This Character-Action Zombie Game Gets in Its Own Way

Background: A Monster Takeover Sets Up a Punk Horror Premise and a Very Odd Goal

Stupid Never Dies opens with an unusually direct world setup: monsters emerged from inside Earth's crust, took over the world, and all but wiped out humanity. The designs borrow from classic silver screen incarnations and popular B-movies, then pass them through a 90s or 00s pop-punk aesthetic. That mix gives the game a self-aware, goofy, self-effacing tone from the first screen.

The opening explanation arrives with a "just go with it" haste. It seems proud of its stylish mash-up and embarrassed by it as a thin pretense for fighting movie monsters. The humor often stays just barely on the right side of cringe, though parts of the story veer too cheesy or silly.

The aftermath of the takeover also creates a new social order. Zombies are treated as cannon fodder in the fight for monster supremacy, and zombies who refuse to fight are seen as even lower. Davy, the teenage-looking undead protagonist, belongs to that bottom tier. He is presented as more of a lover than a fighter, and the game does not pretend he is a competent hero.

His adventure begins by accident. Hungry, he eats a weird glowing egg and reveals it to be a Phoenix Egg, giving him the ability to absorb power from other monsters. Dr. Frank later suggests that this power might revive Julia, a dead girl Davy found in a freezer and has become infatuated with, framing her as the supposed love of his afterlife. Davy's goal is not a noble rescue; it is the fantasy that he and Julia would be a happy couple.

That premise has an uncomfortable edge. Julia is a random human, and the story gives her little agency, so the romance setup can feel icky. If the story treated it with any seriousness, it would be outright toxic. Because Stupid Never Dies frames Davy as a complete dumbass, the audience is meant to recognize the obvious folly in his lovelorn puppy act, but the awkwardness does not disappear.

Development Process: The Run Toward KOM Turns the Story Into a Roguelite Combat Loop

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 monster races burrowed back underground, leaving only lowly zombies to roam the surface. As Davy descends into deeper and deeper layers, he is searching for new materials in his quest to revive Julia, all leading toward KOM.

The roguelite structure appears in how a run is cashed out. If Davy 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 loop turns the story setup into a run-based action-RPG progression system.

In the underground combat segments, Davy can move quickly and strike hard, behaving much like a hero in a character-action game. The enemy mix helps: mobs include lizardmen and skeletons, while elites include cyclopes and harpies, offering a good bit of variety, especially because players can absorb the powers of elite enemies.

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

Progression comes from both standard perks and the Bite ability. As Davy levels up in roguelite fashion, he gains new perks to equip and upgrade. Some are straightforward boosts to attack or defense, while others are more specialized, such as a passive perk tied to how many enemies have been knocked off the edge of a stage.

The Bite ability is charged up through regular attacks and functions as both a heal and a finisher. Davy can chomp down on enemies to restore some Hit Points, but it is better saved as the fatal blow on an elite enemy, since that heals for a greater amount and grants a big power boost. A lot of the combat becomes a rhythm of managing the bite gauge, building it up for a big enemy, and then chomping into an elite for an impactful heal.

Skill cores deepen that rhythm. Elite enemies often drop skill cores that Davy can bite into as long as his gauge is charged, which lets him add their transformation to a quick select. These are worth using instead of saving because they expire. They turn Davy into a super-powerful creature such as a werewolf, lich, or snow fairy, greatly expanding his abilities and making him much more powerful than his standard zombie form. Like the regular upgrades, they also come in different rarities, so it is always exciting to see a legendary monster form that can tear through enemy mobs or an impending boss.

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

Latest Progress: The Mall Base Expands the Meta, but Upgrade Clutter and the Timer Create Friction

When players return to base, there are a variety of upgrade systems. Bessie sells upgrades that will be findable in the dungeons from then on. A nearby monster gives achievement rewards for completing milestones. Acelino, a weredog, can swap Davy's body parts to build him out with various stat boosts and abilities. Milo's ice cream shop lets players trade giblet gelato for ranked skill and stat upgrades. Julia can receive gifts to earn stat upgrades to the Davy Burst, his super-powered ultimate state. In this base, players can also explore to talk with Dr. Frank about the monster dex, view and heart Julia's old social media posts, or change soundtrack tunes.

The multitude of systems is not exactly elegant. Davy always starts in the mall with a slow zombie shamble. Players quickly unlock the ability to ride around on a motorized vacuum, but the review finds it baffling that the quicker ride still requires pressing a button to board every time. It cannot imagine anyone actually wanting to walk around at the default slow pace, so forcing the transition feels unnecessary.

Other elements are similarly unwieldy. Bessie's upgrades are mostly understandable, but the sheer number of variables can become confusing. At best, it breaks the momentum of a stage when a player must pause to decipher an ability; at worst, it becomes so confusing that a player bypasses it altogether. The review describes one recent run where an upgrade option read "Rate decrease for recoverable damage reduction over time +100." It looked like a good card by rarity, but the meaning was impossible to make heads or tails of.

The timer changes the shape of every run. A TickTock Teddy in the corner of the screen incentivizes skipping some layers strategically because players simply do not have time to play all of them in a single run. Time-extension items add one more thing to earn while choosing which layers to play. The review sees this as half-baked because 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.

Time pressure also makes certain aspects of 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 players can 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 makes the review think about how much time is being burned on the way.

Where the Game Stands Now: Good Ideas, But the Loop Needs Cleaner Support

At the stage where the full experience is weighed, these caveats and friction points harm the overall result. The combat and merchant systems feel just a little too overstuffed, and the timer is a frustrating and unnecessary addition that detracts from the flow of moving through the world. Stupid Never Dies has good ideas going for it, including an inventive world, a likable idiot of a protagonist, and cool combat mechanics like transforming into elite enemies.

The review still wishes it could enjoy those positive aspects more, without cringey plot points and jokes, repetitive and slow progression, and an awful timer system getting in the way. For readers who like chaotic monster combat, punk-influenced B-movie designs, and run-based upgrades, Stupid Never Dies makes a strong, if extremely weird, first impression. For readers who need tighter combat precision, clearer progression variables, and a timer that supports rather than punishes the run, the game's inventive world may not be enough to carry the experience.