Today, Bordeaux, France-based developer Motion Twin announced that its "RogueVania" game Dead Cells is poised to launch on PC via Steam Early Access on May 10, 2017. Accompanying the early access release date announcement, the developer also released a new launch trailer for the game.

For those that don't know: Dead Cells is a roguelike, Castlevania-inspired action-platformer where you explore a sprawling, ever-changing castle...assuming you can fight you way past its numerous "keepers." According to Motion Twin, to beat the game you'll have to master 2D Souls-like combat and not die, because there is permadeath, aka no checkpoints, and if you die, you start over, and hopefully learn from your mistakes. The game is essentially the blend of the devloper's two favorite genres: roguelike and Metroidvania.

In the game you play as "a green mass of sentient cells" that is stranded on an ever changing island.  A description provided by Motion Twin continues: "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."

Motion Twin up until this point had only ever worked on free-to-play PC and mobile games, as well pioneered some freeware developer tools. That being said, Dead Cells marks a journey into a bit of new territory for developer. Motion Twin’s lead designer Sébastien Benard accompanied the announcement with the following statement:

“We’re a cooperative with no boss that’s been making F2P games for 15 years. It got to the point where we had to ask ourselves why we were doing it. After that there was no choice but to make something for us. We’re taking two genres we all love, adding our little twist, and aiming for the best rogue-lite/metroidvania you’ve ever played. So far the feedback has been really positive, so we’re really really excited to see people playing!”

When Dead Cells ships in its early access form, it will represent about 30 to 40 percent of the content that will be found in the final version, which is expected to ship at a "later time" for PC, as well as Mac and Linux.

Below, you can check out the new launch trailer, as well as a batch of screenshots from the game: