Stupid Never Dies Review

by Josh Torres on 19 October, 2026

I’m transported back to the late 90s / early 00s whenever I play Stupid Never Dies. Developer GPTrack50’s debut title has a certain charm that will strike a specific demographic: those who remember renting games and watching Nickelodeon TV programs as their teenage years approached.

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Stupid Never Dies carries that sense of irreverent energy through its vibrant visual presentation and slapstick comedic atmosphere. I mostly like what this action RPG is bringing to the table, though there are some factors that dampen the experience here and there.

First and foremost, several different plates are being spun. Nearly all of humanity is already wiped clean at the start of Stupid Never Dies due to a monster uprising led by a being called KOM. After nearly eliminating all humans, KOM mysteriously led the monsters off the surface world into other dungeon realms that exist deeper into Earth; zombies, established as the bottom-of-the-barrel tier, were left amidst this mass exodus.

One day in an abandoned mall, a random zombie named Davy ate a Phoenix Egg during his random stupor of hunger. The small remaining populace that has the capacity to rebel against KOM were hoping to find a way to utilize that Phoenix Egg themselves – until Davy ate it. Now, they must work with Davy to achieve their goals.

There is one problem, though. Davy himself isn’t particularly interested in chasing after KOM solely for their sake. Thankfully, Davy is an easily persuadable zombie. Before his Phoenix Egg snack, he fell in love at first sight with Julia, a woman who froze to death in a freezer inside that abandoned mall. Doc from the anti-KOM group assures Davy that Julia can be revived by defeating KOM.

Thus, the premise of Stupid Never Dies is established. Players control Davy as he repeatedly dives into the lower dungeon realms via being flushed down a toilet to eventually reach, and beat up, KOM. The Phoenix Egg he ate gave him the power to Style Eat, allowing him to morph into other creatures after consuming their cores.

It took me a while to warm up to Stupid Never Dies’ roguelite structure, and it seems oppressive at first. The entire foundation for it leans on continually building up Davy’s experience point multiplier every run, regardless of whether the player succeeded in getting to the next story checkpoint.

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This means that win or lose, Davy will gradually start to level up faster and faster for each subsequent run in the dungeon. Leveling up grants increased stats, so Davy will be able to dish out and take more punishment from enemies the higher level he is.

Throughout Davy’s dungeon runs, he’ll always start in his baseline zombie form. Unlike his incredibly stiff and slow movement speed on the surface, he’s faster and much more limber inside the dungeon. Players will have their standard options of light and heavy attacks along with an active ability,

Obtaining new transformations requires defeating marked enemies that drop their core. Davy can store up to two other transformations, and his zombie form is always available. Transformations only last a certain number of “floors”, or layers, though. People are free to continually swap into these forms as much as they want, but they’ll eventually expire unless they’re replaced with another consumed core beforehand.

These forms come from various creatures from popular myths and urban legends – werewolves, harpies, snow fairies, vampires, lichs, cyclopes, and so forth.

All of them have unique abilities and movesets. Harpies can attack from afar with feather projectiles, and they also have the capability to double jump and glide. Lichs can harvest the souls of enemies to turn them into skeleton minions. Snow fairies can freeze enemies and upgrade their basic attack strings through continually extending the reach of an icicle sword.

Different cores from the same creature can have different active abilities as well. One harpy core can soar into the air to call forth a tornado underneath them, and another one can barrage enemies with a swarm of projectiles rapidly in front of them. Meanwhile, another harpy can throw a massive boomerang.

While each layer’s level design is largely linear, there are sometimes branching paths that require different forms to access. Elevated platforms that only a harpy can reach, or breakable walls that only the might of a cyclops can breach. They reward goodies, of course, though hardly worth stressing over if Davy doesn’t happen to have the right form at that time and place.

One major element of Davy’s dungeon runs is that they all start with a 12-minute time limit, as well. If the timer runs out before players exit the dungeon from a safe landing area or reach the mandatory story trigger to go back up, it will be considered a death that fails the run. Failed runs still increase the EXP multiplier and equipment drops are kept, but a portion of the currency for unlocking and upgrading the “zombie receipt” level-up rewards are forfeited.

