This Character-Action Zombie Game Stumbles Into Its Own Way

Stupid Never Dies makes a strong, if extremely weird, first impression. Wrapping roguelite progression around the system of an action-RPG and setting that story in an inventive punk-inspired world of monsters is an inviting hook. Plus, it's hard not to feel some affection for the dimwitted hero and his undoubtedly creepy quest to revive the supposed love of his afterlife. But the inventive world and a few neat ideas can only carry this game so far, and I ultimately struggled to look past the repetitive and often imprecise combat.

The world of Stupid Never Dies has been completely taken over by monsters who emerged from inside the Earth's crust. These monsters are very conspicuously inspired by classic silver screen incarnations and popular B-movies, all filtered through a '90s or '00s pop-punk aesthetic. It's a stylish blend of influences that immediately identifies this game's goofball, self-effacing tone.

When these monsters took over the world, they all but wiped out humanity. In the aftermath, a new caste system emerged, with zombies considered to be little more than cannon fodder in the fight for monster supremacy. Zombies who refused to fight in the war are seen as even lower than that--protagonist Davy is one of those, a teenage-looking undead who's more of a lover than a fighter.

In fact, Davy shambles his way into the adventure accidentally. He's just hungry, and happens to eat a weird glowing egg he finds laying around. This turns out to be a Phoenix Egg, giving him the ability to absorb power from other monsters. He doesn't really care to use this newfound power until an associate, Dr. Frank, tells him he may be able to use it to revive a dead girl named Julia who he's been infatuated with. Julia is a random human that Davy found in a freezer, and Davy sets his sights on reviving her solely because he imagines they would be a happy couple.

This motivation doesn't give Julia any agency--we don't know whether she would even want to date a zombie, let alone Davy specifically, and that creates a problematic vibe for the setup. If the story treated this with any degree of seriousness it would be downright toxic. But this is not a serious game, and Davy is very pointedly presented as a complete dumbass, so I at least think we as the audience are supposed to recognize the obvious folly in his lovelorn puppy act. Still, it's a bit ick.

This uncomfortable setup is also just quickly drowned out with lore and jokes. There's a ton of exposition at the very start to introduce you to this world, but a lot of it is delivered with a sort of "just go with it" haste. It seems at once proud of its stylish mash-up and embarrassed by it as a thin pretense for fighting movie monsters. The humor, similarly, is mostly kept just barely on the right side of cringe, though parts of the story occasionally veer over into being too cheesy or silly.

To have any hope of reviving Julia, Davy has to defeat and absorb the power of KOM, the nickname given to the King of the Monsters. After destroying Earth, most of the monster races burrowed back underground, leaving only the lowly zombies to roam around on the surface. Davy descends into deeper and deeper layers to find new materials in his quest to revive Julia, all leading toward KOM. If he completes a particular boss target or takes a ride back to their home base in an abandoned shopping mall before being defeated, he keeps his gains and can cash them in for power-ups. That's where the roguelite structure comes in.

In the underground combat segments, Davy can move quickly and strike hard, behaving much like a hero in a character-action game. The enemies are nicely differentiated between mobs like lizardmen and skeletons and elites like cyclopes and harpies, offering a good bit of variety, especially since you can absorb the powers of elite enemies. (More on that momentarily).

By default, Davy's moves feel floaty--flailing and imprecise. This makes sense, as he is a zombie, but it does mean your core moveset never feels very cool or stylish. Devil May Cry this game isn't. You can also parry enemy strikes--the game insists on exclusively calling this a "stupid parry" for no particular reason--or leap to reach flying enemies or knock them into walls or off the stage. Combat has a fun sense of chaos and momentum to it.

As you level up, in roguelite fashion, you'll gain new perks to equip and upgrade. Some of these are fairly straightforward, like boosts to your attack or defense, while others are more specialized, like giving you a passive perk for how many enemies you've knocked off the edge of a stage.

