The Drifter review — A point-and-click thrill ride

The Drifter may be one of the freshest puzzle games I’ve played in a long time. During my time at GamingTrend, I’ve covered many different puzzle games, from your standard point-and-clicks like The Case of the Golden Idol to perspective puzzling in Monument Valley and whodunits in The Duck Detective duology. All have been splendid experiences and consistently impress me with how varied the genre is. People may overlook the genre, preferring action blockbusters to their contemplative, “casual” atmosphere. However, my next journey into the genre in The Drifter takes puzzling and makes it a thrilling ride that never slows down until the end credits. I first played the demo at Steam Next Fest and instantly fell in love with its first chapter, and after getting to the end credits, I’m happy to say The Drifter exceeded my expectations.

The Drifter is a narrative adventure that follows Mick’s return to his derelict hometown to attend his mother’s funeral. After an intense confrontation in a train cargo carriage where a man is murdered, Mick finds himself launching out into the underbelly of the city. I found that I already had tons of questions about what was going on. The Drifter does an immaculate job of making you hold your breath and ponder every exchange you have with characters straight from the start. Poor Mick has found that he doesn’t know where his sister’s address is, as his phone goes dead as she bends his ear, so the prologue is mainly about finding where you must go next. You stumble across an old friend and a nosy journalist and pick up a lot of loose story pieces that won’t get answered for a long while.

Whilst playing Chapter 1, you’re settled into the gameplay; it’s your typical point-and-click puzzler where you’ll interact with different objects and people to find the solution you’re looking for. What I found so fun about this game’s puzzling was its use of its catalog of items. Instead of limiting items to one use, Mick will typically accumulate a few items that will be used multiple times through innovative means. You can use items on the landscape, or take them apart to combine, or modify them to fit the solution. A small example of this is in the second chapter, where you’ll find an umbrella. You can use the umbrella for multiple scenarios, from reaching through a broken window to twist the door handle to grabbing at a hanging rope. There are plenty of other examples like this, especially when you get to the sciency late-game chapters that have Mick pick up various pieces of equipment. Overall, the puzzles felt very natural and always hit the right mark with a challenge that didn’t rise to frustration. One or two chapters do get pretty long, and it becomes hard to wrap your head around all the conversation topics and items you have, but my biggest piece of advice is to always exhaust all dialogue with every character. That one connecting piece could be hiding amongst them.

The Drifter’s UI is also worthy of a mention, as it never felt cluttered or annoying. You have separate tabs for items and conversation topics, and those conversation topics will update as you learn more information and will gray out if they’re not relevant to a character. The same can also be said for items; as soon as you’ve used the item for everything it needs to be used for in the game, then it’ll disappear from your inventory, cutting all the hassle of inventory management.

The other half of The Drifter’s gameplay is its intense death scenarios. It’s no spoiler that Mick can (and will a lot of times) die and come back again. In every chapter, Mick will encounter one or two fatal scenarios where his life is at risk, whether that’s being drowned or being slashed open—poor guy. Under these threats, you’ll need to act quickly to use the environment and items on hand to save Mick. These scenarios are often bouts of trial and error, so take your time and assess the situation. (Unlike me, who was screaming internally whenever something was happening.) This quick thinking and intensity make for a delightfully different puzzling experience that you don’t find in other games. 99% of the time, you have all the time in the world to figure things out, and for me, this can be to my detriment because I’ll end up getting exhausted or overthinking it. These breaks in The Drifter’s normal time of city exploration and puzzling made The Drifter an experience that I didn’t want to put down.

A word of warning after all this talk of death: The Drifter is very gory and very violent, so if that isn’t for you, then please play with caution.

The Drifter’s story and characters were also a delight to uncover. You only get a small cast of characters, but by the time the credits rolled and after everything they had been through, I had come to love them all. They’re all extremely charming, from our sarcastic and pessimistic protagonist, Mick, to his cool-headed and sassy therapist sister, Annie. I do have to emphasize how much I loved Mick as a main character; he has a pretty tragic backstory and is carrying a lot of baggage with him, but his journey through that is rewarding. I also cannot praise the voice acting enough in this game. Everyone was a standout in their own right, but the award has to go to Adrian Vaughn, who voices Mick and several other important characters. I thought at first his voice would wear down on me a bit because he acts as Mick’s voice and the narrator, but I couldn’t get enough of him. I hadn’t even realized until I saw the credits that he had voiced several other important characters! I haven’t heard of him in anything else, but my god, is this man talented. He’s definitely my pick so far for best voice actor of the year.

The story of The Drifter is also extremely fun, thrilling, and bizarre! As I mentioned before, the game does a great job of establishing a lot of mystery in the first half of the game, but as you get deeper into what’s happening, it goes from a seemingly grounded detective/conspiracy story to a bonkers sci-fi horror. In just 9 chapters, The Drifter’s pacing feels electric without much pause for wondering what the hell is going on. For a lot of the time, I was like, “What the hell is going on?”, but if you lean into The Drifter’s humor and wackiness, you will have an amazing time. The plot towards the end of the game isn’t anything spectacular and is very, very cliché, but with a cast, presentation, and puzzling like that, I could forgive anything. Overall, the story is punchy but also has plenty of quiet moments revolving around Mick’s family, so just have fun with it.

The pixel art and soundtrack are outstandingly stunning in how dingy and 90s horror/cop film vibes they give off. The environment, from the labs to the city, is grungy and very detailed, so The Drifter doubled up as a narrative adventure and a visual pleasure. The main theme that plays in the title screen is one that will stick in my head for a long time; everything came together to feel atmospheric and tense.

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