Static Dread: The Submarine Crew of the Ares

The Ares does not give you a silent crowd. After the electromagnetic strike, a handful of specialists still talk, work, and break. This hub is their roster. How to assign them is crew management. How each major choice spends them is crew fates. You are the unnamed First Mate and sonar operator. The Captain is a sealed door for a long time. The game is single-player; these NPCs are the entire social budget.

Static Dread: The Submarine released 14 August 2026. Names below match launch dialogue and achievement titles. They are not Lighthouse keepers. Do not mix families.

You — First Mate

You assign the roster, sit sonar, and inherit every job a corpse drops. Officers call you the Captain’s right hand. That means blame, not rank. Getting Started is your onboarding. Controls is how you actually move and shoot.

The Captain

Most of the crew is dead; the Captain is not reliably on the bridge. Playtest lines ask whether he is hiding because of a saboteur. Knock Knock is the trophy for reaching his sealed compartment. Treat him as a late information node, not as a second-player partner. You will not get a second player.

Kelly

Doctor and communications officer. She is the voice you want on comms restorations and medical calls. Family-lineage talk exists in the script; some reviewers felt it never pays off. Stop Kelly is a named trophy, which means a run can put you in her way. If you want Dream Team, do not spend her casually on hull welds while people are bleeding.

Zack

Navigation officer. Headings, charts, and a journal he can give you (Psychotherapy). He can also take a fatal radiation dose or be reborn in the Great Old One’s image (Zack of the Deep). Protect him on kind runs. Spend him on mythos runs. Details: crew fates.

Sharon

Chief engineer. Reactor, leaks, drones. Achievements exist for forcing her to work and for leaving her alone, and for letting her crack (Sharon Unhinged) or uncover the Captain’s truth. She is the difference between a boat that still has a wrench and a First Mate who has to do engineering in first person while sonar is also due.

Michael

Logistics and supplies. Salvage, stores, the reason parts still exist. Michael Unraveled is the watch-him-break trophy. If logistics is unmanned, expect story and survival to starve at the same time. He is easy to ignore because he is not the medic or the engineer. Ignore him and the list still turns red.

Timmy

Not a specialist you schedule. A wound that walks. Algae, coral, missing when he should not be able to walk. Shoot or spare: how to deal with Timmy. Safety versus Chance. He is the tutorial for every later mutated-crew prompt.

How to read this roster in play

When a scene names someone, glance at their job before you volunteer them. When someone dies, open the console immediately; their cards did not vanish. When you chase collectibles instead of staffing medical, you are writing Kelly’s absence into the next crisis. The story walkthrough is the order of rooms. This hub is the order of people.

Voice acting is one of the sequel’s actual strengths. Listen even when you already know the prompt. Subtitles can disagree with audio; reviewers caught “can’t” versus “can.” If a mechanical instruction conflicts, look at the interactable, not the flavor.

For trophies attached to each sailor, use achievements. For whether the cast is deep enough, the review is skeptical and still recommends a first dive. For launch-week platform notes, launch notes.

Keep the names attached to the jobs. The North Atlantic will not.

When you are ready to spoil individual flags, continue to crew fates. When you only needed a roster, return to the Guides Hub and assign the next watch.