Dead Cells Easter Eggs Nod To Loads Of Recent Games

Dead Cells is already a critical hit, and some eagle-eyed fans have noticed a handful of Easter eggs that pay homage to several other recent games. The pixel-art backgrounds contain framed artwork with several iconic characters and items from around the industry.

As spotted by Twitter user Third Editions, the portraits on the wall show 2B and 9S from Nier Automata, the undead from Dark Souls, the sword from Transistor, and the face of Hollow Knight. These portraits are scattered around, so there may be even more portraits yet to be uncovered.

Dead Cells was developed by a small indie team, and some of its influences, from games like Dark Souls, are readily apparent. It's run-based, which means that you'll die frequently as you learn enemy patterns and slowly build up permanent boosts. These inclusions could be a way of acknowledging those influences, or simply a hat-tip to fellow developers the team respects.

Dead Cells has received an aggregate score of 92 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic. In GameSpot's Dead Cells review, Daniel Starkey said, "Dead Cells is a phenomenal effort to blend together some very disparate genres into a tight, cohesive whole. It's one of the better examples of how to remix ideas without losing their individual strengths."