Death Road to Canada in IOS

Zombie roadtrippin'

Walkthrough, Guilds, Tips on this special game

Our Site Score

96/100

Death Road to Canada is a masterpiece of indie gaming that made a flawless transition to mobile. It plays like the classic 'Oregon Trail' mixed with top-down, frantic zombie beat-'em-up action. Managing your vehicle, food, and the hilarious personality traits of your randomized survivors makes every single playthrough completely unique.

The writing is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, full of bizarre text events and weird characters you can recruit (including dogs that can learn to drive). The combat is surprisingly deep, requiring careful stamina management and weapon choice. It's incredibly difficult and you will die often, but jumping back in for another road trip is irresistible.

Reviewed on: Mon Mar 04 2024
Dinsun Avatar

Dinsun Review

Now this is a game with some actual backbone. Death Road to Canada isn't interested in holding your hand; it wants to watch you die because you forgot to buy gas or because your teammate decided to pick a fight with a moose. The writing is genuinely funny—a rare feat in gaming—and the pixel art has a lot of character despite its retro simplicity. It captures that 'Oregon Trail' spirit but adds a frantic, top-down combat layer that actually requires some skill.

It’s not perfect. The controls on a touchscreen are occasionally frustrating during the more intense 'Siege' moments, and the RNG can be flat-out cruel. Sometimes you lose because of bad luck rather than bad play, which is the cardinal sin of the genre for a conservative gamer like myself. However, the sheer variety of events and the satisfaction of finally reaching the border keep it compelling. It’s a complete, premium experience that feels right at home on mobile but plays like a proper PC title.

Overall Stats

Pros & Cons

  • Genuinely funny and unpredictable writing
  • High replayability with meaningful choices
  • Strong retro aesthetic and soundtrack
  • Touch controls can be imprecise in combat
  • RNG can occasionally feel unfair
  • Steep difficulty curve for newcomers

Technical Report

Performance: Runs well; supports physical controllers which is highly recommended for higher difficulty runs.

Accessibility:
  • Adjustable text speed
  • Rumble support

Audience Fit

Buy if: You enjoy survival games with dark humor and don't mind starting over after a crushing defeat.

Skip if: You hate pixel art or prefer games where you can always save your progress.

Similar Games:
  • Organ Trail
  • Don't Starve
  • Streets of Rogue

Reviewer Context

  • Reviewer: Dinsun, conservative 40yo male gamer
  • Hardware: iPhone 15 Pro with Backbone One controller
  • Playtime: 45 hours
  • Status: Reached Canada twice; unlocked several rare characters

The Game

Available on: iPhone, iPad, iPod

Version 1.3.2Thu Oct 27 2022

This is a truly large update! Here's a summary of changes, because otherwise we'd easily hit the character limit in these patch notes.

- Added new Halloween Event stuff!

- Greatly extended the time period the Halloween Event covers. Before it would only happen on Halloween itself, and now it will last from the launch of the update all the way up to Nov 1st!

- Big revamp to how your AI Followers value different weapon categories and tiers! Short version: They should no longer drop a Claymore for a Tennis Racket, ever

- Lots and lots of new character customization options, both base and unlockable

- New ZP upgrades to get!

- Series of ZP upgrades that let you buy from Tnomey multiple times in one game!

- 12 new zombie head types!

- Duffle bag added, which lets you access your Trunk in Trader Camps where you don't have a car, or in the new Indoor-Only trader camps

- New Rare Trading Camp: Final Hospital, featuring a really good hospital food cafeteria and the Golden Scalpel

- Cleaning Lady buffed

- New Rare Trading Camp: Mechanical Fortress

- Two new and powerful robot special characters, designed by Professor Sycamore!

- New Location: Graveyard, with two variations

- New Location: Public Park, with many variations and random bits

- New Character: Jack Hamm, the jackhammer expert

- New Fireworks vendor added to the general trader rotation! Sells 4 new fireworks types, all useful for distracting zombies, and then the KO BOOMER which is useful for blowing yourself up by mistake

- Jackhammers added

- Lots of tweak to the following old locations: Quiet Factory, factories in general, and all standalone houses and apartment locations including the starter locations

- Ultramop power nerf, but knockback and cleave buffs

- Debutante Umbrella power buff

- The best weapon, the Tire Iron, changed so the AI don't favor it as much

- Magazine chance removed from farm locations, as it would just glitch out anyway

- Farm tractors can now be looted for gas

- Mysterious Past + Martial Artist no longer gives points in shooting

- New characters added to OPP mode!

- You can now simply eat the bandits in the "Merciless Bandits" event


New content update added! More updates coming, see below for details.

********

Death Road to Canada is a Randomly Generated Road Trip Action-RPG. You manage a group of jerks as they explore cities, find weird people, and face up to 500 zombies at once. Everything's randomized: locations, events, survivor personalities and skills. There's a different story every time you play.

Travel the Death Road from Florida to Canada, the last nation on Earth. Find special events, rare encounters, and unique recruits. Recruit a grunting super-bodybuilder who's strong enough to pick up and throw the car. Try to teach a dog how to walk upright and shoot a minigun.

Most of all, get eaten by enormous hordes of slow, classic-style zombies.

