Yawn of the Dead.
In 2022, Hiroyuki Kobayashi, a former producer for Capcom, known for Dragon's Dogma, Devil May Cry, and Resident Evil, founded a new studio, GPTrack50. And, now some years later, their debut game, Stupid Never Dies, has finally arrived. With a tone and approach to it that feels very reminiscent of games produced by Grasshopper Manufacturer, does this zombie game feel reanimated or just brain-dead? Let's dive in.
Given my fondness for Lollipop Chainsaw, I was very much looking forward to Stupid Never Dies, given the stark similarities and the same frantic energy to its combat and style. However, what I wasn't expecting was that GPTrack50 wouldn't be taking the typical route found with this sort of game and instead would be going the rogue-lite route, making Stupid Never Dies a run-based game.
When it comes to rogue-lite games, content is always a worry of mine. Are there enough levels so that runs don't always feel the same? Does combat hold up through all the repetition? Does progression radically change how you play from hour one or hour ten? However, when it comes to Stupid Never Dies, those worries are present across every inch and hour of what GPTrack50 has built here, as this zombie hack and slash rogue-lite is all filler; no killer.
You play as Davy, a lowly zombie who ran away during the human/monster war, and retreated to the safe confines of an abandoned shopping mall. You see, years ago, monsters invaded the surface, and humans are almost all but extinct as a result. And, to make matters worse, while zombies plague the surface, left there as monsters still considered them to be mostly human, monsters have been digging deep into the Earth, creating sub-layers that they can exist in, but humans cannot. However, the monsters are not aimless in this endeavor, as KOM, their leader, is set on destroying the surface level, and making Earth a home solely for monsters.
However, while Davy is perfectly fine just shambling around, it is when two major events happen in his new life that catapult the slow-talker into a quest to save the planet. First, he meets Julia, a frozen human girl who ended up locked inside the freezer of the shopping mall’s food court. Secondly, he eats a mysterious “egg” that grants him incredible power, an action called Style Eat.
It's here, in the mall, where Davy meets a few characters who become the game's entire supporting cast. You have the eccentric Dr. Frank, the self-proclaimed greatest mind on Earth, and his tech-assistant Acelino, who is a Chihuahua man, and not to be confused with a werewolf. Secondly, there is Bessie, who delivers Frank food from the burger joint she runs from the food court, and lastly, Goyle, a stone gargoyle who is apparently sentient, but also forgets everything.
The cast do have their moments, but lack any depth to make them evolve over the course of the game. Acelino almost has something to chew on, but it's all but forgotten after the next crisis takes foot in the story. More or less, they are glorified shopkeepers with loose ties to the story rather than being anything substantial or memorable.
When Davy is imbued with power, Dr. Frank ensures him that he can save Julia if Davy consumes KOM, and unlocks the ability to save humanity. This becomes the driving force for Davy to dive into these sub-layers and stop KOM, once and for all. While there are twists and turns to this fairly simple premise, the story does suffer from its biggest moments being far too predictable. Still, it is engaging enough, if only to see how it all wraps up.
On the surface, Davy is slow, both in mobility, and conversation. While you do get a Roomba to move around the mall a bit faster, and button prompts for fast travel, Davy discovers that in the sub-layers below, that he can talk fast and move even faster, making him able to kick some ass.
The loop of Stupid Never Dies is shown right away, with very little to add to it, even despite several systems being injected as the game goes on. You'll dive into the sub-layers, kill monsters, and attempt to reach KOM. Early on, you're limited to just two biomes, with more opening up after what felt like forever. That said, the variety of level design is pitiful, with several floors being the same you'll explore countless times over. While new biomes solve some of this, they too start to repeat after a while.
Eventually, you'll collect loot via a system called Body Hack. This allows you to equip gear to your head and each arm and leg. These vary from providing passive attacks when you are downed, to flashy strikes, such as firing off rockets or wielding a great sword, which was a favorite of mine. These pieces can eventually see their traits replaced as you spend scrap to swap that extra health or more defense for something else. That said, the results are random, so you could spend scrap to get a bonus on a stat you simply don't want, objectively making the item worse.
