A haunting, human road trip that rewards curiosity and compassion as much as survival instincts.
It’s been nearly a decade since we first spoke with Mike Blackney about his mysterious, apocalyptic road trip game, Dead Static Drive. Back in 2018, he called it “Grand Theft Cthulhu”, half-joke, half-warning. At the time, the project felt like an ambitious fever dream: cosmic horror on a stretch of lonely American highway. When I caught up again with the team at PAX Australia in 2019, chatting with Leena Van Deventer as I took the wheel for a demo, the vision was already evolving…eerie, painterly, and brutally atmospheric.
Now, in November 2025, that dream has finally pulled into the gas station. And it’s as haunting, human, and strange as ever.
My own road trip with Dead Static Drive didn’t start smoothly. I was driving with a keyboard, which, as it turns out, is like trying to parallel park my hearse with oven mitts on. The moment I switched to a controller, though, everything opened up. The car moved with weight and purpose, the world felt more alive, and for the first time, I could relax and enjoy the apocalypse.
That’s not to say it went well. I rolled the starter car, two police cruisers, and three buses. Somehow, through the miracle of saving, quitting, and reloading, I managed to un-flip them all , survival through persistence and mild exploitation.
And I died. A lot. Sometimes it was to the tentacled, humanoid horrors that stalk the highways. Other times, it was the deer-headed, blood-spewing demons that could’ve walked out of someone’s fever dream. One of my cars was devoured by what I can only describe as a giant Goa’uld symbiote from Stargate, while another run ended thanks to a spider-crab the size of a caravan with unrelenting, murderous ambition.
Even the living can’t always be trusted. Some characters will smile, then try to murder you before you can blink, sometimes in a fiery instant, courtesy of an exploding gas tank. The top-down perspective can make those moments extra tense; you often don’t see danger until it’s already sprinting toward you.
Still, amidst all that chaos, there’s a strange calm. The game’s tone has shifted from cosmic horror to something quieter, dread wrapped in melancholy. It’s about survival, empathy, and the way people connect when everything else falls apart. The painterly, almost Lynchian art style sells it beautifully: soft light, hard edges, and colour palettes that hum with menace.
Dead Static Drive gives you the freedom to drive, scavenge, and survive at your own pace. You’ll fix cars, stock up on fuel, and push ever deeper into the weirdness. The world is punishing, but never cruel. Each mistake, each death, teaches you something valuable.
It’s not always easy, but it’s fair. Once I got the hang of it, I realised this is a game I’ll actually see through to the end, not because it demands mastery, but because it rewards curiosity.
And yes, I absolutely leaned into my loot goblin instincts. My trunk was full of bags and cases, which were full of gear I’d probably never use. I spent far too long trying to fill gas cans (still not sure it’s possible), and eventually became so over-encumbered with stuff and story threads that I just…started again.
That restart changed everything. Unburdened by my “must-have, must-do-it-all” mindset, I finally gave myself permission to just explore, to play at my own pace, to meet people, to make choices that felt human. That’s when I truly fell in love with Dead Static Drive.
There’s a lived-in texture to Dead Static Drive, years of iteration, love, and stubbornness baked into every frame. The painterly art style gives the world its eerie charm, while the sound design and music elevate every quiet moment.
The soundtrack is incredible, New Order meets Regurgitator, a perfect electro-punk pulse for the post-apocalypse. The lack of voice acting gives the silence room to breathe. The hum of the engine and the distant static on the radio fill the space where words would be. It’s haunting in all the right ways.
When I first covered Dead Static Drive in 2018, Australian indies were still clawing their way back post-GFC. Now, in 2025, we’ve got Cult of the Lamb and Hollow Knight Silksong reshaping how the world sees Australian games. Dead Static Drive feels like the bridge between those eras, a game that survived the hard years and arrived with something meaningful to say.
It’s about resilience, of developers, of players, of people who keep driving even when the road looks endless.
Something lurks in Dead Static Drive — not just in the shadows, but in how it lingers with you long after you’ve stopped playing. After so many years, it’s more than a game. It’s the sound of an engine idling at the end of the world, waiting for you to decide whether to keep going.
A copy of DEAD STATIC DRIVE on Xbox Series X|S was provided to SIFTER for the purpose of this review.
