If you enjoy the Dark Souls series, Necropolis might grab your attention right from the start. The people behind this 3D action adventure take the Souls' tough-as-nails combat, add a pinch of humor, and some slightly harsher consequences: Death doesn’t drop some of your current progress, you lose everything (levels, equipment, and items) and start over form the beginning. Creative Director and co-founder of developer Harebrained Schemes Mitch Gitelman describes it with a succinct pitch that a member of his team came up with: “What would happen if Dark Souls and Spelunky had a baby? And that baby tried to kill you over and over again?” he said.

“You’re going to die fairly often,” Gitelman jokes, “Embrace that.” Necropoilis is a difficult Roguelike, a genre where permadeath is a hard reset that robs you of progress.

Harebrained schemes is the studio behind the successful Shadowrun series on Kickstarter, but this project is a very different beast. On one hand it’s an old-school Dungeons and Dragons experience where the lower you get in the labyrinth dungeon, the tougher the enemies become. But the game has a twist: after the initial tutorial area, all of the terrain, enemies, and treasure is procedurally generated, so you never know what's going to come next.

Regardless of the constant threat of the unexpected, Necropolis has plenty of tools to help you survive. Success in combat is dependent on strict timing, as you dodge and counter attack enemies with a variety of swords, daggers, and axes. The avatars you play is fairly nimble, and you can customize yourself using special cloaks and helmets you find along the way. Our demo had a few framerate hiccups because it was an early build of the final game, but we still held our own against the skeletons, mages, and other armor-clad foes.

Early on, you’ll meet the Brazen Head, an enormous pyramid-shaped caretaker of the dungeon. He will give you a set of task to complete as you explore a single floor of the dungeon. Complete them before you descend to the next floor and the Brazen Head will reward you with Tokens of Favor. These tokens can then be traded in for Codexes, magical books that will give you special abilities that don’t go away. Unlocked Codexes are stored in a library, and you can swap them in and out on each play through.

Oddly enough, while trying to stay alive in Necropolis’ colorful dungeons, the game will unexpectedly make you laugh. Funny poems can be found scrawled on some of the walls and items have clever descriptions. Gitelman describes the humor as similar to Cabin in the Woods. One message scrawled on the wall of the dungeon read:

“Tiaxiatl tore the skin from the flayed got to make this world. With his his face he fashioned the high plains. With his arms and hands, the reaching lands of the south. Then he was like, Sorry, dude,” and split.”

Much like Diablo, some items need to be identified in order to safely use scrolls and potions. The Scrolls of Identification have a funny description that reads: “With six words, every unknown scroll and potion becomes apparent, and you remember your 3rd grade teacher’s name.” You can still consume an unidentified potion, but you might get stuck with a negative buff that could have been avoided. We got hit with a de-buff that obscured our vision and made enemies difficult to see.

Gitleman mentioned some details about Necropolis’ whimsical co-op, but we didn’t get to play it in our pre-E3 demo. Friends can drop in and out of the action at any time. In line with the humor-filled tone, you can also kill them off (or hopefully revive them so you can make progress).

Necropolis is already coming to PC this Summer, but Namco has stepped in to help publish it on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles. And Dark Souls-inspired roguelike is onto something, as we hacked and slashed our way to the deadly fifth floor. We had to navigate tough mobs in our trip through the dungeon, but the subtle laughs and powerful weapons kept us entertained along the way.

Jose Otero is an Editor at IGN and host of Nintendo Voice Chat. You can follow him on Twitter.