The Drifter might be the most chilling point-and-click of the year

With the narrative snap of a LucasArts game, the foreboding mood of the Black Mirror trilogy, and the complex pixel art of last year’s Arco (a personal GOTY), the new point-and-click game The Drifter feels like the collision of what a certain subset of players are always looking for. After playing the demo, released ahead of the June Steam Next Fest, I can say I’ll be continuing on through this stylish noir when it rolls around later in the summer.

At the center of The Drifter is Mick Carter, whom we meet looking ragged and tired as he steals a ride in the cargo car of a freight train. But when he and a fellow vagabond are caught, Mick witnesses a brutal murder, then escapes into an encampment under a bridge, where he learns this was part of a pattern of recent attacks and disappearances. By the end of the demo, I was fighting for my life as Mick got a taste for what was really going on.

Australian indie duo Powerhoof, the team behind 2017’s Crawl, describe The Drifter as a mix of “King, Crichton, and Carpenter, with a dash of ’70s Ozploitation.” The 20-30 minute demo leans much more on the John Carpenter side of things for me, exuding a Lovecraftian aura that puts it on the wavelength of the horror master’s In the Mouth of Madness in terms of tone. But there’s plenty of reason to think that what lies ahead could become even more supernatural in nature. (The trailer will spoil a bit of it, if you need the sell.)

The Drifter plays like a typical point-and-click, where players investigate their surroundings, collect key objects, and piece together puzzles to progress further in the story, which in this case, is gripping. Voice actor Adrian Vaughn stars as Mick, and his performance is as textured as the art style. Powerhoof is right to invoke Stephen King, too; while there might be horrific turns to come as the reluctant investigator peels back the layers of his mysterious kidnappers and what it might have to do with his estranged marriage, the internal monologuing is sharp enough to stand up to King’s own first-person writing.

Adding to the intrigue is frictionless play. While it might make sense to do some actual pointing and clicking using a PC and a mouse, I demoed the game on my Steam Deck, using the game’s wheel of interactions to navigate the opening chapter’s dimly lit alleyways. (Which is good news, because after the Windows, Mac, and Linux launch in July, Powerhoof intends to port the game over to Nintendo Switch later this year.)

And at least 20 minutes in, everything I needed to find was intuitive enough that I did not run into my #1 biggest point-and-click problem: being too stupid/blind to see the thing I am supposed to point-and-click on. The Drifter presents a few welcome challenges without too many tall hurdles.

The Drifter arrives on July 17, which is when I will be eager to find out more of what Mick is dealing with in this chilling mystery.