Stupid Never Dies is a single-player action game built on one philosophy: attack, attack, and attack some more. After playing the demo, it’s clear that all the game’s mechanics are built around rewarding aggressive play, giving gameplay a sense of momentum and progress.
You play as Davy, the world’s weakest zombie who needs to fight his way through layers of a monster-filled dungeon to take down KOM (the King of Monsters) and save a frozen girl he fell in love with at first sight. Oh, and you enter the dungeon by being flushed down a toilet. That should give you a pretty good idea of the tone, which is quirky, chaotic, and paired with a pop-punk visual style that gives the game its own unique vibe.
“How does the world’s weakest zombie manage to defeat these monsters?” you may be wondering. Well, that’s where Stupid Never Dies’ gameplay systems become the star of the show. Davy begins with a base Zombie Style that has regular and heavy attacks, a parry, and a vomit ability that can hit enemies in a row in front of you.
The parry ability (called a Stupid Parry) is important and should be used regularly, since a successful parry allows you to unleash a strong counter. You take some damage when you parry, but that lost HP is recoverable if you Bite an enemy. Landing any attack fills the Bite gauge at the bottom of the screen, and once the gauge is full, you can Bite any enemy.
Bites are powerful attacks that also replenish all your current recoverable damage and a bit of extra HP. Recoverable damage becomes actual damage over time, so you need to use Bite quickly to keep your HP topped up. This gameplay loop rewards aggressiveness, since you use parries to keep damage recoverable, land counterattacks and basic attacks to fill your gauge, and then use a Bite to get all your health back. There’s no pausing between fights to heal yourself, you need to do it in combat by staying on the offensive.
That’s not all Bites are good for, though. They can also be used to eat enemy cores to steal their abilities or combat styles. Each enemy type has a core, and eating different cores has different effects. A normal enemy will give you an Instant Skill, a one-time use ability. An elite enemy gives you access to their Style, allowing Davy to transform into it and use its unique abilities.
There will be 11 different enemy types whose Style you can steal in the game’s full release, and their gameplay varies significantly. As a Werewolf, your movement and attacks are much faster, parries can unleash a flurry of counterstrikes, and you can wall jump to get to otherwise unreachable parts of the map to find shortcuts or treasure chests. As a Harpy, you can double jump, glide through the air, fire ranged projectiles, and gain a longer-range dodge.
If it wasn’t already clear, these aren’t merely cosmetic changes or stat boosts, each Style legitimately alters how you move and fight. You can swap out your equipped Style whenever you acquire a new one, and you can transform at any time, including in the middle of a fight. So it’s wise to consistently test which Styles work best in which situations and against which enemies, and strategically switch between them to take advantage of their strengths.
Each time you dive into the dungeon, Davy will reset back to Level 1 and just have access to his base Zombie form. But each run also boosts how quickly you level up in a system that developer GPTRACK50 Inc. refers to as “blazing fast growth.” The boost depends on how far you got and how many enemies you defeated in your previous run.
True to its name, the difference in leveling speed is significant and noticeable. After only a handful of runs in the demo, my EXP boost was over 400% and I was gaining levels after every fight. When I first made it to the boss Afreet, I was level 10 (and he kicked my ass). During my last run before writing this article, I devoured him and finished the fight at level 21.
The sped up leveling helps the sense of momentum encouraged by the aggressive gameplay, since you’re always pushing forward, even after a failed run. Each run builds on the ones that came before it, and the boosts are cumulative, so no run is wasted.
Rapid leveling is also important because each run through the dungeon has a countdown timer. If you run out of time, you’ll die, get sent back to your base, and lose the items you gained during that run. There are Landing Areas at certain spots in the dungeon, and if you reach one, you can escape while keeping your items. So you have to weigh the risk vs. reward of pushing farther into the dungeon or getting out while you can.
If you successfully get out of the dungeon with the items you gathered, you can use them to create OT Gear for body hacks, a system where you can replace Davy’s body parts with technology that gives him new abilities. In my time with the demo, I saw abilities that included a deployable barrier, a spinning attack that lunges you forward, and saws that rotate in a circle around you.
You can also use ingredients you gather to create new Zombie Skills, which are stat boosts and other boons that you can activate during a run. When you reach certain levels, you’ll be given the option to activate one of three Zombie Skills that are randomly selected from the ones you’ve unlocked.
Eating bosses for the first time awards you with special materials that you can turn in to unlock unique upgrades. Defeating Afreet allowed me to unlock a Zombie Skill that gave my attacks enhanced knockback and gave them extra damage if I used them to knock enemies into walls.
Between all the different Styles, body hacks, and Zombie Skills, there are a ton of different customization options to try and see what fits your playstyle best. And all of these systems are sure to be expanded in the final release compared to what’s available in the demo version.
If you want to give Stupid Never Dies a try for yourself, an updated free demo is available now on Steam and PlayStation 5. The full game releases on October 21 on those same two platforms.