Reuben Games

Reuben Games is an Australian independent game studio built around the debut project Dead Static Drive, a top-down survival horror road trip released on November 5, 2025, for Windows and Xbox One with Game Pass inclusion. The studio grew from a solo developer project started in 2014 into a small team through a decade of gradual development, external funding, and platform support from Xbox.

Dead Static Drive

Dead Static Drive began in 2014 as a solo project by Mike Blackney, then a game development lecturer in Australia. Blackney received the first-ever Unreal Dev Grant from Epic Games in 2015, Film Victoria funding in 2017, and subsequently left teaching to develop the game full-time. Leena van Deventer joined the project in 2019 as Creative Producer and Writer, and Xbox offered platform support and Game Pass inclusion that allowed the team to expand further and realize the full scope of the design. The game was self-published under the Reuben Games label.

The game is a top-down action-adventure set in a nightmare version of 1980s Americana, following a road trip through a Lovecraftian horror landscape. Blackney has described it as Grand Theft Cthulhu, drawing on The Evil Dead and horror rooted in suburban and mundane settings rather than explicitly supernatural environments. Built in Unreal Engine 4, the game released to mixed critical reception, with reviewers noting the stylish aesthetic while finding the gameplay execution uneven.