Stupid Never Dies Review – A Roguelike Grind That Never Gets Fun

After checking out Stupid Never Dies earlier this year at Summer Game Fest, I walked away from my brief hands-on preview intrigued, eager to see what developer Gptrack50 had in store for players once the game was released to the masses. To be fair, I still had a lot of unanswered questions about how its bevy of gameplay mechanics and influences would (or could) come together, but I was intrigued enough to sign myself up to review Stupid Never Dies ahead of its October launch.

Now, in retrospect, I can confidently say that I let my curiosity get the better of me.

For the uninitiated, Stupid Never Dies puts you into the shoes of Davy, a lovestruck zombie who’s willing to do whatever it takes to resurrect the frozen corpse of a young girl named Julia. With humanity nearly extinct after a global war against otherworldly monsters that emerged from the depths beneath Earth’s surface, there’s little hope left. Thankfully, a few ragtag individuals (some human, some monstrous) aren’t giving up just yet and are more than willing to help Davy in his journey to defeat the aptly named King of Monsters (KOM, for short), who was responsible for the all-out war that decimated mankind in the first place.

If it’s any consolation, you can largely skip over and ignore Stupid Never Dies’ paper-thin premise for a story, though you won’t be able to completely escape its pop-punk, tryhard, “weird for the sake of being weird” aesthetic, which permeates every character, cutscene, and tutorial, whether you want it to or not. To its credit, it’s not all that bad – anyone who’s a sucker for dogs might get a kick out of Acelino, the werewolf-adjacent body-hacking expert who flip-flops between human and chihuahua – but for the most part, Stupid Never Dies vibrant and chaotic visual style is far less interesting than its rebellious, skater culture aesthetic would have you believe.

Of course, Stupid Never Dies’ overwrought presentation would be easy to ignore if the moment-to-moment gameplay were satisfying in its own right, but that is where things really start to fall apart. While Gptrack50 hasn’t explicitly labeled it as a roguelike, Stupid Never Dies clearly draws inspiration from other roguelikes, especially when it comes to the concept of runs. In an effort to track down the KOM, Davy will need to venture into the Underworld, a constantly shifting series of discrete layers each with its own unique visual style and layout.

At the start, Davy will have the deck stacked against him; he’ll accumulate XP and rank up slowly, won’t have many upgrades, and his time in the Underworld is limited by a timer that ticks down every second you spend there. Unlike other roguelikes you might be familiar with, it’s actually impossible to reach the KOM on your first, second, third, or heck, even your 20th try. And after you log a few runs, the bigger picture of how Stupid Never Dies’ campaign is (poorly) structured begins to rear its head.

You see, while it borrows elements from the roguelike genre, Stupid Never Dies is essentially a third-person action RPG. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that, but rather than letting individual runs through the Underworld vary wildly based on whatever randomized powerups or bosses you might come across, the entire experience is much more gated than it initially suggests.

Stupid Never Dies’ focus on grinding run after run will eventually wear you down

The rate at which Davy accumulates XP and grows more powerful does continually tick up (and, more importantly, persist) between runs, but each descent into the Underworld will reset both his level and the aforementioned timer. In practice, this means your playthrough will quickly devolve into a cycle of grinding run after run until you’re able to make it far enough to come across a new boss with enough time left on the clock to beat it, and of course, you’ll need to make sure you’re strong enough too (each Underground layer you can pick from as you navigate your way down has a recommended level that you need to be at to stand a fighting chance).

While he’s slow-moving on the surface, Davy is a much more competent fighter in the Underworld, and even as a zombie, he can deal enough damage with just his bare hands. Beyond his regular and special attacks, Davy can bite enemies (assuming his Bite Gauge is filled), which restores lost health, unlocks different special moves in battle, and, most importantly, lets him unlock entirely new movesets by transforming into another monster. Dubbed “Style Eat,” you’ll unlock a handful of transformations over time. Unfortunately, almost all of them are awful to play as.

You might think the Harpy, for instance, would excel thanks to her long-range projectiles that let her keep her distance while attacking, but their range is comically short, and the lack of a lock-on option means you’ll miss half the shots you take.

The Cyclops might seem like an absolute bruiser, given his large size and ability to attack multiple foes at once with the swing of his club, but he’s so slow-moving that you’ll end up wasting more time playing as him, and time is such a precious commodity to begin with. For most of my runs, I switched back and forth between Davy’s zombie form and the Werewolf, since the latter could at least attack and move around with decent speed.

Sadly, the rest of Stupid Never Dies’ combat system is absolutely frustrating to grapple with, and it often feels like the game is fighting against you with every encounter you find yourself in. Attacks often have long windup animations that can’t be easily canceled, and aside from a few specific Styles, you don’t have a dedicated dodge button. The game also encourages you to use “Stupid Parry,” which can mitigate damage from incoming attacks, but the timing is a pain to nail down because it has a slight delay when you trigger it.

Worse yet, using a Stupid Parry actually causes you to take provisional damage, which must be recouped by biting into an enemy (which itself is tied to its own gauge that needs to be replenished). It also doesn’t help that things like taking damage and healing lack a lot of noticeable, visual feedback.

It’s rare to find a combat system this unenjoyable and aggravating, but somehow, Stupid Never Dies has pulled off the unthinkable. Even when you get to the point where you’re semi–competent at a few different Styles, you’ll still find yourself at the mercy of a randomized Underworld, combat encounters that end up taking too much of your limited time, and boss fights that are stacked against you if you don’t have any good Styles to transform into (oh, did I mention that you need to find Styles during each run, and sometimes, you won’t find the ones you really need?).

You might think that you can brute force your way through the game’s linear progression of bosses by getting a lucky run, but the temporary upgrades you can get by leveling up or defeating certain bosses often don’t shift the tide of battle that much, and remember, those upgrades are reset each time you venture into the Underworld. Instead, you’ll have to contend with Stupid Never Dies’ actual gameplay loop – continually doing runs to increase your XP gain so you can level up faster on subsequent runs, all while grinding for other resources to permanently upgrade Davy once you return to the surface.