The Drifter overview
Must know
What’s it? A degree ‘n’ click on “pulp journey thriller” with true grit.
Launch date July 18, 2025
Anticipate to pay TBC
Developer Powerhoof, Dave Lloyd
Writer Powerhoof
Reviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop computer), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck Formally “unknown”, nevertheless it runs brilliantly
Hyperlink Steam
We meet Mick Carter as a homeless drifter. Because of some unspecified previous trauma, he’s deserted his settled home life in a anonymous Australian metropolis for a self-flagellating transient existence. He’s en path to dwelling, the place he’s been beckoned to attend his mom’s funeral. He does so reluctantly, as a result of it attracts him nearer to a previous he’s intentionally deserted.
Shit hits the fan instantly. Not solely is Mick forcibly ejected from his practice carriage by a mysterious, probably supernatural presence, however he’s then framed for the homicide of a homeless man within the seedy railway underpass he finds himself in. At first, The Drifter guarantees to be a darkish character research wrapped in a homicide thriller, nevertheless it proves to be extra—alas, to its detriment.
The Drifter payments itself as a “pulp journey thriller” and it wastes no time dwelling as much as that descriptor. Carter is a depressive however however oddly calm protagonist, with a well-recognized—if considerably antiquated—Australian matter-of-factness about him. He’s downcast, however not solely ruined. In truth, when a hi-tech conspiracy begins to loom he proves fairly resourceful: The Drifter’s point-and-click trappings usually demand MacGyver-like logic, which is to say, a capability to make use of mundane objects to resolve seemingly insurmountable issues.
However The Drifter has quieter, ostensibly extra complicated ambitions. At first the world presents as a richly down-at-heel city sprawl. Its lavishly illustrated environs are a potent mixture of John Carpenter blight (assume They Dwell, Escape From New York) with movie noir techniques. Powerhoof’s pixel artwork strives in direction of a painterly, oddly curvaceous semi-realism, darkness and undulating shadows rendering a bleak and forbidding world that also manages to be tastefully vibrant and diverse. The way in which Powerhoof frames a lot of The Drifter’s exterior city expanses inside impermeable darkness lend them the temper of fascinating, sickly dioramas.
The studio has a particular strategy to pixel artwork, which isn’t any small feat. It doesn’t depend on the innate appeal of the model; it has a sure wobbly, barely surreal exaggeration to it. It is a very totally different recreation from Crawl, nevertheless it’s instantly apparent that it comes from the identical group.
Picture 1 of 4
The Drifter is a pleasure to behold and work together with. The studio’s strategy to city noir is extra conventional in comparison with the haunted fashionable listlessness of Norco’s flyover suburbia, for instance, however regardless of the familiarity of a seedy practice underpass, or the places of work of a doubtful tabloid, or a skyline-lit nighttime graveyard, there’s one thing forbiddingly melancholy concerning the opening hours. It’s magnetically downcast. However the locations I go to differ extensively because the story progresses, and the oppressive, noir-ish melancholy flounders because the story strikes on.
The purpose-and-click parts are acquainted. Puzzles are likely to boil all the way down to executing actions in the fitting order, combining discovered objects to make a jury-rigged instrument, or compelling sure occasions to happen to accommodate my goals. Powerhoof has devised a intelligent person interface that takes lots of the tedious guesswork out whereas additionally offering ample details about current circumstances, lest one lose (or overlook from one session to the following) their method. Lateral considering continues to be the order of the day—in fact you’d use a small steel tag, retrieved from a bowl, to unscrew a vent!—although problem-solving is mostly performed linearly: there’s no option to be extra intelligent than the prescribed sequence of interactions.
Which is okay, as a result of The Drifter is proud to be a point-and-click journey; it’s not messing with a format it clearly adores. If something, it solely desires to make it much less obtuse and extra welcoming.
The Drifter is a finely wrought level ‘n’ click on journey on a mechanical degree, with attractive artwork—and the latter can’t be over-emphasised—however its pulp tendencies sit a bit askew from a few of its extra extreme themes. The devastating supply of Carter’s jiltedness rubs awkwardly towards the excessive idea sci-fi narrative, which in fact entails time journey, albeit in direction of bleaker ends than the standard “only one extra likelihood” fantasy. Whereas some would possibly wish to revisit the previous to make good on some in any other case irrevocable failure or shortcoming, Carter simply desires to overlook his previous; he doesn’t wish to optimize, he desires to erase, all the higher to negate the ache he’s didn’t dwell with.
It’s a refreshingly ruthless, refreshingly human, framing of remorse, however as The Drifter strikes into labyrinthine sci-fi territory, and as its strands coil round a conspiracy a lot bigger than Carter’s circumstances, the sport loses sight of the emotional stakes in favour of the procedural unfolding of wily mad scientist baloney. Because the story progressed, I felt increasingly distant from Mick Carter.
To Powerhoof’s credit score—and there’s a real ambition right here—this partial failure has rather a lot to do with the restrictions of style conventions; inside the strictures of a loosely side-scrolling and panned out presentation, the subtleties different mediums might use to squeeze feeling out of Carter—expressions, posture etcetera—aren’t obtainable. As soon as we’ve left the forbidding, narrowed-in cityscapes in favour of extra outlandish “pulpish” environs there are fewer alternatives to really feel as if we’re commandeering a genuinely shaken character; Carter turns right into a fish-out-of-water drawback fixing avatar with depressive posture. Below these circumstances the emotional influence of his plight is blunted. As a sci-fi thriller, The Drifter is rote.
Picture 1 of 3
There’s additionally the bizarre tonal inconsistency of the supporting characters, equivalent to Hara, a unusually disinterested investigator who unaccountably morphs right into a sidekick determine, and a reporter whose involvement within the unfurling complexity feels more and more superfluous, to not point out the extra intimately concerned characters Carter reacquaints with, who’re fast to forgive his fleeing.
Can a point-and-click journey be good if its story does not stick the touchdown? Powerhoof’s elegant artwork course and sensitivity to temper give it immense potential to inform tales like this with out resorting to potboiler cliche, and the studio’s strategy to UI and puzzle design is impeccable. The Drifter is a good piece of design, nevertheless it wanted to keep away from the straightforward shelter of pulp to be a totally fascinating journey.