I drip-feed roguelikes into my gaming schedule: one too many total resets and my brain could break beyond repair. I always knew this wasn’t an unusual approach but I didn’t ever think it would be an opinion I’d share with one of my favourite filmmakers, Guillermo del Toro. But the world is a strange place.
Thanks to a new interview with IGN we now know that del Toro is a gamer with excellent taste, and a fan of Dead Cells—with a small caveat.
“Dead Cells was really interesting to me, I just hate respawning,” del Toro said, chuckling. “You get 35 levels in and then you start again, you get faster, but please do a version without respawning for the older, for the elderly players. I’m available, you contact me and send it to me, please I beg you. Because I like the world, great design.”
It may go against the entire point of a roguelike—and Dead Cells’ very specific promise of “no checkpoints”—but honestly, I get it. Some of the best worlds in videogames exist in roguelikes, they can be so beautiful to wander through, while also being excruciatingly painful.