DEATH ROAD FEATURES:

- Designed for massive amounts of replay value.

- Character Maker lets you put friends and family into the game.

- Meet your custom characters during your travels. Get them eaten by mistake or on purpose.

- Make tough choices in text events that change depending on your group.

- Your team has different personalities, and someone may betray the others. Be careful!

- Lots and lots of secret events and unique characters with special abilities.

- Equip a wide variety of different weapons. Splat zombies with a flamethrower, battleaxe, hockey stick, wizard staff (lightning bolt), Mjolnir, boomerang, and much more.

- Canada jokes written by a real Canadian so they're 100% accurate.

- Get rid of all humans and make an entire team composed of dogs driving the car.

- Airhorn weapon with incredibly realistic, computer-generated airhorn sounds.

*******************

Update Plans

We've already done lots of updates, and there are more updates coming! We're adding new features, locations, characters, weapons, and more!


Requires iOS 12.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Double-sized DOUBLE UPDATE! A revamp to how AI followers select their weapons, new locations, new events, new characters, new character customization, and much, much more

New content update added! More updates coming, see below for details.

********

Death Road to Canada is a Randomly Generated Road Trip Action-RPG. You manage a group of jerks as they explore cities, find weird people, and face up to 500 zombies at once. Everything's randomized: locations, events, survivor personalities and skills. There's a different story every time you play.

Travel the Death Road from Florida to Canada, the last nation on Earth. Find special events, rare encounters, and unique recruits. Recruit a grunting super-bodybuilder who's strong enough to pick up and throw the car. Try to teach a dog how to walk upright and shoot a minigun.

Most of all, get eaten by enormous hordes of slow, classic-style zombies.

DEATH ROAD FEATURES:

- Designed for massive amounts of replay value.

- Character Maker lets you put friends and family into the game.

- Meet your custom characters during your travels. Get them eaten by mistake or on purpose.

- Make tough choices in text events that change depending on your group.

- Your team has different personalities, and someone may betray the others. Be careful!

- Lots and lots of secret events and unique characters with special abilities.

- Equip a wide variety of different weapons. Splat zombies with a flamethrower, battleaxe, hockey stick, wizard staff (lightning bolt), Mjolnir, boomerang, and much more.

- Canada jokes written by a real Canadian so they're 100% accurate.

- Get rid of all humans and make an entire team composed of dogs driving the car.

- Airhorn weapon with incredibly realistic, computer-generated airhorn sounds.

*******************

Update Plans

We've already done lots of updates, and there are more updates coming! We're adding new features, locations, characters, weapons, and more!


Ratings & Reviews

4.7 out of 5 with 1328 Counts
★★★★★
★★★★★
★★★★★
★★★★★
★★★★★
Age Rating 13+

Screenshots

Death Road to Canada screenshot 1Death Road to Canada screenshot 2Death Road to Canada screenshot 3Death Road to Canada screenshot 4Death Road to Canada screenshot 5Death Road to Canada screenshot 6Death Road to Canada screenshot 7Death Road to Canada screenshot 8Death Road to Canada screenshot 9Death Road to Canada screenshot 10

Death Road to Canada is a Replay Value Action-RPG. You manage a group of survivors as they explore cities, find weird people, and face up to 500 zombies at once. Everything is randomly generated: locations, events, survivor personalities, and skills. You'll make difficult choices in interactive fiction events, and fight off hordes of the undead in real-time combat. It's a brutal, hilarious, and endlessly replayable journey to the promised land of Canada.

Features

1

Endless replayability with randomly generated runs

2

Massive zombie swarms featuring up to 500 enemies on screen

3

Custom character creator to put yourself and your friends in the game

4

Incredibly deep and funny interactive text events

News on this game

Best console and PC conversions for Android  Pocket Gamer

Pocket Gamer - Mon Jul 27 2026

Death Road to Canada TRACHEA Update Announced  Big Boss Battle

Big Boss Battle - Wed Jul 22 2026

Best arcade games for iPhone and iPad (iOS)  Pocket Gamer

Pocket Gamer - Thu Jun 25 2026

Deadly Days: Roadtrip takes classic zombie roguelite action and then hits the road  Rogueliker

Rogueliker - Thu Jan 29 2026

The Best iPhone Games for 2026  PCMag Middle East

PCMag Middle East - Wed Dec 17 2025

Death Road to Canada got a Retina Update, and Space Dingus is on the horizon now  Rogueliker

Rogueliker - Wed Dec 03 2025

Death Road to Canada gets a major free update with new game modes  GamingOnLinux

GamingOnLinux - Tue Oct 07 2025

Death Road to Canada is nine years old, and that’s how I just discovered Space Dingus  Rogueliker

Rogueliker - Wed Jul 23 2025

Space Dingus is a spiritual sequel to Death Road to Canada  GamingOnLinux

GamingOnLinux - Tue Jul 22 2025

After nine years, one of Steam's top-rated zombie games has a big new update, and a pseudo sequel is on the way  PCGamesN

PCGamesN - Mon Jun 30 2025

Gameplays

Q&A

Yes, the mobile port includes full MFi controller support for better combat maneuvering.

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