If you took The Legend of Zelda, doused it in some Illuminati themes, stitched some Dark Souls combat mechanics to it and gave it a really groovy soundtrack, you might end up with a game like Necropolis. And that ain’t a bad thing.

The action adventure game was front and center at this year’s PAX Prime where Harebrained Schemes unveiled the new trailer for the rogue-like dungeon crawler. You can see the action packed trailer from the convention below.

NECROPOLIS PAX PRIME 2015 – Official Trailer Friday August 28th through Monday the 31st, Harebrained Schemes is proud to present an all new NECROPOLIS demo at booth 7410 on the 6th floor of PAX Prime. https://necropolisgame.com NECROPOLIS is a third-person action roguelike, set in a living dungeon that changes every time you play, filled with monsters, myth and magic, and lorded over by the mad mystical intellect known only as the Brazen Head.

According to the YouTube description…

“NECROPOLIS is a third-person action roguelike, set in a living dungeon that changes every time you play, filled with monsters, myth and magic, and lorded over by the mad mystical intellect known only as the Brazen Head.”

It kind of amazes me that despite the popularity of The Legend of Zelda the game hasn’t really spawned a lot of viably successful clones. Adventure games aren’t a difficult thing to take on, though. They need proper attention paid to detail when it comes to making compelling and engrossing puzzles, as well as constructing dungeons that are actually fun to traverse and explore. A large part of this also ties into needing visually engaging environments that keep players interested in what they’re doing and where they’re doing it. The combat also needs to be easy enough to pick and play but hard enough to require players to invest time and energy into mastering it.

Harebrained Schemes has a tall order in front of them – having to make a worthwhile and noteworthy adventure game that can stand up on its own merits while also having an art-style that may or may not win over enough people to justify the game as a profitable release. It’s not an easy task but I’m glad they’re taking the risk to do it.

We get a lot of hack-and-slash titles but many of them are very much derivative cash-ins with little substance and hardly any replayability. I mean, anyone remember Rise of the Argonauts? Or how about Ryse: Son of Rome? Vikings anyone? How about Spartan: Total Warrior? Hopefully Harebrained Schemes can churn out something noteworthy with their title.

As I mentioned, we get quite a few hack-and-slash games and a smattering of adventure titles here and there but few of them standout enough to stand the test of time. We’ll see if Necropolis can graduate from the arcade of mediocrity and excel into the annals of history as a classic.

You can keep an eye on Necropolis and its development for home consoles and PC by paying a kind visit to the official website.