The Drifter on Switch: A Point-and-Click Port Done Right

The Drifter, from Australian studio Powerhoof, has left its Steam-only days behind and landed on Nintendo Switch. The point-and-click genre's big-budget glory years may be long gone, but indie developers have kept it going. Powerhoof, best known for Crawl, is a relative newcomer to adventure games, and a new review from Indie Game Reviewer suggests the team has made a strong entrance.

The short version? The port is excellent, and the game underneath it might be even better.

Coming Home to Trouble

You play as Mick, a drifter heading back to his hometown for the first time in five years to attend his mother's burial. The welcome party is not what he expected. Armed strangers attack him almost immediately, and he has to run. From there, things get stranger.

The reviewer calls The Drifter about as close to "fast-paced" as a point-and-click adventure can get. It throws one mystery after another at you, and even the quieter stretches keep pulling you forward.

A lot of that comes down to the writing and voice acting. Both keep the cast likeable and worth caring about, even as the plot takes some truly odd turns. The game also has something to say, especially about how society treats unhoused people. It's pulpy, but it isn't silly.

The review compares it more than once to John Carpenter's They Live. The bold visuals and synth-heavy soundtrack only strengthen that link.

Mouse Game, Meet Controller

Moving a point-and-click game from mouse to controller is notoriously tricky. Plenty of games have tried and stumbled. The Drifter gets around this with a twin-stick setup. The left stick moves Mick, and the right stick highlights objects around him. According to the review, it isn't flawless, but it works well roughly 95% of the time.

There is one strange gap, though. You can't use the touch screen in portable mode. For a genre built around pointing at things, that feels like an obvious missed opportunity.

Switch 2 owners get a free upgrade. It raises the resolution, which makes the pixel art look even sharper. The bigger addition is the option to use a Joy-Con 2 as a mouse. The reviewer tried it and found it clicked right away and felt natural.

A Few Stubborn Puzzles

The Drifter isn't perfect. It avoids most of the genre's worst habits. There's no pixel-hunting for tiny items, and you can't lock yourself into an unwinnable state. Still, a handful of puzzles are more obtuse than they should be. The ones that require a specific sequence of actions can get especially frustrating.

Even so, the verdict is clear. It's a fantastic game with a fantastic port, and the reviewer puts it among the best point-and-click games ever made. If you don't have a PC, the Switch version is an easy recommendation.

The Drifter is available on the Nintendo eShop. The Windows PC, Mac and Linux versions are on Steam.

Our Take

For relaxed players who mostly game on the couch or on the go, this is good news. Point-and-click adventures have long felt most at home on PC, and The Drifter suggests that careful console design can close that gap.

It also fits a wider pattern of indie games reaching new platforms, from cozy console releases to classic games ported to new hardware. The Joy-Con 2 mouse option is the detail to watch. If it works as smoothly as this review suggests, it could make the Switch 2 a more natural home for mouse-driven genres. It's worth watching whether other adventure developers pick up on it, and whether Powerhoof adds touch-screen support in a later update.