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Further into the game, there are a few ways to extend that time limit – albeit not significantly.

I initially didn’t like this time limit, and I can certainly see this aspect alone being a big obstacle for many folks. Oddly enough, the pressure of being on the clock makes the nature of the game’s dungeon runs filled with interesting decisions to make. There was a certain epiphany that struck me the more I played Stupid Never Dies.

Think about the different types of people who play RPGs. There are those who take their time fighting every enemy mob they encounter. Others may opt to skip most “trash” enemies that provide little EXP and rewards, as they seek out the ones that have heftier payloads on the path to their destination.

Stupid Never Dies pushes players to adapt to the latter philosophy because the journey to the deeper layers, and the events that transpire in them, are always running down the clock. I eventually had to be picky about whether I wanted to spend time fighting versus just making a mad dash to the next layer as fast as possible. Some encounters will block off Davy’s path too, so that’s another factor to keep in mind.

This is the main crux of what Stupid Never Dies’ gameplay flow revolves around. Several boss fights deeper into the game are no joke, so I had to constantly consider whether my Davy was geared and prepared enough to face them. Some transformations work better than others in maneuvering around a boss’s attack patterns, and sometimes I failed because my Davy wasn’t sufficiently leveled or prioritized the wrong upgrades because I was unfamiliar with what that boss would do.

I never thought it took too long to reach a boss from a new run, but I think GPTrack50 falls into a few roguelite design traps that work against the spirit of the game.

For instance, one of the first tricky bosses I fought against constantly froze Davy. Even though I unlocked the Freeze Immunity upgrade to be part of the pool that can show up, it never did on that first run up to that boss. That initial attempt taught me that the boss loves to freeze me, obviously, and what upgrades I should probably prioritize on the subsequent runs back to them.

After about two more attempts, I finally got a run where the Freeze Immunity upgrade showed up along with several stat modifiers to enhance my stats against bosses. Plus, I had powerful transformations that worked well against that specific boss.

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This made me think that the vendor that allows players to spend currency to unlock and/or upgrade the zombie receipts may be a bit of a trap, because there are many unlockable upgrade options that felt… weaker or too situational to be universally useful. Therefore, it might be wiser to hold off on unlocking these less useful upgrades to limit the pool size of what level-up upgrades can appear for Davy.

There’s no way to disable or block a specific upgrade that’s been unlocked already from appearing. Rerolling upgrade selections are in Stupid Never Dies, though they are very few and limited.

Davy has other options at his disposal, as well. He can equip four pieces of equipment, but three of these slots are primarily for passive stat increases. Only one of these “Over Technology” parts gives him another attack ability. I think most of them feel underwhelming, though a select few are very useful under the right circumstances. Meanwhile, instant skills are one-time consumable attacks that are obtained by biting an enemy when their core is exposed after parrying an incoming attack that’s highlighted in yellow.

Stupid Never Dies relishes in its carefree nature by calling Davy’s sole defensive option a Stupid Parry. Players can follow up a successful parry with a Stupid Impact counterattack. Davy heals HP through biting enemies and/or eating their cores, though his bite gauge limits how much he can feast.

GPTrack50 did include an optional toggle to make the game significantly easier with the “Go Nuts” mode. Although I personally did not use it for this review, flipping this on will power up Davy. I imagine this will alleviate much of the pressure that the time limit instills, along with any tricky bosses that might be giving someone a hard time.

The biggest aspect of this game that I feel mixed on is the overall feel of combat. It possesses the “looseness” of action games from the PlayStation 2 era when lock-on systems weren’t quite as solidified as they are in most modern titles today. There is a soft invisible lock-on that GPTrack50 added in response to player feedback from Stupid Never Dies’ public demo.