Diving into the sub-layers is also a way where Davy becomes closer to Julia, and can bring her gifts to build up his special attack, or returning from a run to find that Goyle has unlocked more corrupted data from her cellphone. You'll read texts, listen to voice diaries, and learn more about Julia as the game goes on. Gifts are pretty easy to find, and eventually you'll gain a NPC that makes it even easier.
Part of the loop is retrieving items or currency to bring back to the mall to further enhance permanent upgrades to Davy, or unlock additional upgrades that you choose from as you level up during a run. These upgrades vary from increasing the time you can spend in the sub-layers, building up your counter power, increasing your defense or healing, to building up your Davy Burst, which basically makes Davy unstoppable for a short period of time.
Bessie’s Burger joint is how you add more variety to the temporary upgrades that Davy will choose from in a run. These range from how much health is restored on a kill, your attack power when your health is low, to how effective your skills are. These upgrades are presented via a tier system with the typical colors for uncommon, common, epic, rare, and legendary. And while you will have lots to inject into a run, I actually held back on unlocking some that didn't fit my playstyle. That and diluting the variety with average or lacking passives cause the better skills to appear less often.
Heading into the sub-layers is via a specialized toilet in the bathroom adjacent to the food court. One flush and you start at the first layer. Each run will only take you so far before you're recalled back to the surface, regardless of how much time you have left. You'll have a little plush teddy bear that will indicate how much time is remaining, as he dances in the top right corner. However, that timer comes in two flavors, digital and analog. A digital timer will show up when you're in the safe zone between layers, with an analog-only timer when you are active in a run, likely to cheat the system a little bit without you knowing.
When you enter into the safe zone, you'll have two options; tinker with your equipment loadout, which I did not see any real incentive to do so, or apply a few buffs. Bessie will be there, tinkering on her bike, and you shop with her to apply said buffs, and these add bonuses to your attack, defense, or your Davy Burst, as well as refilling your health, or boosting your item drop percentage. However, apart from refilling your health, you only ever get one purchase out of the rest, making these boosts feel largely pointless since most of the level up options provide the same bonuses. I get what they were trying to do here, but the implementation feels half-baked.
Later on, you'll get a third option, but it feels like a carry over of another system that is used only once in the story. So, instead of removing it, they applied it to yet another shop that doesn't really accomplish much, other than the random time they offer up an increase to your timer.
While the safe zone will occasionally replenish some of your timer, I do wish there was an option to just keep diving and bypass the zone. While I get it is there to provide the doorway to the next level, I wish the end of each zone had both doors, allowing you to just keep going, especially if you've already consumed all the single-use bonuses.
While other rogue-lite’s generally have you diving from one level to the next, Stupid Never Dies allows you to skip layers and go from the likes of the 4th floor to the 15th, but with the notion that the level requirement will be increased. Still, leveling is a brisk affair as each dive increases your experience modifier, with not even death resetting it. Eventually, I had over 1800x locked in, so by the time I left the first layer, I was already well past level ten, at minimum.
Combat is easily the part of the game you'll be doing the most, and while it can initially offer up a good time, there just isn't much to it, apart from the small variety of weapons you'll wield. While Davy is mostly a melee fighter, as his general attacks are just punches and kicks, you'll be able to equip weapons via the Body Hack equipment you'll find as you keep diving, albeit via cool-downs. However, I feel that Davy wasn't given much to his combat repertoire due to his ability to style eat elite enemies and use their forms for combat instead.
