The Drifter Review – A Sierr-ious Work of LucasArt
Coming from developer Powerhoof, The Drifter is a bold shift following 2017’s Crawl, a multiplayer couch co-op brawler that cemented them as an up-and-comer to keep an eye on. Rather than go back to the well, Powerhoof instead went in a completely different direction to produce The Drifter, a mystery-thriller-sci-fi point ‘n click adventure which takes visual inspiration from the early 90’s era of the genre, with a hefty dose of mid 90’s LucasArts spirit in there to boot. The result is a wicked piece of contemporary Australian media that left me wanting more.
My earliest PC game experiences were point ‘n click adventures of the Sierra variety, King’s Quest V being a particularly formative piece of gaming media as I harassed my dad to mail-order me a copy from Computer Market or some other long-defunct monthly magazine. I consumed every entry in the genre I could get my hands on at the time, which mostly consisted of Sierra and LucasArts titles, later moving on to things like Broken Sword and The Longest Journey before the genre itself sputtered out and became rose-tinted memories when modern ‘adventure games’ like The Walking Dead proved to be a pale imitation of the hits of yesteryear for me. The Drifter has tapped into much of my nostalgia while being an overwhelmingly modern title in sensibilities and tone. The layers of mystery that unravel over the course of its nine chapters make it difficult to discuss story specifics in too much detail, but we can go over the basics; Mick Carter has arrived back in his hometown, homeless and hitching a ride on a boxcar with his mother’s funeral only a few days away. His sister Annie tries to reconnect and reassure him, whilst a looming confrontation with his ex-wife, Sarah, casts a shadow over an already pretty dour set of circumstances. Until the moment Mick is riddled with bullets as he opens the boxcar door before finding himself thrust back to mere seconds before his mysterious assailants opened fire. Cue shades of Dark City and a story that grabs players until the credits roll a half-dozen hours later.
The Drifter shines in so many areas, it’s visual design work and lighting crafting atmospheric environments that use colour and shadow to brilliant effect. It’s a reminder that I can be just as thrilled, scared and engaged with sprites moving around the screen in 2025 as I was in 1993 when pixel art and limited animation techniques are used to their fullest effect. Compounding this is a synth-heavy, pulsating soundtrack from Mitchell Pasmans and Louis Meyer that pairs exquisitely with the gloomy streets Mick must roam in search of answers about his seeming inability to die, a great thematic and mechanical workaround for modern audiences which splits the difference between classic Sierra’s heavy handed approach to mistakes and LucasArts’, which often used death as a punch line before a soft reset. The Drifter knows when to pump the brakes and when to floor it in service of both stakes and story, only one or two sequences outstaying their welcome thanks to solutions that weren’t apparent to very tired eyes wanting to wrap up just one more chapter before calling it a night.
Part of The Drifter’s charm is in the earnest performances of its voice actors, Adrian Vaughan’s lead role as Mick Carter carrying much of the runtime without becoming grating, even when needing to constantly monologue about everything he sees. Rhiannon Moushall and Shogo Miyakita bring heavy doses of believability and A-grade B-movie camp respectively to their roles as Annie and Detective Hara, but there really isn’t a dud in the bunch; all the actors involved lift the material and bring a peculiar sort of realism to the proceedings, even when the weirdness goes up to eleven.
Plain and simple, The Drifter is a great entry in a genre that doesn’t really see too many of them these days. What it lacks in obtuse puzzle difficulty it makes up for with a smart, pulpy narrative that kept me engaged the entire time, with characters endearing enough that many players will likely return for a second or third lap. Here’s hoping Powerhoof are already looking at a follow up.
The Drifter was reviewed on PC using code kindly supplied by the publisher.
