Point-and-click adventure games often tell silly, lighthearted stories. For me, the mishaps of the pirate Guybrush Threepwood in the Monkey Island series come to mind. The nature of the genre — wandering around, talking to people, and trying to solve puzzles — lends itself well to humor, as every interaction with a person or object offers an opportunity for a joke. The Drifter, a new point-and-click game from Powerhoof, cleverly uses the format to instead tell a dark, twist-filled thriller, and it sucked me in like a gripping novel.
In The Drifter, you play as Mick Carter, who you meet shortly after he hops aboard a train as a stowaway. Within moments you’ll witness a brutal, unexplained murder and be forced to go on the run, and the story quickly becomes a complex web of characters, pursuers, and mysteries to poke at.
Mick serves as the game’s narrator, often describing what he’s doing in a grim, first-person tone with full voice acting by Adrian Vaughan. Mick’s tone sometimes feels a bit heavy-handed and overdramatic, but I enjoyed Vaughan’s performance anyway — it really sets a pulpy tone that’s fun to sink into. The game’s gorgeous pixel art helps, too, and locations have dramatic lighting and moody shadows.
This being a point-and-click adventure, the primary way to move the story forward is by solving puzzles, often by using the right object at the right place at the right time. The game is usually pretty good at suggesting where you need to go through conversations or through a list of broader story threads you’re investigating.
Actually doing the investigating is straightforward.