From werewolves, demons, vampires, ice fairies, and giant stone golems, there is a decent variety here of enemies for Davy to change into, especially as with different tiers of foes to consume, they each have a small assortment of different attacks, even between the same types. I opted for the werewolf as much as possible, due to many of these attacks either replicating rushes, slices, or drop kicks, as I could never get the hang of the more weirder ones, like the mer-man, or the more ghoul-like creatures that didn't always feel adequate for the situation. As you can equip two of these, I almost always opted for dual werewolves with different skills. These transformations only last a few layers, so you only get them for a short time before you'll need to replace them, and replace them you will, often.
Davy does have attacks of his own, as well as special attacks like vomiting acidic spray that can burn away at enemies, or a bite that can replenish your health. You'll find alternatives as you go for the former, but the real variety is in the weapons or passives you'll equip and the monsters you'll style eat and use in battle.
Davy can also parry, or rather, Stupid Parry which inflict recoverable damage, but Davy takes less damage and his HP won't drop to zero. If you block an attack, when an enemy glows yellow, with a Stupid Parry, Davy will unleash a powerful counterattack. While biting elite enemy cores grant you a transformation into those enemies, weaker enemies grant you instant skills, which are usually projectiles.
However, you really do see the bulk of what is here well before the midway part of the game. Even as I was roughly twelve or thirteen hours in, approaching the end, I felt like I was doing the same tactics every single run. And when the game eventually has a few fetch quests added into the runs in the late game, having to retrieve 30 of one item, and 5 of another, each run just started to feel like a chore instead of providing me something fresh as the game went on. I felt bored, and you never want that, especially in a rogue-lite.
It also doesn't help that despite there being maybe a half dozen biomes, each only has a few different layouts. While there is an alternative to each level that increases the challenge for better rewards, it doesn't do anything to visually change up the level, apart from the thickness of the miasma. These alternative layers have stronger enemies, and often reduce.your health or increase your cooldown times on your abilities. While the loot is certainly more plentiful, they never felt like a must-play part of a run, and I often ignored them to proceed with skipping a few layers or what I felt was a better reward offer at the end, as each portal in the doorway indicates what type of reward you'll get.
When you pick a layer, you'll have a general path to follow, defeating enemies, leveling up, finding gear, and power ups to make Davy more powerful. Each layer then ends with a gatekeeper layer where you either fight a boss or a flood of enemies. This structure does not change. If you die, you'll lose everything since the last Landing Area, which is the safe zone. And, if you die enough, an easier difficulty setting can be unlocked.
Each layer will have some obstacles or environmental hazards, such as buzzsaws that you can parry into, or pumpkin bombs you can eat and then detonate next to a collapsible wall. Eventually, you'll find cursed stakes that fire projectiles at Davy, should they be hit by enemies.
Stupid Never Dies has a personality to it that feels very Suda51, but never really capitalizes on how weird it can get. Most of the crazy stuff is shown off early, and it rarely goes places you don't expect. The game settles into itself pretty early on, with only a few other instances where the game tries to introduce other things, but they ultimately feel wasted.
I do have to say that one area where the game absolutely drops the ball on is its music. It's not the worst score or selection of tracks I've heard, but the music doesn't do anything to get you pumped. The Landing Zone is all but silent, and I couldn't tell you a single moment in the game where I enjoyed even a note of its music, it's wildly forgettable. If we somehow get a sequel to this, this is a huge area of the game that needs to be completely reworked.
Stupid Never Dies should be fun, but it rarely gets the opportunity to be anything more than its premise. The rogue-lite structure hurts the concept of this game, as it simply doesn't have the variety to remain engaging. Combat, level variety, and progression are certainly present here, in some form, but are disappointingly shallow and repetitive, even for a rogue-lite. While the Grasshopper influence is felt across most of the game, it lacks the soul of those titles, and is a largely forgettable experience on its own.
Developer - GPTrack50. Publisher - SEGA. Released - October 19th, 2026 (Early Access), October 21st, 2026. Available On - PlayStation 5, PC. Rated - (M) Blood, Strong Language, Violence Platform Reviewed - PlayStation 5. Review Access - A review code for Stupid Never Dies was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.