Indie developers Motion Twin announced today that their upcoming “roguevania” Dead Cells will be released on Steam’s Early Access program on May 10. The game mixes elements of metroidvania titles with roguelike features, and its creators say that they were inspired by the Souls series when they set out to design Dead Cells’ combat system.

RogueVania: The threat of permadeath, balanced with a generous system of progression, the exhilaration of discovering new hidden areas, alternate paths to progress through the castle and a pinch of procedural generation to keep you on your toes.
Our main character is a green mass of sentient cells stranded on an ever changing island. The player must take over a discarded corpse and explore the prison, where survival is a precarious and ephemeral state. Death, however, is only the beginning in this alchemy afflicted world… just one more opportunity to unlock new powers, discover outlandish areas and plunder hidden secrets.

Game features:

• Souls-like combat: Gameplay changing weapons, invincibility frames when rolling, pattern based bosses and monsters and of course, punishing difficulty.
• Unlock new levels, secrets and abilities as you learn the world.
• Permanent upgrades will allow you to go a little further with every run.
• More than 10 levels, 50 weapons, spells and traps, plus tons of replayability.
• More to come: This is about 30-40% of the content expected in the final version.