During The Game Awards 2025, GPTRACK50 finally announced their long-awaited debut title Stupid Never Dies, scheduled to launch next year on Steam and PlayStation 5. Development of the singleplayer action RPG is headed by former Capcom producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi, best known for his involvement in the Devil May Cry and Dragon’s Dogma series. The project, however, has taken a completely different turn compared to previous games Kobayashi has worked on, with even the producer himself calling it “non-Kobayashi like.”

Now that we have an official announcement after a few long years of waiting, AUTOMATON decided to dig into some of our past interviews with GPTRACK50 and look back on everything we know about their title so far. Please note that as the interviews took place while the game was still in development, some of the information may differ from the final product.

Though the game takes on a pop-punk, comic-book like style when it comes to its visual presentation, according to the developers, it was built in Unreal Engine 5. But as Kobayashi explained, he wanted to “leave photorealistic graphics to the big guns” and “go for something new” – the idea was to leverage UE’s advantages while taking things in a stylized direction.

But compared to studios that start with visual concepts and graphics, GPTRACK50 made Stupid Never Dies with a gameplay-first approach. Initially, the team didn’t even have artists on board, so the visuals came only after the systems and game cycle were created – but that proved to be a good decision, said Kobayashi. Figuring out the system beforehand helped the developers focus more on the gameplay, and thanks to Unreal Engine, they managed to create their first playable mockups within several months of development. Despite the game being in a rather bare-bones state with placeholder graphics at that point, the development team focused on making it fun before moving on to making it “look good.” As one member of GPTRACK50 noted, “Putting in the graphics makes the game more pleasant, but it doesn’t make it more entertaining.”

However, Kobayashi mentioned that, because of the studio’s struggle with securing human resources and lack of progress when it came to graphics in the initial stage of development, it took almost 3 years before they were ready to announce the game.

When it comes to the gameplay itself, Stupid Never Dies is described as a “BLAZING FAST GROWTH” action RPG. In one of his previous interviews with AUTOMATON, Kobayashi stated that the game will not be as action-heavy as one may think, but will feature the best of both worlds. So, while there is going to be a fair dose of action, it won’t be punishingly technical like, for example, soulslike games. Such elements will be balanced out with character growth and numerous other RPG mechanics. “It’s a game in which you develop your wisdom and character to progress,” he explained.

Regarding the action itself, Kobayashi said that Stupid Never Dies will be “a standard action game,” keeping enough elements fans of the genre are familiar with but still incorporating its own original twists togameplay. As per the game’s Steam page, players should expect “fast-paced combat packed with innovation,” with gameplay features like stealing enemy abilities and “customizing your undead body with bizarre upgrades.” The so-called “Funky Zombie Action” is still in development, and hopefully we’ll get some more info on it once we step into the new year.