Silly By no means Dies made fairly the doorway final December. Its reveal throughout The Sport Awards pre-show would not have felt misplaced in a late-aughts Sizzling Matter; a zombie boy and human woman singing and dancing to a catchy, rocking love track in a music video crammed with undead imagery, comedian e-book scribbles, and colourful bursts, with a fast punch of some motion gameplay on the very finish. However whereas it set the tone, it wasn’t instantly clear how the 2 elements got here collectively.
After attending a hands-off preview session with developer GPTRACK50, I’ve received a firmer notion of what Silly By no means Dies is. It’s an motion RPG, crammed with style-switching fight and a roguelite, structured round dives right into a monster-filled dungeon. And it’s completely saturated in pop-punk aesthetics.
I requested studio head Hiroyuki Kobayashi, who has labored on quite a few sequence together with Satan Might Cry, Resident Evil, and Dragon’s Dogma, about how the group created this imaginative and prescient of zombies and pop punk mashed collectively. “After we discuss pop punk,” Kobayashi says. “That is, from the very starting of the sport, as we [started] creating the idea of the sport, pop punk was the tone we needed to purpose for.”
Silly By no means Dies follows Davy, a low-level zombie in a dungeon that is been overrun by monsters. He discovers a human woman, Julia, frozen in a freezer and is infatuated along with her. He desires to see her introduced again to life. So Dr. Frank, a mad genius, encourages Davy to dive into the dungeon and get the ability to take action by slaying KOM – the King Of Monsters.
Davy, as a zombie, shouldn’t be notably highly effective in comparison with the numerous unusual and harmful beasts of the dungeon. He can, nonetheless, acquire energy in two key methods: he can die and are available again, and he can take up the talents of particular foes to tackle their type.
There are myriad types Davy can take, and we noticed loads of them. Perhaps too many. The Zombie is a base type, naturally, and performs with some commonplace motion sport instruments: regular and heavy assaults, a parry, and a chunk. After biting some enemies, although, Davy can flip into them throughout his dungeon expedition, although he can solely carry two further types at a time.
The Werewolf affords a blitz of velocity and fury, whereas the Harpy unleashes feathered projectiles. The Golem is hard and durable, spinning its arms round to ship foes flying. The Vampire spawns in swarms of bats, the Will-o’-the-Wisp can swap between the bodily and astral planes, and the Cyclops swings laborious with large, all-or-nothing strikes. The Snow Fairy may be my favourite, permitting you to freeze foes after which slice them with an ice blade, enhancing the blade’s energy within the course of. The Merfolk type can dive into the bottom and make whirlpools, the Lich is a summoner-like type with skeleton friends, and the Demon warps gravity.
It is lots to soak up, however basically, these types make up a base of energy for every run. Getting used to how they work, and particularly how they will work collectively as you flip by way of them mid-combat, is a core a part of Silly By no means Dies. Throw within the further energy of Physique Hacks, which add weapons that Davy can make use of in runs like a Missile Pod or the imposing Huge Edge blade, and you’ll have a reasonably wide selection in playstyles between totally different dungeon crawls.
“That type of selection might be a lot broader if we made this sport run-based,” Kobayashi says. “That is the rationale why we selected this construction.”
As a part of the roguelite nature, Davy builds up a meter of expertise development. Primarily, every run provides bonuses to future expertise positive factors within the dungeon, so every try sees Davy levelling up just a bit bit quicker. Whereas an early enterprise may spend a while on attending to, say, degree 10, he may hit degree 20 in simply as a lot time, and even quicker, in future adventures. Runs do have a time restrict on them, however that may be a very good factor if it means later tries can develop into explosively, exponentially quicker.
“We wish the participant to expertise blazing quick development,” Kobayashi says. “That is a basic system of the sport, so every run, you’re feeling totally different.”
Layered over all of it is a saturated, exaggerated type that conveys as a lot character as that first trailer. Davy may even amp it up a bit when he enters his Davy Burst mode, an excellent mode that comes with over-the-top animations and visible results.
Silly By no means Dies is an enchanting undertaking, generally feeling just like the action-brawler Heat Our bodies roguelite we by no means received. However beneath the pop punk veneer, there’s an enchanting mixture of motion fight mechanics and fast-ramping roguelite development. It is totally different and unusual in all the very best methods, and has definitely discovered a spot on my radar for the hidden gems of 2026.
