Dead Static Drive takes you on a cosmic horror roadtrip
Drive through haunted America
Horror driving games are my new favourite thing, and I'm hoping we'll see the genre really come into its own in 2017. Just recently I was drooling over Driving Survival, and now Alice has brought Dead Static Drive [official site] to my attention. I didn't even realise it was a horror game at first and was intrigued even then. I'd play a monsterless driving game with these lovely graphics, but there are monsters scattered all across this eighties themed land, and you can hit them in the face with an axe.
I couldn't find any recent videos, but this run-down of the setting and ideas behind the game is still useful, even though it's from way back in February of last year.
Drive to iconic locations, find weapons and/or doppelgangers, try to keep a grip on your sanity so as to identify monstrous creatures accurately, and then whap those monstrous creatures until they disintegrate. The ones in the video are crow people, and despite the 'Grand Theft Cthulhu' tag that developer Mike Blackney applies to the game, the images of other beasties seen so far are refreshingly untentacled. I don't mind the occasional tentacle at all, but this American roadtrip could use some folklore other than that nestled out in Lovecraft Country. It looks like that may be the case.
The game was recently shown at PAX Australia and there are some lovely new screenshots. One of them is at the top of this post and the others are here:
And this gif may give an idea of how uncertainty applies to what may or may not be people at the roadside when sanity is running low:
But let's finish on some rad driving so as to be clear this isn't just about parking your car next to scary things:
No news on a release window yet, but I'll be keeping an eye on this from here on out.