In most modern action games, you’re encouraged to pull off incredible dodges and parries, and look as cool as possible while doing so. That’s not what Stupid Never Dies wants — it wants you to survive a knock-down, drag-out brawl with every little ability you have, soaking up attacks like a sponge while Davy the zombie punches the living hell out of everything. One part roguelike, one part RPG, and one part brawler, Stupid Never Dies doesn’t fit neatly into one genre or category. But boy is it fun.
Stupid Never Dies is the first game from the new Japanese studio GPTRACK50 Inc, and there’s quite the pedigree behind the developers working on it. Eichiro Sasaki is the director, who previously worked at Capcom for years, as director of both Resident Evil Outbreak games as well as Resident Evil 6. Studio head and founder is Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who spent three decades at Capcom on Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Dino Crisis and more. The two brought along other talent that worked at Capcom for years and decades, and are joined by Genseki Tanaka, art director of Far Cry 3 and 4.
That’s an almost absurd amount of talent and institutional knowledge, but what’s fascinating is that the key developers are insistent that they don’t want to do the same thing they’ve always done – they want to break new ground.
“The thrill you get, or the catharsis, from playing an action game and feeling ‘oh yeah, I’m fucking awesome’ is still in this game,” director Sasaki says, “But then doing something a little different from, say, Devil May Cry, is what we want with this game.”
In Stupid Never Dies, you take on the role of Davy, a young man who’s recently been turned into a zombie, the lowest of the low in the monster hierarchy. In the wake of a great war, humanity teeters on the brink of extinction, and shortly after his zombification, Davy wanders into an abandoned store and finds a beautiful girl frozen solid in the freezer. As one does, he instantly falls in love and decides he’s going to fight all monsterkind to find a cure and bring her back to life.
It’s an absurd setup that the game dives headfirst into with gusto, with an abrasive “punk rock” style that splashes the screen with vibrant colours, results in quite a few curse words, and plenty of violence. I can feel Stupid Never Dies teetering on the brink of being “edgy,” but I think there’s a genuineness here to what it wants to do that keeps it from going too far.
But that spirit of punk rock is built into every aspect of the game, with Sasaki telling me straight-out that Davy’s design is directly based on Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong. Even the reason behind the game’s name is sort of charmingly simplistic.
“The protagonist is pretty weak, and he’s also not very smart. So he falls in love with a frozen dead woman, and maybe only an idiot would do that,” Sasaki says, “Fighting monsters is a huge thing, and he’s always been one that runs from conflict, but because of this cute girl he wants to fight. It’s an idiotic thing to do. So idiots ‘stupid’ don’t die, and also the idea of zombies don’t die.”
“One part roguelike, one part RPG, and one part brawler, Stupid Never Dies doesn’t fit neatly into one genre or category. But boy is it fun.”
From a gameplay standpoint, Stupid Never Dies meshes RPG and roguelike elements together, and that idea of Davy being bulky and stupid plays directly into combat, like I mentioned earlier. This isn’t a game where you’re pulling off quick dodges and perfect parries, but trying to string together combos and managing your health just right. Davy has basic attacks and a sort of dodge that lets you minimize damage, but not entirely. But there are a ton of elements layered in on top of that.
For one, Davy is a zombie, which means he can bite people. By biting people, you restore health and can even rip cores out of enemies to steal their powers and transform into other beasts. The two transformations I got to play with were a Werewolf and a Harpy, both of which unlocked entirely new combos and sets of powers. Later in the game, you can give Davy body modifications that unlock a whole suite of powers: a giant blade to slice enemies in half, automatic missile launchers, and more.
The roguelike element of the game comes into play with the structure, as you’ll embark on a “run” every time you leave your home base of an abandoned shopping mall (which you do by getting flushed down a toilet). In these runs you battle through a number of rooms, gaining upgrades after each battle. Sasaki says each run is designed to be completely different, but the most interesting element is how the sort of persistent progression works.
Davy levels up during each run, but you also build up an overall levelling percentage throughout the entire game. As this percentage builds up, Davy levels faster and faster, meaning the further you get into the game, the faster you’ll be levelling, thus making earlier areas easier and easier. As you unlock new areas, you’ll also be able to skip ahead or play through everything to get upgrades and level. It’s a genuinely interesting idea that I haven’t really seen done in the roguelike genre, and the team is even hesitant to really call Stupid Never Dies a “roguelike” game.
“You could say the unique thing about this game is the explosive growth in a regular RPG takes 20-30 hours. But in this game you take that thirty-hour timeline and shrink it into a thirty-minute timeline, totally condensed. So each time you experience diving into the dungeon over and over, it’s somewhat of a roguelike, but I consider it more of a condensed RPG,” Sasaki says, “I really like games like Dead Cells and Hades, but in those games parameters go up and you win. Similarly, in games like Devil May Cry, you have to use your skill in action to beat enemies. In this game it’s a combination of both, which I think is a totally new spirit.”
Initially, Stupid Never Dies felt a little clunky to me, but I think a large part of that is because I went in expecting a tight action game, and it’s very much not that. The more I played of Stupid Never Dies, the more it started to click, combat drastically growing in depth as I unlocked new transformations and skills. And, more than anything, I’m excited to see how far those systems can grow.
But it’s really the style of Stupid Never Dies that hooks me, that irreverent punk rock vibe meshed with genuine heart. There are loads of little details that help make that style pop too – with my personal favourite being the little teddy bear at the top-right of the screen that holds a clock for your timer on each run, gyrating and moving wildly the closer you get to time running out.
The real question is how much Stupid Never Dies can continue to mix things up and keep things exciting across dozens of hours. But there’s a personality and earnestness to doing something new that makes me more than happy to find out.
