Kinda hard to frown on a game called Stupid Never Dies, isn’t it?

Throughout all the reveals and marketing and brouhaha for Stupid Never Dies it was, of course, the name that always stood out to me. What the hell does it mean? Is it just a literal stupid ploy to raise eyebrows and get eyeballs fixed?

I think somewhere along the way I saw Stupid Never Dies was a dungeon crawler or a roguelite or an action RPG or whatever hell mishmash the developers at GPTRACK50 deemed it was. And I likely–naturally–assumed the game was some SUDA51 or Grasshopper Manufacture joint. After all, it was earlier this year I played Romeo is a Dead Man–which I constantly kept calling Romeo Must Die after that Jet Li movie from 2000–and visually, both games are extremely weird and different and noisy.

Noisy doesn’t have to be bad. Noisy doesn’t even have to mean stupid. I’ve absolutely been charmed by absurdist games that aim for the stars even if they occasionally putter out before breaking through the ozone layer. Games can be experimental and do strange and stupid things to make it feel like a wish list of an auteur made real. Doesn’t mean you or I have to enjoy it. Doesn’t mean you or I won’t absolutely fall in love with it… while recognizing the flaws, of course.

Stupid Never Dies isn’t stupid. Dumb? Sure. In the same way that I tell a dumb joke and it gets a laugh because it was out of left field or so absolutely silly to be disarming. This is a game where players perform moves like the Stupid Parry, or Style Eat, or Davy Burst. It gives off that same aura as Viewtiful Joe screaming “HENSHIN-A-GO-GO, BABY” or Mario’s “SHINE GET”. It’s harmless, it’s wacky, and it immediately endears you to a bit of sincere silliness.

Davy, the guy who’s bursting, is a zombie. The Great War has left mankind devastated as monsters run amok. Zombies were one of the first on the front lines but Davy, being the coward that he is, retreated to a mall. It was there he found the love of his life: a human girl named Julia frozen in a walk-in freezer. From that day, he vowed to never eat meat again. But that didn’t stop him from eating a psychedelic phoenix egg (spoilers for a joke later in the game: the egg is actually a phoenix turd) and gaining incredible powers.

You know what? I accidentally got distracted in the opening crawl of Stupid Never Dies. I tried to open a new save to watch it again but gave up after a few seconds. It didn’t take me long to pull all the pieces together and recognize that Davy has been tasked by an eccentric doctor to kill KOM–the King of Monsters–to save humanity. In this dimension, Davy is a useless shambling zombie who can barely talk. But once he flushes himself down the toilet into where all the game’s combat takes place, he’s granted speed, full speech, and the ability to transform into other monsters by using “STYLE EAT” and consuming their essence.

Look guys, when it’s all said and done you don’t really need to trouble yourselves with the plot of Stupid Never Dies. It’s dumb and silly, the perfect kind of connective tissue that reeks of absurdity. Slapstick jokes and ridiculous scenarios are aplenty. GPTRACK50 is more interested in doing funny things than really getting into the weeds of KOM and all these alternate reality, Great War shenanigans.

We’ve got a Were-Chihuahua, a dog that turns into a handsome man with an accent and a tail who resides in a tattoo shop and creates body modifications that Davy can fuse onto himself. There’s a talking gargoyle statue named Goyle. A fellow biker zombie named Bessie who used to run a burger shop that now develops different meats for Davy to improve and upgrade his stats during runs. And as the game goes on, Davy gets all lovey-dovey over a girl that he can only learn more about through her social media posts.

Irreverent is one way to describe it all. But in that madness, there is purpose. It’s all enjoyable and fun and yeah, you guessed it, dumb in the way that makes you laugh at its absurdity. Little touches scattered throughout the game give it the required personality to make it not a heartless, vapid slog.

The game is bright and vibrant, much of it looking a bit cel-shaded. Bosses and monsters all appear relatively threatening and scary but in essence are often fodder that is dispatched quite quickly. Voice acting is surprisingly strong and I found myself impressed at the lip syncing during cutscenes and the dialog bits where two characters have a back and forth. Every enemy players kill during a run are represented by stickers that fill up the results screen. The time left is shown as a teddy bear with a clock on its chest who starts wildly dancing and fidgeting when in the red. Davy’s fantastical imaginings of him and Julia are real or stock photos with the in-game portraits of the two slapped on the heads.

And at its heart, Stupid Never Dies is a weird kind of dungeon crawler with roguelike mechanics.

Honestly, it’s strange and unexpected. But within minutes players are thrown to the proverbial wolves and new mechanics are delivered at a relatively fast past. With such a rapidly revolving door of concepts to grasp–despite them being pillars of the genre–players might become initially overwhelmed in the first hour or so of Stupid Never Dies, I know I certainly did and I’m pretty familiar with these kinds of games.

