Del Toro Begged for Easier Dead Cells. It Already Exists.

"Please, I beg you." Those were the actual words Guillermo del Toro used during a recent IGN interview when talking about Dead Cells, Motion Twin's 2018 roguelike-Metroidvania that has been humbling players for the better part of a decade. The Oscar-winning director of Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim, and The Shape of Water was not begging for a sequel, a film adaptation, or a cameo. He was begging the developers to let him stop dying.

"Dead Cells was really interesting to me," del Toro said in the July 29 interview. "I just hate respawning. You get 35 levels in, and then you start again. You get faster, but please, please do a version without respawning for the older, for the elderly players. I'm available. You can contact me and send it to me. Please, I beg you. Because I like the world, great design."

It's a heartfelt plea from a 61-year-old man who clearly loves the game but can't stomach the genre's core punishment loop. There's just one small problem: the feature he's asking for has existed since 2022.

Assist Mode, Since 2022

Motion Twin responded to del Toro's request through IGN, and the studio handled it about as gracefully as you could hope. As reported by PC Gamer, the studio said:

"We'd like to officially add this moment into our own personal Cabinet of Curiosities. We are surprised and truly honored to see that Mr. del Toro is a Dead Cells player, and we can even help him right now: there is an Assist mode in the game! This mode lets you resurrect at the start of the current biome or closest checkpoint, rather than restarting the entire run. Thank you very much Guillermo for your kind words and your time on the game. We hope this little message will help you!"

The "Cabinet of Curiosities" reference is a nice touch, given that's the name of del Toro's Netflix anthology series. And the Assist Mode they're pointing to does exactly what he asked for: instead of wiping your run and sending you back to the Prisoners' Quarters, it respawns you at the start of your current biome or the nearest checkpoint. Your progress stays intact. The world doesn't reset. It's a Continue button for a genre that traditionally refuses to give you one.

I find the whole exchange endearing. Del Toro didn't frame his complaint as a demand or a critique of game design philosophy. He said he loved the world, loved the design, and just wanted to see more of it without the roguelike structure punishing him for being, in his own words, elderly. That's about as reasonable a request as you can make. Motion Twin's anticipation of players like him four years ago makes it even better.

This does feed into a recurring conversation about difficulty in games that flares up every time a new Soulslike ships or a roguelike punches above its weight. Dead Cells is interesting because it actually addressed the debate years ago without much fanfare. The Assist Mode update in 2022 added granular options: you could toggle on the checkpoint respawns, adjust enemy damage, or slow the game's speed. It wasn't a binary easy/hard switch. It was a suite of modifiers designed to let players tune the experience to what they could handle.

Yacht Club Games' Mina the Hollower took a similar approach recently with dozens of optional modifiers, and it was widely praised for it. The pattern is clear: studios that give players control over difficulty without locking content behind skill gates tend to earn goodwill rather than backlash. Dead Cells was doing this before it was fashionable, and I think Motion Twin deserves more credit for that than they've received.

As for del Toro not knowing about Assist Mode, PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield made a fair point: one of the most common Google searches for any new game is "how do I save in [game]." We've all missed an obvious menu option. The difference is most of us don't do it on camera at San Diego Comic-Con in front of millions of people.

Dead Cells is available on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and mobile. Assist Mode is already in there, Mr. del Toro. No contact information required.