The Drifter is a point-and-click adventure that's also a fast-paced thriller

When you think "point-and-click adventure" you probably think of something a bit sedate, something you play with a hot drink near at hand while taking plenty of pauses to mull over what you're going to do next. The Drifter is not that kind of adventure game.

Within minutes of starting the demo I was trapped in a boxcar being shot at, and shortly after escaping that I was dumped in a reservoir with a weight round my ankles. Having to escape these situations with whatever tools are at hand makes The Drifter feel less like a mug-of-tea kind of game, and more like a near-death experience.

It's the work of Powerhoof, an Australia studio you may know from local multiplayer games like Crawl or Regular Human Basketball, but who've quietly been releasing classic-style adventure games on the side for free, including Sierra-esque quest fantasy The Telwynium and Antarctic research-base horror game Peridium.

"I've always done adventure games," says Dave Lloyd, the programmer/designer half of Powerhoof. "The first game I ever did was an adventure game, like 20 years ago when I found Adventure Game Studio, which is really what got me into making games." Peridium, made for a game jam, featured a sequence where the protagonist was being hanged by the neck from an extension lead, and had to use a pair of wirecutters to cut themselves free. Lloyd watched players frantically fumble through the simple action of clicking one thing and then another, panicking the whole time, and had an idea. 

"That was the first inkling I got that you could make a point-and-click adventure that's a bit fast-paced and has that heart-thumping kind of feeling like you're up to phase three of a boss battle, which you don't expect to have in an adventure game," he says. "That became one of the core pillars of The Drifter: how do we get these really fast-paced-feeling elements into what's usually a slow-paced genre?"

(Image credit: Powerhoof)

That's not all there is to The Drifter, though. In between the demo's pulse-pounders you can have a long conversation with a friendly man by a burning bin, and walk back and forth between a few screens as you collect the information and tools you need to solve a classic multi-step 'repair the thing' puzzle. "There's some sections in the game where there's a lot more locations you'll be wandering around as you try to piece things together," Lloyd says, "but then it goes back to really fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat kind of stuff. Trying to balance that is a big part of it."

Lloyd found inspiration in the movies of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg as well as books by Michael Crichton and Stephen King. As Mick Carter, the drifter of the title, you've returned to your home town for a funeral and immediately got yourself caught up in something unexplainable. There's a murder to solve, but there's a deeper mystery than that. As you'd expect for a game that draws from Stephen King there's a spooky side to The Drifter, with Carter seemingly able to come back from the dead—but not without bringing something over from the other side when he does. 

You can play a demo of The Drifter on Steam, and Powerhoof will be showing it at PAX Australia in the Indie Showcase area from October 6–8.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

Read more
A cartoon nun looks shocked and scared, bathed in green light.
The new game from the Blasphemous devs is like if Commandos was a metroidvania set in a Spanish monastery, and also the Green Beret kept losing his mind
White Knuckle trailer still
Ascend through 'ten thousand meters of concrete and decay' in this horrifying 'first-person roguelite speed-climbing game'
A cybernetic woman holds a silenced pistol
I became a domestic terrorist to steal a lightbulb in the best immersive sim I've played this Steam Next Fest—and it isn't even a Next Fest demo
The protagonist of Haste dashes with alacrity in a vivid piece of artwork for Haste: Broken Worlds.
Haste: Broken Worlds finally lets me live out my childhood fantasy of running really fast and then slamming into a rock at Mach 1 and breaking all my bones
A man turns away from an open window while monsters gather in the dark
Look Outside is a survival horror RPG where you absolutely should not look outside
Alligator skull with glowing eyes on human body and cords coming out sitting at piano with "The Norwood Etudes" ready to play
My new most anticipated RPG let me be a kleptomaniac gourmand set loose in a noir city on a quest to make 'the perfect sandwich'
Latest in Adventure
Image of illuminated manuscript-style drawings from the game Pentiment.
Random characters kept swearing in Obsidian's font-obsessed murder-mystery when its procedural error system ran amok: 'Naughtiness abounded'
An image of a corpse with the text "You've been re-educated."
I played the lost videogame sequel to 1984, and came away more nostalgic than ever for gaming's awkward adolescence in 1999
Rosella encounters a satyr in a forest in King's Quest 4
Eagle-eyed streamer spots that Roberta Williams' portrait in King's Quest 4 is based on her author photo on the back of the game box: 'I never noticed it before.'
Myst puzzle game
'You’ve been asking, and we’ve been listening': Myst remake adds a whole new world to the classic adventure, one originally introduced in another overhaul from 25 years ago
The character takes a test in a school room.
Expelled! review
Max, protagonist of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Double Exposure, stares with trepidation at something off-screen with her friend.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure reportedly a 'large loss' for Square Enix, says analyst, who adds: 'The company's IP fundamentally varies too much between good and bad'
Latest in News
Two brightly colored stormtroopers dressed like Run-DMC stand in front of PAX Australia's WELCOME HOME banner.
Tickets for PAX Australia 2025 are on sale now
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again