Deadly Days: Roadtrip brings inventory management to survivor-likes and it's damn good

Blending inventory management with a zombies horde-based road trip bullet heaven, Deadly Days Roadtrip is a delight. Disclosure: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

Once again taking the mechanics popularised by Vampire Survivors, but with a fresh spin on it that’s a bit more like Death Road to Canada mixed with backpack management found in the likes of Backpack Hero. All together, that’s a lot of “it’s like this but also this” so I’ll attempt to break it down a little more for you.

Pictured - Deadly Days: Roadtrip on Desktop Linux (Kubuntu)

You start off in a basic camp with nothing but your bus. So off you pop, and pick a location to run around and loot in. Each location to pick has a different map size, general loot amount and amount of fuel you can find. In the locations you run around while your character auto-fires (you can manually aim like a twin-stick too), and you pick up experience gems from dead zombies. When you level up you auto-throw a flare and after a short delay along comes a little care package. This is where the real hook is!

Inside the package you get to pick an item. This could be a power-up item, a new weapon, a gadget of some sort or more slots to build your backpack to get more space to add even more into it next time.

The inventory management alone is quite a challenge. You can initially only wield two main weapons (like guns or bats and knives), as after all - you’re only human. Each weapon takes up 1 or 2 slots, for single or double-handed. It’s how you arrange that inventory that matters due to the many different additional items that can stack upgrades onto weapons. Like a lighter that can add burning to ammo to set zombies ablaze. All these extra items have specific backpack slots they affect, so that’s where you have to rearrange everything to fit and synergise together.

Pictured - Deadly Days: Roadtrip on Steam Deck

Eventually, you might be able to stack some more weapons if you’re lucky enough to find the legendary Robot Arm. However, this is inventory Tetris, and so the arm takes up valuable backpack space too. Decisions - decisions, making room for it is the obvious choice of course. Who doesn't love more weapons?

Pictured - Deadly Days: Roadtrip on Steam Deck

Another fun bit is that you can drop the same weapon on top of another, and it will level them up to make them more powerful too. The game doesn’t actually tell you that though, and it took me a while to even realise as it just does a small arrow animation over the same weapons that I entirely missed for a while. Easy to miss when you’re not looking for it. Nice to have but one small bit they should explain better.

There is a point to exploring these locations too as you need to find more fuel to feed your bus to continue on your journey to the next destination. The longer you stay to get as much loot as you can, the more challenging it gets and it can end up pretty brutal. As soon as you have enough fuel to leave, you can make a run for your bus - but that can at times be insanely tough. Especially if you overstayed your welcome.

There’s a nice mixture of enemy types from the mindless walkers, to some that will dash as you, throw up some toxic stuff your way and more. I've lost count of the amount of times I've died in it, often due to my own stupidity but the later exploration is a true challenge.

You also get stopped along the way with special levels that interrupt your trip. Here you get a smaller map with specific objectives like clearing actual roadblocks or taking down specific enemies, like the shot below where you have to take down Titans, much bigger and tougher enemies.

Pictured - Deadly Days: Roadtrip on Steam Deck

At first you think it’s a bit light on content, then you finish your first run and realise that’s just the start. Back to camp you go, and new things have appeared. Like a crafting table, that allows you to unlock more for your future runs like new items, a merchant, an item workbench to craft new items and much more.

It’s in your camp where you can now also do character upgrades. Depending on how long you survive you get apples, a currency to boost your stats like max HP and attack speed.

As fun as it is, I think they’re playing it perhaps a bit too safe. Or maybe plain is the better word here? I would love to see them play with the absurdity of a zombie apocalypse a bit more. You can see a small glimpse of it at times, like when you get a powerup from a box that explodes zombies on death for 30 seconds. Or the little bits of map destruction already in that they could really amplify. You can destroy a few select items on the map - I want lots more like that for it.

The game has only just begun life, and I expect it’s going to be another big indie hit during its time in Early Access. Incredibly keen to see where they take it. Already more polished and fun than a lot of finished games.

Good performance on Steam Deck too and it works great out of the box. Valve, weirdly, gave it only a Playable rating noting various issues that just don't seem to exist. This should be a Verified game as far as I can see. I've put almost all of my hours into it on Steam Deck. No issues to report on Desktop Linux (Kubuntu) either, it works very nicely.

It tickles the happy part of my brain. A properly fun blend of things. I love turning a big horde into zombie confetti when I’ve really juiced my weapons with fancy items after spending 15 minutes sorting my bag.

That is until I die for the 5th time in a row, but then that itch comes back and I need another run to scratch it. And another run I will have, often, to the point that my total hours in it shocked even me. Where does time go?

Great stuff, you should go grab it.

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