Mad Max emphasizes vehicular combat, in which players can use weapon and armor upgrades on their car to fight enemies.

Mad Max is an action-adventure game set in an open world post-apocalyptic environment caused by resource shortages and ecocide.

Although Mad Max primarily uses a third-person perspective, the player can switch to first-person view when fighting enemies while driving the Magnum Opus.

[2][7] An enemy can jump on top of the Magnum Opus to make it explode, but the player can avoid that by surrounding the car with hazards such as spikes.

Max's garage can change and modify the car's engine, chassis, wheels, body work, paint job, and its "shell".

[10] Max, his armor, and weapons are customisable;[11] the player can unlock new skills and upgrades for him as he progresses through the game and earns experience points.

[15] The game has a free-flow combat system combining professional wrestling attacks and boxing techniques, similar to Warner Bros.' previous Batman: Arkham video-game series (in which indicators on enemies' heads remind the player when to strike, counter or make finishing moves).

[27] Max can also eat small animals, such as rodents, and maggots from decomposing corpses, to replenish his health, and areas where he can find food and supplies have crows flying around them.

He runs into War Boys led by Scabrous Scrotus (Travis Willingham), son of Immortan Joe (Fred Tatasciore) and ruler of Gastown.

[31] Max obtains a weapon and clothes from a dead Wastelander, cares for the wounded dog, and resolves to find Scrotus's base of operations and recover his car.

Chumbucket builds an exploding harpoon launcher for the Magnum Opus, allowing Max to destroy a massive gate protected by War Boys and explore new territory.

After winning the race against Stank Gum (Yuri Lowenthal) and defeating the fighter Tenderloin in a Thunderdome duel, Max receives the engine and the concubine Hope (Courtenay Taylor).

When he wakes up, he and Hope steal the Big Chief; they drive to the temple of Deep Friah (Robin Atkin Downes), a friendly fire cultist.

At the temple, Hope asks Max to find her daughter, Glory (Madison Carlon), who had fled to Buzzard territory.

Max kills Stank Gum, rushes back to the temple and finds Hope hanged and Glory tortured on the floor.

Max and Chumbucket find Scrotus driving around the Purgatory Flatlands, and after a prolonged chase the Land Mover is left teetering on the edge of a cliff.

A video game set in the Mad Max universe was mentioned by franchise creator George Miller in a 2008 interview.

[35] A Mad Max: Fury Road tie-in video game was in development by Interplay Entertainment, but was scrapped when Electronic Arts acquired the franchise's video-game rights for $20 million.

[51] Chumbucket, Max's mechanic and companion, is obsessed with the Magnum Opus; according to the game's lead writer, he "has a pseudo-religious/sexual relationship with engines".

[52] Scabrous Scrotus, the game's main antagonist, is a warlord designed as a "bloodthirsty monster that only can find solace from his own pain through the suffering of others".

One challenge faced by the developers was building a wasteland with a variety of environments, since Mad Max is Avalanche's first post-apocalyptic game.

[61] The team also worked on improving the world's draw distance and ensured that gameplay across the three major platforms have no significant difference.

[70] The Ripper, a steelbook, collector's box, mini-license plate and Blu-ray copy of Mad Max: Fury Road were included in the Post-Apocalypse Edition.

[71] PlayStation 4-version purchasers could access a Road Warrior Survival Kit,[72] with twelve hood ornaments for the Magnum Opus,[73] exclusively until 30 November 2015.

[81] Matt Bertz praised the game's inhospitable atmosphere, commending Avalanche for adding a variety of styles and a vibrant sky to an otherwise-boring sandbox.

Peter Brown of GameSpot praised Mad Max's natural disasters, writing that it set a new standard for in-game weather effects.

Brown praised the car action, calling it intense, complex, and unpredictable, but criticized the over-simplistic and shallow on-foot combat.

He called the health system a redundant addition in which resources, such as water and food, play an insignificant role and can be neglected by players.

[84] Chris Carter of Destructoid wrote that the game brought nothing new to the genre, and its quests and features were too similar to typical Ubisoft open-world design.

[94] Former Avalanche boss Christofer Sundberg revealed in 2024 that "[WB] blamed us for the bad sales" and that canceled DLC was "just sitting there waiting to be released".