Tantamount to survival is Davy’s ability to consume the flesh and cores of certain larger monsters. This Style Eat requires players to build up literal bites through attacking other enemies. Chomping down on enemies will tear off some of their health and restore some of Davy’s health but once an enemy’s exposed core is gulped down, players are granted the ability to turn into that beastie.

Werewolves, golems, liches, harpies, fairies, and more offer transformative powers and each one uses different attacks, special abilities, and movement tech. Want to move fast, jump up walls to get out of reach items, and swiftly slash? Pick the werewolf. Want to sever the souls from low-health enemies and turn them into skeletal minions? Go for the lich. It’s an incredibly interesting mechanic and players are meant to constantly consume these cores and spend their limited uses to keep the flow of battle fast.

One of my points of frustration is that in the opening hours of Stupid Never Dies, there is a lot of time players will spend as the werewolf, harpy, and lich. Out of these three, the werewolf feels the strongest and fastest, meaning that players will feel slightly less pressure with the shockingly limited time Davy has during a run.

Stupid Never Dies can be a bit scattered and overwhelming because the opening hours of gameplay are constantly split up by stops and starts to incorporate new mechanics, tutorials, and narrative. Initially there was a fear that fighting would be somewhat slow, despite how aggressive players are meant to be. But the pace does pick up.

One of my favorite things about Stupid Never Dies is the constant feeling of progression players are making. Enemies defeated constantly drop pieces of meat meant for upgrades at Bessie’s show–though I was never certain if some of these were always passive or dependent upon a lucky drop. A constant flood of mods for Davy’s arms, legs, and head add numerous stats and active powers to incorporate new strategies. And even when dying, players will watch numbers go up as the different zombie styles and base levels shoot up.

For the first half an hour, players are bashing minions with Davy’s fists, spitting acid on them, and leveling up a slow pace. By hour two, killing a few enemies will have Davy dripping level-ups out of his ears. That’s Stupid Never Dies working as intended because the clock is always a threat. Skipping floors becomes essential but almost at a detriment. Players can’t really sit in a dungeon and grow in power exponentially because the clock is always keeping them in check, even when finding ways to extend time.

The option opens up to skip several floors at once, all meeting increased power requirements. And as the player keeps watching Davy’s total percentage of strength–in the thousands, mind you–he will be able to survive deeper and deeper to eventually contend with KOM and his generals.

Back at the mall, players can work on builds and invest currency with Bessie to make runs better. Additionally, players can gift Julia presents to beef up the Davy Burst ability that acts as a kind of super. Great touch? Because Davy shambles along the surface, players quickly get a roomba for him to hop on and zoom around.

Those kinds of touches make Stupid Never Dies stand out. Yet the game truly nestled into an overall satisfying groove for me. As Davy, combat is pretty slow and basic. But even when transforming into the varying zombie forms, there’s a reliance on button-mashing and not really performing combos. The camera often felt like it fought against me as I tried to scan areas for enemies to kill and the lock-on didn’t help much either. Flying enemies can be absolutely atrocious to contend with as there are limited ways to juggle attacks mid-air. But perhaps my biggest complain was that it felt like I was being punished for actually mashing buttons. I noticed pressing the primary attack button back to back would almost hold that action–like a punch–until Davy performed his other action. This led to multiple times where I would whiff an attack.

Though conceptually I understand Stupid Never Dies‘ aggressive approach to combat, not having a dodge button took more time than it should have to grow comfortable with. Players are meant to use the Stupid Parry as the primary means of absorbing a blow. Performing the Stupid Parry as an enemy attacks causes Davy to hit back with an explosive force. However, he does still take damage. Davy does have recoverable health akin to Bloodborne but this melts away after a point. The frustration is that the Stupid Parry needs a few moments to “recharge” and if a player’s timing is off, it may be incredibly costly. During the chaos of battle and when unavoidable red attacks crop up, there’s a lot of Davy getting knocked off his feet and mid-air recoveries aren’t easy to time.

It’s a shame that these annoyances were kind of persistent throughout Stupid Never Dies. While it became something I acclimated myself towards, there were simply times where a dodge or better input registering would have assuaged annoyance. The game’s saving grace truly is how wacky it tries to be and how effortless it is to upgrade Davy’s strength through failure. Certainly the experience could be a lot smoother but I can’t say that I wasn’t glad to have been apart of this wholly bizarre vision of GPTRACK50, wondering if they have any other genres it wants to take a stab at in the future.

Stupid Never Dies does dungeon crawling differently by way of its power-swapping zombie hero. The flashy, bizarre package housing this quirky jaunt does contain familiar structures and bouts of frustration but a constant energy keeps it engaging.