Stupid Never Dies Review: Punk-Rock Style Can't Save Its Sluggish Monster Mash

Stupid Never Dies has no trouble making a memorable first impression. Its hero, Davy, is a baseball-cap-wearing teenage zombie who has broken away from the horde. His motivation is to descend through monster-filled dungeon layers, grow stronger, and save the cheerleader he adores--despite the fact that she is preserved in an ice-cream shop freezer and the two have never actually spoken. It is an intentionally ridiculous setup, and it fits a game built around punk collage visuals, toilet gags, supernatural mall residents, and an undead protagonist who gains power by biting the cores out of his enemies.

That confident identity is Stupid Never Dies' greatest strength. GPTRACK50's debut mixes a turn-of-the-millennium pop-punk mood with a broad monster-movie toybox, then frames it through the structure of a replayable action RPG. It is loud, colorful, and sincerely eager to show players one strange new idea after another. Yet its strongest concepts are undermined by awkward execution. Combat often feels unreliable, many of the game's transformations are too cumbersome to justify using, and a heavily level-gated progression system makes success feel more about numbers than mastery.

Stupid Never Dies launches on October 21, 2026 for PC and PS5. It comes from GPTRACK50, the studio founded by veteran Capcom producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi. That background is visible throughout the game's design, from high-energy crowd battles and combo-driven melee to its fondness for eccentric terminology and excess. The result is a game with plenty of character, but not enough mechanical consistency to bring all of that personality to life.

A mall hub built for monsters and misfits

Before each dungeon dive, Davy returns to a shopping mall that acts as the game's central hub. The location is populated by a deliberately bizarre supporting cast: a were-chihuahua, a gargoyle occupying a shopping trolley, and Davy's frozen crush among them. These characters offer upgrades and other services before the next descent, giving the mall a familiar run-based RPG rhythm. Players take care of their preparations, head out for another attempt, return with resources, and slowly strengthen Davy for the next trip.

For useful background on this topic, read Skövde Celebrates Its Survival Game Legacy With a Growing Walk of Game.

The route into the dungeon is considerably less conventional. Davy enters by flushing himself down a toilet, a gag that establishes the game's willingness to embrace stupidity as an aesthetic and thematic virtue. The title is not subtle, and it is often more enjoyable when it commits fully to the bit.

Its presentation is especially successful. Cutscenes, menus, collectibles, and interface elements are assembled in a zine-like collage style of marker scrawls, stickers, ripped magazine imagery, and layered graphics. The approach gives even routine systems a handmade, chaotic visual energy. Davy's hoodie, cap, and sneaker-heavy fashion reinforce the pop-punk tone, while the game's theme song even has its own music video accessible from the main menu. The music and art direction consistently sell a world that feels as though it escaped from an early-2000s DVD shelf, in the most affectionate possible sense.

Eating enemies is the game's best idea

Stupid Never Dies centers its combat on a system called Style Eat. After Davy creates an opening against an enemy, he can devour its exposed core and steal something from it. Basic creatures such as skeletons and lizardmen grant one-use Instant Skills. These can provide attacks like a burst of bones or a flurry of claws, useful for adding a quick extra option in a crowded fight.

Elite monsters offer the more exciting reward: a transformation. Bite a werewolf, vampire, fairy, lich, merfolk creature, or other elite enemy, and Davy can assume a version of that form--with his unmistakable cap still part of the outfit. The transformed character designs are among the game's most charming achievements. They turn an already silly premise into a visual parade of monstrous costumes, and they provide a strong reason to seek out different prey.

There are 11 Styles in total when Davy's default zombie form is included. Each has its own basic moves, general role, and selection of potential Style Skills. The lich, for example, can summon skeletons to fight alongside it, then gain access to options such as a large scythe strike, a damage increase fueled by sacrificing minion health, or a spinning attack that turns both caster and skeletons into hazards. On paper, that is a remarkable amount of variation for a debut from a small team.

The game also introduces a defensive mechanic called Stupid Parry. Rather than completely avoid harm, Davy rushes into an incoming attack and converts some damage into recoverable chip damage if the parry connects. Parrying a particular gold-flashing Heat Attack creates a Stupid Impact, stunning the opponent and exposing the core that Davy needs to eat. This is the intended link between defense, health management, and transformation hunting. It is a smart structure in theory: take a calculated hit, get a punish window, eat the enemy, and broaden Davy's options.

