Dead Cells: What's Next For Motion Twin?

Back in 2017, a handful of devs at indie studio Motion Twin created a little game called Dead Cells and put it into early access. A little over a year later in August 2018, the full version released alongside console ports for Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. Since then, the game has received numerous accolades along with plenty of free and paid updates, that make revisiting Dead Cells a worthy venture time and time again.

In early 2019, Motion Twin stated that they had begun work on their next title and would hire while continuing to develop Dead Cells updates. However, Motion Twin quickly realized that the hiring process was getting too big for what the original vision was for the studio, as they didn’t want to get away from egalitarianism that the studio was built on.

The result of this decision was to create a new studio called Evil Empire. Motion Twin would continue to focus on developing a new game, while Evil Empire would work on Dead Cells updates along with a new game. As their site says “super excited to have the opportunity to work on some new unannounced projects before getting to create our own game”

As of today, Evil Empire is over 50 people and have been extremely quiet about new projects since January 2019 when the company was formed. Considering that we are now in 2023, this means that whatever the Motion Twin and Evil Empire have been working on has been in development for at least four years now and 2023 might be the year we find out.

Will There Be A Dead Cells 2?

As for a possible Dead Cells 2, when speaking with Eurogamer in July of 2022, not only did they say that “2023 will be the biggest year since 1.0, but that the game is very much in it’s mid-life” If the game went 1.0 in 2018 then mid life means another 3-4 years of solid updates.

As it stands, both Motion Twin and Evil Empire are developing new projects and my gut says that we will hear about at least one of these titles or get an early access version in 2023 because four years is a long time to not have any capital coming into the company outside of the Dead Cells.

Between Dead Cells: Return To Castlevania, which is said to be the biggest expansion yet and possibly releasing their new title, it could be one heck of a year for Motion Twin and Evil Empire.