{"id":74042,"date":"2026-10-21T17:08:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T08:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=74042"},"modified":"2026-10-21T17:08:53","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T08:08:53","slug":"neither-a-musou-nor-a-soulslike-stupid-never-dies-offers-hardcore-action-gamers-an-alternative-to-mainstream-aaa-games-and-remakes-we-talk-to-the-developers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/interviews\/neither-a-musou-nor-a-soulslike-stupid-never-dies-offers-hardcore-action-gamers-an-alternative-to-mainstream-aaa-games-and-remakes-we-talk-to-the-developers\/","title":{"rendered":"Neither a musou nor a soulslike. Stupid Never Dies offers hardcore action gamers an alternative to mainstream AAA games and remakes. We talk to the developers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jointly published by SEGA and studio GPTRACK50, the action RPG Stupid Never Dies<\/strong> launches on October 21 for PC (Steam<\/a>) and PS5. Players take control of Davy, a pathetic underdog of a protagonist who fights as the weakest of monsters, a zombie. In an effort to revive Julia, his crush who froze to death in a freezer, Davy ventures deep into the dungeons to take on the strongest monster of them all, KOM (King of Monsters).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahead of launch, AUTOMATON sat down with Hiroyuki Kobayashi, the game’s producer and CEO of GPTRACK50, and game director Eiichiro Sasaki. We talked to them about the response to the “First Bite Demo,” as well as the themes and ideas that guided Stupid Never Dies’ development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From left to right: Eiichiro Sasaki and Hiroyuki Kobayashi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Launching just one year after the initial reveal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2014The game is finally about to launch. How are you feeling?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hiroyuki Kobayashi (hereafter Kobayashi):<\/strong>
I’m thinking, “It’s finally coming out.” Although, I find it hard to say whether the development period felt long or short for me. It’s been quite some time since we finished the game, so I’m happy that players will finally be able to get their hands on the full version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eiichiro Sasaki (hereafter Sasaki):<\/strong>
I’m excited, but also a little nervous. I also feel a sense of accomplishment that we’ve managed to reach the goal I set as my biggest priority when I joined this studio \u2013 creating a new IP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014I believe launching within a year of announcing a game is a fairly rapid turnaround even for experienced creators like yourselves. How were you able to move so quickly?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kobayashi:<\/strong>
More than a year before the announcement, our marketing producer and I had already been discussing whether it might be better to start marketing roughly a year before release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the period between the announcement and launch drags on for too long, the information can start to lose its novelty, and with so many other new games coming out, players will simply forget about your game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We unveiled Stupid Never Dies at The Game Awards (TGA) last December. We were ultimately able to make it happen, but initially, we had to start by negotiating over whether we could announce the game at TGA in the first place. Once we secured that opportunity, everything went according to plan from a marketing perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, if development had been delayed, the time between announcement and release would have exceeded a year. But I trusted the development team and Sasaki to keep things on track… (laughs). I think it all worked out well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sasaki:<\/strong>
I was responsible for managing the development schedule. Our studio has a lot of veterans, so even when everyone was talking about their ambitions, they always kept deadlines and costs in the back of their minds. I think that made it easier to keep everything under control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What kind of game is Stupid Never Dies?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u2014This is a very unique game. For promotional purposes, developers often describe their games by comparing them to existing titles or subgenres, but Stupid Never Dies doesn’t seem to fit neatly into any existing category. If you had to sum it up in a single tagline, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kobayashi:<\/strong>
One of the game’s selling points is that it’s a love story about a hopeless zombie boy falling in love with a human who’s already dead. It’s also where I was able to fulfill a long-standing ambition to create something like a love story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sasaki and the rest of the team came up with the idea that, because the protagonist is a zombie, he eats enemies to replenish his health and absorb their abilities. That opened up all sorts of possibilities that can only be achieved with a zombie setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that sense, I feel like this is a “true zombie game.” I’ve played plenty of games where you kill lots of zombies, but I don’t think we’ve ever really had a game quite like this one, where the protagonist is a zombie himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sasaki:<\/strong>
Looking back, one of our themes was the idea that, while this isn’t a triple-A game, perhaps we could aim for what you might call an “indie AAA.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We wondered what would happen if we took the kind of action RPG you often see in indie games, with 2D or isometric pixel art, and built it using our own full-fledged 3D technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel like we’ve managed to bring that vision to life to a considerable extent. Although it’s a third-person game, it has a free camera that lets you look around your surroundings, and the camera sits a little farther back than in recent mainstream action games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started with popular indie games as a foundation, and refined the formula in pursuit of what we call “indie AAA.” As a result, I think the game comes across as something with its own distinct flavor, different from both AAA and indie games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kobayashi:<\/strong>
Another phrase Sasaki often used was “funky zombie action.” He came up with the formula “PUNK + LOVE = FUNKY ZOMBIE ACTION” and kept pushing to make sure the whole team embraced it. If I had to sum the game up in one catchphrase, that might be it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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