Ambition gets in the way of action

The trouble is that too many pieces of this combat loop lack the clarity and responsiveness needed for an action game. Hits can feel weak or fail to connect as expected. Stupid Never Dies does not use lock-on targeting, an understandable decision when its arenas can fill with large enemy groups. But without it, attacking the intended target is frequently uncertain, especially when Davy needs to position himself for a parry or follow up on an exposed core.

Enemies are inconsistent as well. They may remain inactive for several seconds, then launch a major strike that misses by a wide margin. That might sound generous, but successful Stupid Parries are so important to the Style Eat loop that unreliable enemy behavior becomes a problem. Players can spend time pursuing Heat Attacks and placing Davy in danger, only for the attack to whiff or for Davy's bite to connect with empty space.

Many of the Styles suffer from similar practical issues. The werewolf is fast, aggressive, and able to move through the dungeon with satisfying speed. It can also use wall backflips to reach elevated areas. The vampire and lich are likewise among the more dependable choices. But other forms are slow, awkward, or built around gimmicks that do not fit the pace of arena battles.

The merfolk Style, for instance, can move below the ground for short periods before bursting upward with a strong uppercut. That is a neat concept, but it is difficult to make efficient when dozens of enemies need to be cleared quickly. Its underground movement lasts briefly, after which the form has to shuffle across land while its meter recovers. The snow fairy and will-o'-the-wisp offer specialized mechanics involving freezing foes and self-immolation, respectively, but their niche strengths do not always compensate for the effort required to use them effectively.

That leaves a frustrating gap between the game's creative range and its actual play patterns. Instead of encouraging experimentation, Stupid Never Dies often rewards sticking to a few faster, more reliable forms and using them repeatedly. The most distinctive systems are not absent; they simply feel less useful than the simpler route of slashing through crowds as a werewolf.

Progression overwhelms finesse

The dungeon structure adds further pressure. There is a clock running during each descent, and once the limit is exceeded, Davy is severely weakened. It does not result in an immediate failure state, but the penalty is harsh enough that the practical outcome is much the same. With time constantly pushing the player forward, slow transformations and cooldown-dependent abilities become even harder to justify.

Eventually, the game's most important measure of readiness is not combat knowledge, but level. Every dungeon run increases experience gains, resulting in an accelerated RPG curve where later attempts can produce level after level in rapid succession. The visual fanfare of those upgrades can be satisfying, and watching numbers rise at such speed has an undeniable arcade-like pull.

However, the system also creates a stark difficulty divide. When Davy's level is appropriate for the next dungeon layer, encounters can become easy. Attempting to push beyond the suggested level can instead feel like attacking an immovable barrier. That progression model means execution and build creativity matter less than expected, especially when many of the more imaginative Styles already struggle with usability.

There is even a Go Nuts Mode, described in blunt terms by the game itself as making Davy extremely powerful. It can help players cut through protracted or repetitive sequences, but its existence also illustrates the core issue: at times, overpowering the action is more appealing than engaging deeply with it.

Verdict

Stupid Never Dies deserves credit for being unmistakably itself. The pop-punk zombie premise, handmade collage presentation, catchy musical energy, weird mall hub, and delightfully absurd transformation designs give it a vivid personality that many larger action RPGs would envy. Its foundations also suggest a game full of possibility: parries that feed into monster devouring, forms with distinct move sets, and a dungeon framework made for repeated experimentation.

But those possibilities too often remain unrealized in play. Unreliable targeting, erratic enemy attacks, low-impact hits, uneven transformations, and progression that favors grinding over finesse prevent the combat from achieving the satisfying momentum its inspirations promise. Davy can become a werewolf, a lich, a vampire, or a fairy in a baseball cap, but the game repeatedly nudges players toward only a small number of dependable answers.

Stupid Never Dies is a stylish, ambitious monster mash whose best ideas are easier to admire than to enjoy. Fans of bizarre Japanese action games and deliberately messy punk presentation may still find enough here to appreciate, particularly in its art direction and imaginative creature forms. For most players, though, this undead adventure is likely to feel more like a promising cult oddity than a fully successful action RPG.