Dead Cells Studio Is Reviving Two Dormant Franchises

Dead Cells is one of the successful indie games of all time, and it now seems that the studio behind it is turning its attention to new projects. In a recent interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Evil Empire CEO Steve Filby said that the studio is working on two “massive video game franchises” from third-party IP owners. Unfortunately, he didn’t reveal what those franchises were.

According to the interview, this is something that Filby has wanted to do since the early days of Dead Cells’ development at its original developer, Motion Twin, where he served as the CEO. However, Motion Twin was more interested in working on its own intellectual property, even though several large players offered to let the developer work on external IP. Filby explains that now that Dead Cells’ stewardship has switched to Evil Empire, that path is now open.

“Eventually people actually started asking me directly, saying ‘Well, look, you guys are doing all this work on Dead Cells now, you have taken over things and what you’re doing is fantastic, why don’t you make the next game in X awesome series that you’ve been playing since you’re a child?” Filby said in part. “And so from there, we ended up signing with two third-party IP holders to make the next installments in these really massive video game franchises.”

Filby further confirmed that the IPs that the studio is working on have been “dormant for a long time.” One is planned to come out in early access next year, and the other is slated for a 2025 release. He also said that the studio will be reinventing each series, rather than rehashing previous entries.

Though it’s likely that we won’t know what Evil Empire is working on for a while, there’s a pretty obvious possibility on the table: Castlevania. Dead Cells recently received a large update that essentially turned the game into an old-school vampire hunt, and Konami has made it clear that it’s open to working with third-party developers on its IP, per the recently announced Metal Gear Solid 3 remake. Still, there’s no confirmation yet, so try not to get your hopes up too high.