaps, and Impulse Gamer found that foes can be yanked toward her as a stepping stone or a finisher. Belmonts have always been defined by that weapon. Making it the way you move is the kind of idea whole sequels get built on.
Whip, swing, repeat
The worry is the look
Famitsu's four critics each gave it 8 out of 10, a 32 out of 40 total. According to ixbt.games' summary, they praised the detailed Paris and castle and the music, but found the visuals and pacing closer to modern Western indie games than to classic Castlevania. Look at the screenshots and you can see what they mean: painterly and saturated, nothing like the pixel gloom of 1997.
We would weigh that lightly. The team has already auditioned for the job. The 2023 expansion Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, made under licence from Konami, let players control Richter Belmont and hid a secret level inspired by Symphony of the Night. A studio that loved the source enough to build that is not slapping a logo on a roguelite.
One caution. ixbt.games reports it runs harder than some earlier entries, especially in boss fights, with settings for damage taken and potion count if you need them.
Where to start
- Start with the free demo. games.gg says it covers the entire first chapter and that progress carries over to the full game, so nothing is wasted.
- Then Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse. Rose's story is set 23 years after it, and her father Trevor is its hero.
- Then Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, the game that turned the series into an explorable castle. Play it to see what Belmont's Curse is measuring itself against.
- For the whole family tree, go back to Castlevania (1986), then play the Return to Castlevania expansion in Dead Cells to meet the new builders on their home turf.
