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
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