I charge around the dingy dungeon sprawled out in front of me, flying enemies swooping at me from above, and grounded foes completely surrounding me, as the dev on my shoulder encourages me to do one thing, and one thing only: attack.

Stupid Never Dies is the most colorful zombie game I’ve ever played. Sitting down for 30 minutes of the action RPG at Gamescom, its punk rock-inspired look seeping into everything from the character designs to the flashy UI, I’m struck with the realization that this is the first game I’ve played since Persona 3 Reload that has such a strong and unique visual identity – it could honestly rival the Atlus JRPGs in many ways.

As you’d hope from GPTRACK50 as a studio led by former Capcom veterans with credits on series including Devil May Cry, Dragon’s Dogma, Resident Evil, and more, this isn’t a case of style over substance. Even from a brief demo, it’s clear that Stupid Never Dies ironically has a lot of clever ideas.

Love after death

Protagonist Davy is a zombie – the weakest one, at that. But to save a dead girl he’s fallen in love with, he’s got to fight his way through a dangerous dungeon to eventually beat the King of Monsters.

Thankfully, he’s got a few tricks up his sleeve to do so – being a zombie, he can die as much as he likes, for a start, but his other abilities see him biting enemies to restore his health, as well as a parry move (with a very generous reaction window) to launch counterattacks when there’s a big blow headed your way. These defensive measures are a large part of the reason why I’m encouraged to get really stuck into fights, no matter how dangerous they may appear.

My favorite of Davy’s powers is his ability to chomp down on the “cores” sometimes dropped by foes, which lets him temporarily unlock various transformations and steal their combat moves (kind of like Monoco in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33), expanding his moveset beyond his standard melee attacks. My go-to in the demo turns him into a wolf-like foe with a devastating, wide-reaching slashing attack that wipes out anything that dares get too close, but it’s also great flying around as an airborne creature or slamming into crowds as a giant ogre.

Striking a power chord

There’s a universal truth in any action game – defeating big groups of enemies is fun, and that’s no different here. The only snag I find is the lack of an option to lock onto enemies.

Davy might pack a punch, but he can also feel clumsy to handle. There are many occasions I find myself launching attacks but narrowly missing my targets – especially the airborne ones. Speaking to director Eiichiro Sasaki following my demo, he explains that the lack of lock-on was to “gain the flexibility of the gameplay,” noting that deciding how to deal with the “pressure” from multiple directions “was the important thing for this game.”

I do sort of see the vision, but after an admittedly short amount of time playing, I’m yet to figure out if this concept will actually grow on me or simply serve as a point of friction. So far, it feels like a hurdle stopping the combat from feeling fully satisfying, sometimes making punches and the like feel floaty and aimless rather than snappy and powerful – but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Even if I’m not completely in love with the feel of the combat right now, though, I left my demo feeling hungry for more. There’s a definite magic in what GPTRACK50 is cooking up here, and I’m eager to see how Stupid Never Dies lands when it launches next month.

Feast your eyes on our list of the best ARPGs if you’re hankering for some other combat-heavy roleplaying experiences!