On top of that, Davy has a Bite ability, which you charge up through regular attacks. This functions as both a heal and a finisher, as you can chomp down on enemies to restore some Hit Points, but it's better saved to use as the fatal blow on an elite enemy, since that heals you for a greater amount and grants you a big power boost. A lot of the combat is about managing your bite gauge, building it up for a big enemy, and then chomping into an elite for an impactful heal.

Elite enemies also often drop skill cores that you can bite into as long as you have your gauge charged, which lets you add their transformation to a quick select. These are worth using instead of saving, since they expire, but they turn Davy into a super-powerful creature like a werewolf, lich, or snow fairy. Those greatly expand Davy's abilities and make him much more powerful than his standard zombie form. And like the regular upgrades, they also come in different rarities, so it's always exciting to see a legendary monster form that you know will really tear through enemy mobs or that impending boss. 

It all works pretty well, but progression can be achingly slow, and the early battles get repetitive fast. I found the game actually became much more fun in the "Go Nuts" mode, a modifier that makes your level progression much faster to speed you along, especially in the early stages. Stupid Never Dies hits its stride about halfway through each run, I found, so breezing past the early parts to get to the meat of the gameplay was just a better way to play.

When you get back to base, there are a variety of upgrade systems. You have Bessie, who sells you upgrades you'll be able to find in the dungeons from then on; a nearby monster who gives you achievement rewards for completing milestones; Acelino, a weredog who can swap your body parts to build out Davy with various stat boosts and abilities; Milo's ice cream shop, which lets you trade giblet gelato for ranked skill and stat upgrades; and Julia, who you can give gifts to in order to earn stat upgrades to the Davy Burst, his super-powered ultimate state. In this base, you can also explore to talk with Dr. Frank about your monster dex, view and heart Julia's old social media posts, or change your soundtrack tunes.

The multitude of systems isn't exactly elegant, and what's worse, Davy always starts in the mall with a slow zombie shamble. You quickly unlock the ability to ride around on a motorized vacuum, but it's just baffling why you have to press the button to board the quicker ride every time. I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to actually walk around at his default slow pace, so why force the transition at all?

Other elements are similarly unwieldy. Bessie's upgrades are mostly understandable but sometimes the sheer number of variables just gets confusing, which at best breaks the momentum of a stage when you have to pause to decipher an ability, and at worst just gets so confusing that I'd bypass it altogether. On one recent run I had the option to choose an upgrade for: "Rate decrease for recoverable damage reduction over time +100." This was a good card judging by its rarity, but I honestly couldn't make heads or tails of what the heck it was supposed to do.

Then there's the addition of a timer, as indicated by a TickTock Teddy in the corner of your screen. This incentivizes you to skip some layers strategically since you simply do not have time to play all of them in a single run, and time-extension items give you one more thing to earn while you're choosing which layers to play. But it feels half-baked, since the difficulty of the bosses alone is enough of a friction point, and nothing feels as frustrating as nearly defeating a boss and then being brought down by an arbitrary time restriction.

The time pressure also just makes certain aspects of the level design feel bad in unexpected ways. Airborne enemies are a particular pain because they are hard to hit and take longer to defeat, and you can just feel the timer counting down. Randomized stages can sometimes be difficult to navigate, wasting precious time. Even the long approach down a dark corridor to a formidable boss, which could feel properly dramatic and tension-building, instead just made me think of how much time I was burning on the way.

These caveats and friction points ultimately harm the overall experience. The combat and merchant systems feel just a little too overstuffed and the timer is a frustrating and unnecessary addition that detracts from the overall flow of moving through the world. Stupid Never Dies has some good ideas going for it, including an inventive world, a likable idiot of a protagonist, and some cool combat mechanics like transforming into elite enemies. But it also has a lot of cringey plot points and jokes, repetitive and slow progression, and an awful timer system. I wish I could have enjoyed the positive aspects more, without the other cruft getting in the way.