Stupid Never Dies Preview: New Action Game From Ex-Devil May Cry Developers Is Stupid Fun

Stupid Never Dies is stupid fun. I had the chance to go hands-on with the new roguelike at Summer Game Fest and speak to some of the developers behind the game and the recently-formed studio, GPTrack50. Last December, GPTrack50 – a developer headed by Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who has famously worked on franchises such as Resident Evil and Devil May Cry – announced Stupid Never Dies with a music video of sorts. It wasn’t until earlier this year that we got a better understanding of what this game is actually about.

If you ever thought that the movie Warm Bodies would make for a cool video game story, but with additional monsters, powers, and hack-and-slash type of combat, then Stupid Never Dies is for you. Although I was encouraged to skip past all the dialogue, character interactions, and general exposition in the demo that I played, primarily due to the tight schedule we had to adhere to, I gathered that the game follows a lowly zombie named Davy who falls in love with a frozen human girl. And in order to resuscitate her (and be with her), the mad scientist Dr. Frank tells him to dive into the dungeon (which is filled with monsters) and defeat the King of Monsters – and no, it’s not Godzilla. At least not that I was told…

That’s a rudimentary explanation of the story and there’s undoubtedly much more to it, but for the purposes of this preview, what you need to know is that Davy does a dungeon crawl, defeats a boss, comes back to Dr. Frank, and repeats it seemingly ad nauseum. Each time you dive into the dungeon, you begin at level 1, but over time, your progression accelerates and compounds. This can lead to stronger abilities and better loadouts, so to speak.

The thing is, while there are 10 monster types and Davy can turn into any of them by biting their Core, thus gaining their powers for a short time a la Mystique (in the demo, every monster form only lasted for three dungeon levels), you can’t swap between all of them at will. You will always have a limited set and will have to choose which to keep and which to replace. That’s how it was presented to me, but there’s still a lot of freedom there. For instance, I switched between Davy the zombie, a Harpy to land distance shots, and a Werewolf to fight up close over and over until I defeated one of the bosses.

It’s not a particularly difficult game, but there is a high skill ceiling. I’m comfortable saying that after seeing one of the developers play through a later mission, showcasing the large variety of monsters and abilities. What he did made my own performance look like child’s play. Then again, I only got my hands on the game 15 minutes before and he’s been working on the game for years, but still, considering the sheer number of permutations and ways enemies and bosses can be defeated, there’s a lot for players to master here.

Stupid Never Dies shows a lot of promise, being a “funky zombie” game. Needless to say, GPTrack50 nailed the quick and heavy action, but one thing stuck to me out like a sore thumb: locking onto the enemy. You don’t really “lock” onto monsters by pushing down a thumbstick, but directing your attacks can be difficult at times, making you miss swathes of opponents at once. If that can be fixed by the time Stupid Never Dies comes out this fall, it could be a great action game.