Harebrained Schemes, the developer of the highly acclaimed Shadowrun Returns, has announced a brand new game it's working on, titled simply Necropolis.

The title looks like a very stylish dungeon-crawling roguelike, sending brave adventurers into the Necropolis, the tomb of the powerful archmage Abraxis, searching for valuable trinkets and untold treasure.

"Welcome to Necropolis - a game of brutal combat and survival, set in a magical deathtrap that shifts and reconstructs itself around you. Will you find the exit, or die trying?" the teaser website reads, adding a spoiler: "You'll probably die trying."

The website then proceeds to enumerate the many daring adventurers who found an untimely demise in the perilous dungeons, offering a timid initial peek at the game world and setting the tone of the grim journey to come.

Necropolis will feature third-person combat based on timing and precision, just like in the Dark Souls series, mixing in a lot of random elements in order to keep things fresh. It promises to mix difficult, pattern-based fighting with constantly shifting mazes, and with a slew of interesting opponents to take down.

The devs warn that the game is fast and deadly, and you have to learn to anticipate your adversaries' attack patterns and to time your actions in order to get the maximum effect, using combinations of both light and heavy attacks, and that simply mashing buttons is a quick path to an early grave.
A genuinely promising experience

Shadowrun Returns received praise from both critics and gamers, and its expansion (also available as a standalone product), Shadowrun: Dragonfall, was considered by many to be even better than the original.

Granted, the cyberpunk-flavored role-playing games relied on the expansive lore of the Shadowrun universe, honed over more than 20 years of existence. This time around, the action will be set in a completely new world.

One of Harebrained Schemes' previous games' primary strengths was the superb writing, the developer showing that it is able to craft a pretty convincing fantasy locale and to give it the depth and flavor required for an immersive experience, and it's certainly going to be interesting to see what they'll be able to pull off with Necropolis.

In any case, it seems like something to watch out for, a challenging and dark (but humorous) experience with a very intriguing art direction. Another notable feature is the fact that the dungeon will not only be different on every playthrough, thanks to the magic of procedural generation, but will also shift while you're playing the game.

If you want to learn more about Necropolis, you can head over to the developer blog, where you can feast your eyes on some behind-the-scenes goodies. The game is set to come out sometime in 2016, for PC, Mac and Linux, and the devs are also looking into a potential release on consoles.