Drive or Die is a 2D side-scrolling driving and upgrade game developed by Sergey Mezhakov.
There are three game modes: story mode, race mode and free ride mode. In story mode, you try to get to the end of the level by driving, getting money and upgrading your vehicle. In race mode, you have a drag race with an AI opponent, using any of your cars from story mode. Finally, in free ride, you can use any of your cars to drive on the eight different maps.
The story mode has eight different levels, which are all mostly the same: you drive through zombies and boxes. Throughout the game, you unlock new vehicles, which you can upgrade to make it to the end of the level. Levels get more difficult the further you get in the story. Some zombies are weak, some are bigger and stronger and stop your car. Same with boxes, some are weak, some strong and some explosive. To overcome obstacles, you have to keep upgrading your cars, until you finally make it to the end of the level and unlock a new car, so the process starts all over again.
The story mode doesn’t have an actual story, just some levels that you have to complete.
You can upgrade your car’s fuel tank, engine, wheels, nitro and weapon. Fuel tank lets you drive further, engine makes the car go faster and use fuel more efficiently, nitro lets you boost the car without using fuel and the weapon automatically shoots explosive boxes and zombies.
There are nine different vehicles, from hot rods to combine harvesters, from taxis to buses and 8 different levels, which are all pretty similar. Some levels feel very generic, such as the Dune map, which is pretty much just hills for the entire map. There is a level editor however, which means you can design your own levels, which greatly increases replayability.
The race mode has 14 levels, which are shorter than the ones in story mode. You have to race AI drivers and get first place. The AI is not great and tends to roll over or get stuck, especially in later stages.
The freeride mode lets you replay the levels from the story mode, but with a vehicle of your choice.
The game has pixel art graphics and it’s running on the Unity engine. In terms of graphics options, there’s the typical Unity options, ranging from Fastest to Fantastic. You can change keybinds before starting the game. In game however, there aren’t a lot of options. There’s no volume slider, you can toggle sound and music on and off. There’s an option to toggle blood, disabled by default. You can also toggle the slow-mo effect that happens after hitting explosive boxes. The final options is for on-screen buttons, which I assume is a leftover from the mobile version. It’s enabled by default, for some reason.
There are Steam achievements, which is great for achievement hunters. There are only 13 of them, for killing a certain number of zombies and completing levels, the story mode and race mode.
Drive or Die can be a fun time waster, but it gets repetitive during long sessions. All the levels are very similar, and the weird physics can get frustrating at times. Sometimes, the car goes super fast, but the next run it might be way slower. Some vehicles, such as a combine harvester, flip over easily, others barely flip over. There isn’t any consistency with different vehicle physics, which is a bad sign in a driving game.
The game’s UI doesn’t seem to have been altered for the PC version. To pause the game, you need to click on the pause button, pressing ESC does nothing. In general, It looks like a typical mobile UI, that just doesn’t work properly on PC. The game’s tutorials also said to “tap” buttons instead of “pressing” them, which is not a good sign.
The game advertises “amazing physics tricks and ragdoll”. The physics really do some tricks, I’ve seen wheels getting detached from the car, the driver’s body glitching out during loops and gunner flying out of the vehicle during slow-mo sections. The physics have issues, they’re not great.
Zombies sometimes spawn inside the map or too close to the car, sometimes even appearing right in front of it. Buildings can collapse without anything even touching them, which can ruin a good run.
The game itself is very similar to Earn to Die 2, which also has a PC port that works better, has more consistent physics and feels less repetitive.
