Stupid Never Dies Review – Flushed With Ideas

GPTRACK50 Inc. played a reverse Uno card on us with this one, and it's not only a completely shifted perspective but also something that screams originality from every corner of the room. Stupid Never Dies is a game whose main character is, get ready for this, a zombie. Yes, you've read that correctly. In most games, zombies are just bullet meat, but here, a zombie is your hero.

You might think this sounds really stupid and that the concept can hardly work, but the sheer number of ideas and mechanics Stupid Never Dies brings forth is amazing. Let's put it this way: the developers didn't shy away from trying new things here, and those experiments mostly paid off. There are some weird decisions here and there, but I'm more than ready to turn a blind eye to them because of the huge amount of boldness in this title.

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Davy is the zombie hero; what a strange setting.

Story – Love at First Frost

Stupid Never Dies might have the stupidest, yet most ingenious story I've come across lately; after all, the game's very title suggests just that. You play as Davy, a zombie who roams an abandoned mall in search of food scraps. And how did Davy become a zombie in the first place? Well, that part is especially interesting. A war raged between humans and KOM, a godlike entity in command of an army of monsters, and it left humanity on the verge of extinction. The few who survived are hiding, and most of the rest have turned into zombies.

Davy was a youngster when the infection hit him, and he never had a chance to fall in love. While searching for food, he stumbled upon a freezer in the mall, and inside it, the sight that changed his life (if being a zombie can be called living at all) was waiting for him: Julia, a human girl who had hidden inside the freezer to escape danger and froze to death. He fell in love at first sight and swore never to eat a human again. His goal now became saving her, or rather bringing her back to life, but how could such a slow and pathetic creature pull that off?

While searching for answers, he stumbled upon a Phoenix Egg, and since Davy is a brainless zombie, he ate it. The egg belonged to Dr. Frank, and believe it or not, it granted Davy the very same power that KOM wields. Dr. Frank seized the opportunity and made a pact with Davy: he will hone his new powers and eventually devour KOM, which would give him the knowledge needed to bring Julia back and free the world from KOM's rule along the way.

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Julia and Davy in the freezer: a love on the first sight.

Complicated, right? Well, this is just the beginning. The story goes deeper and deeper, and every encounter and every newly explained mechanic adds another layer, to the point where you can get totally lost in it. The premise itself is interesting; I mean, when was the last time you played a game as a zombie? However, the storytelling, while as obviously unserious as the game itself, is all over the place. The story will put a smile on your face once or twice, sure, but it is far from memorable.

Gameplay – Too Many Cooks in the Mall

Stupid Never Dies is a game that simply cannot be put into a single category or genre. It is an action RPG with some roguelite elements, but not exactly a roguelite, because it doesn't handle runs the way classic roguelites do. Simply put, like its story, it is complicated and all over the place.

Davy is a useless zombie who can barely move because he is literally rotting. However, thanks to the Phoenix Egg he consumed, he gained an ability called Style Eat. It lets him gain some crazy powers, but there is a twist: those powers only work inside other dimensions, which he reaches through a toilet in the mall, and to activate this teleporter, he has to flush himself down it. The game tries really hard to make every mechanic as ridiculous as possible, but it doesn't always work the way the developers intended.

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Stupid Never Dies overflows you with its mechanics.

Once inside one of these dimensions (they work similarly to runs in roguelikes), Davy regains normal speed and moves as he did before becoming a zombie. He can punch enemies with light and heavy attacks, chain different combos, and use many special attacks he earns through runs. For defence, Davy relies on the Stupid Parry, which works like a classic parry if timed correctly; if you miss, Davy performs a sort of dodge instead.

Davy can heal with his special bite, and if he bites an elite enemy, he can take its form and shapeshift, borrowing all of that enemy's abilities. Davy can take on 11 different Styles: Zombie (the default), Werewolf, Harpy, Golem, Vampire, Will-o'-the-Wisp, Cyclops, Snow Fairy, Merfolk, Lich and Demon, and each one has its own characteristics and special powers. This is probably the best part of the gameplay, and tinkering with those powers can be really satisfying.

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Beating an elite enemy and biting it will give you the ability to shapeshift.

When it comes to the runs themselves, Stupid Never Dies is very versatile. There are several stages divided into layers, with enemies that grow stronger the deeper you go. Everything culminates in a boss fight, and unlike in most roguelikes, you can return from a run once you've cleared a set of floors. If you die, you lose the loot you haven't banked, although the experience you earned still feeds into a permanent growth bonus that makes Davy level up faster on the next run. Back at the hub, you can upgrade your skills and abilities, improve your gear, add new modifications to Davy and get ready for the next run.

What I didn't like at all is the huge number of tutorials the game throws at you. I'm not exaggerating when I say that tutorials pop up throughout half of the game, which seriously breaks the flow. I know the mechanics are unusual and sometimes very strange, but if you need a four-page tutorial to tell me that Davy can't walk fast enough and has to ride a robot vacuum cleaner to get around, then it loses every bit of sense.

There is a lot to do in Stupid Never Dies, and as the game progresses, new mechanics, new shops and new characters keep unlocking, making everything even more crowded and complicated. Once again, having so many mechanics didn't do Stupid Never Dies any favours; it made the game overcrowded and tiring, and I think the developers missed the right balance here, simple as that.

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Davy riding a robot vacuum cleaner: a simple mechanic that needed a four-page tutorial.

Visuals and Sounds – A Paint Bomb in a Punk Club

The visual design follows the game's overall theme of absurdity and stupidity. Everything is extremely colourful, with palettes that scream off the screen, as if someone threw a paint bomb made of all the strongest and brightest colours and mixed them together without a single care in the world, and you know what? It is perfect that way. The game uses a cel-shaded style, and the characters look crazy and beautiful at the same time. Imagine a zombie, a frozen girl, a half-man, half-robot bloke, a cute little doggy that turns into a self-proclaimed Latin ladies' man, and a gargoyle riding in a shopping cart, all mixed together and put in a single room. The idea is crazy, and the execution follows closely.

The dimensions Davy visits during his runs draw inspiration from real places and historical eras. You'll visit dungeons modelled on Imperial Rome during the eruption of Vesuvius, Medieval Europe, the Viking Age and Edo Japan, plus a Gothic level, and each features unique hazards like lava, torture devices and more. The visual presentation is probably the best side of Stupid Never Dies; it is real eye candy.

The music is good too; again, a bit crazy, but good. Sometimes the background music feels out of place, but that's exactly the point: to evoke the sense of ridicule the game pushes at all times. The voice acting sounds a bit cheap, but this is not a high-budget title, after all.

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Stupid Never Dies is a very detailed game with a very beautiful art style.

As for performance, everything ran perfectly on PlayStation 5. The game offers the usual Performance and Fidelity modes, with the former targeting 60 FPS at a slightly lower resolution and the latter targeting 30 FPS with fidelity cranked up to the max. Both modes work as expected, and I have no complaints at all.

Conclusion

Stupid Never Dies is the kind of game the industry needs more of. Making a zombie the hero, flushing him down a toilet to fight a monster god and letting him steal the forms of the creatures he eats are all ideas that shouldn't work, yet most of them do. The Style system is the clear highlight, the visuals are a joy to look at, and the whole thing runs without a hitch on PS5.

The problem is that GPTRACK50 didn't know when to stop. The story wanders all over the place, tutorials keep interrupting the action for half the game, and the mall keeps filling up with new shops and systems until the whole thing becomes more tiring than fun. There is a really good game buried under all that clutter, and if you can push through it, you'll find plenty to enjoy. Just don't expect Stupid Never Dies to make it easy for you.