Lots of video games trap you in places where everything is trying to kill you. But many of those environments at least have the decency to stay the same so you could figure things out. Not Necropolis. You're going to be starting a whole new death march every time you bite the dust.
Necropolis won't be giving you any comfortable save points or easy-to-memorize layouts. That's because it takes place in an evil, shape-shifting city-sized magical construct designed to trap adventurers and feed off their life force as they try to escape. All the eldritch loot scattered about by its malevolent architect? None of it will give you more than one life. Good thing it's got a kickin' soundtrack, because it seems like you're going to be hearing it a lot thanks to all the permadeath.
I took a look at a pre-alpha build of Necropolis at PAX East last weekend and The smaller enemies you'll see in the video above are called Grines. They're shadow versions of the player-controlled character, which means you'll be fighting yourself a whole lot, along with bigger randomly generated bad guys, too. I really dug the angular art style and shifting environments in Necropolis and will definitely be looking for it when it comes out later this year.
Contact the author at evan@kotaku.com.