This helps the camera “attach” itself to elite-type enemies and bosses, yet it will remove itself if Davy is deemed too far away from them. While it’s better than no lock-on system at all, this solution isn’t as snappy or responsive as most lock-on systems in other games. Off-screen attacks also increasingly became a source of frustration in deeper layers, since enemies love to fire projectiles from the player’s blind spots.

As enemy mob density begins to increase in deeper layers, the soft lock-on can get in the way. A common situation is an enemy core that can heal Davy and give him a new transformation may be surrounded by skeletons that don’t give HP when they’re bitten. Pressing the Bite button by the core might prioritize biting a nearby skeleton instead, so Davy has now used up some of his Bite Gauge for an enemy that doesn’t even heal him. It sucks when this happens!

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Back at the home base in the abandoned mall, there are many small collectibles to unlock. Doc manages a database of all of Davy’s transformations and their capabilities; he’ll reward players with new decorations as the player discovers more of them. There is a music player and new unlockable teddy bear designs – the teddy bear is constantly on the HUD in the dungeon because it holds the timer that players are stressing over.

Players will gradually learn more about Julia’s background and life before her chilly demise, since her smartphone will display social media posts. Sure, there is an undeniable voyeuristic angle that sprinkles Davy’s fascination with Julia, but I think Stupid Never Dies manages to strike a balance where Davy’s crush on her is more akin to a high-school romance, rather than something more perverted or sinister. He can eventually give presents to the frozen girl, which earns players upgrade points to his limited-time Davy Burst enhanced state that functions similarly to the star power in a Mario game.

The multiple currency economies in Stupid Never Dies are a bit irritating. There are unique currencies for zombie receipt upgrades, Davy Burst upgrades, unlocking new preset slots for equipment loadouts, and three separate currencies for boss materials that each upgrade different stats. It’s a bit much.

Plus, there are sprinkles of awkward decisions spread throughout this game. For instance, fast traveling in the abandoned mall hub is done through physical sight rather than a menu or an overhead map. That means the player has to position Davy and the camera to look at the destination they want to fast travel to, in order to bring up the prompt to fast travel to it.

Another head-scratching decision is that the unlockable music tracks can’t be set as background music when traversing through the dungeon. Stupid Never Dies will even allow people to set a custom playlist, but it’s only really for listening to the music on that specific music player screen instead of… the obvious thing that people would want to use it for. Sometimes, I just don’t understand why the game is the way it is.

Later in the game, there is also a mandatory collectathon for the main story. I won’t spoil the specifics, but players will need to gather 30 of a specific resource in order to progress - and the location of these things are randomized. They’ll have a greater chance to appear in deeper layers; the general gist is that the game wants people to continually do runs again and again until they gather 30 of this thing, though there are no guarantees that it will appear in any given run. It’s simply tedious.

Although Stupid Never Dies is juggling so many seemingly disparate elements, its visual aesthetic greatly helps flesh out its own identity and helps keep everything cohesive. Many of its story scenes feel like they were deliberately shot by amateur filmmakers with their reliance on film grain, illustrations drawn over photography, and papercraft cutouts for props. New creature introductions take audio and visual cues from Creature from the Black Lagoon and other old monster films that are practically relics at this point.

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There’s an unabashed appreciation for the monster madness era of film that once captured the fascination of audiences. It then infuses that with the spirit of the late 90s / early 00s to create an atmosphere that I’ve rarely seen. Despite its faults, I admire that Stupid Never Dies is trying to do interesting things with its presentation and gameplay flow – even if it doesn’t come together elegantly all the time.

Stupid Never Dies certainly has its share of faults that stem mostly from its gameplay design decisions surrounding its roguelite progression. Despite these shortcomings, I think GPTrack50’s debut title is an interesting game that’s worth experiencing. Its art direction is such a tour de force that it drives the entirety of the charming, irreverent atmosphere that it aims to hearken back to. I don’t think Stupid Never Dies will be a game that everyone jives with, but those who resonate with Davy’s body-morphing journey will fall in love with it.

7

Versions tested: PC. Stupid Never Dies is also available on PlayStation 5.

Disclaimer: A copy of this game was provided to RPG Site by the publisher.