The Drifter took the point-and-click adventure genre and turned it on its head. Mick Carter’s gripping and gritty story through brisk chapters that kept the intrigue high were combined with logical and fair puzzles that banished dated gameplay concepts like trial-and-error pixel hunts. It was described as what might be “the most polished and expertly crafted adventure game of all time” in Cubed3’s 10/10 Nintendo Switch 2 version review. It is with great pleasure, then, that Powerhoof, the developer of The Drifter, took time to answer a few of Cubed3’s questions to learn more about the game.
Coller Entragian, Reviewer at Cubed3: How did that initial concept evolve over the years into a full pulp thriller, and what were the biggest surprises or pivots along the way?
Dave Lloyd, one half of Powerhoof: It had a long way to come! I’m not a writer so it had a lot to learn along the way. The concept came from a game jam we did way back in 2017. I’d made some silly comedy adventure games before but thought I’d try my hand at thriller writing because I knew my friends Barney (art direction) and Adrian (voice of the main character) would be into it. That jam game (called Peridium) came together in a week and got a great reception, so from then I knew I wanted to eventually do a bigger thriller game.
The biggest surprise, though, was how much harder it was to scale up from a half hour to a full game. It was a steep learning curve, realising I couldn’t just have one little character arc and a single plot beat; there had to be new plot revelations happening all the time to keep it fun, and the complexity really did my head in when I was working it out!
Coller: You’ve cited influences like Stephen King, Michael Crichton, John Carpenter and 70s Australian grindhouse. How did those voices and films shape the story, atmosphere and pacing, and were there specific works or experiences that directly inspired key scenes or characters?
Dave: I leant on all of them when I needed to feel inspired, along with basically any 70s genre film and thriller/horror novels. Carpenter’s title theme from Assault on Precinct 13 was the first point of reference for the music, and the strong colour and deep shadows from his films was a big influence on the art.
From Stephen King, the sinister vibes he crafts from the relationships of everyday people, tinged with supernatural horror are brilliant, and I’m a huge sucker for tech thrillers, that “sci-fi concepts meets modern day” stuff. Crichton is the master of that. And yeah, Aussie genre films from the 70s/80s have this off-beat rawness to them that I just adore. They were a good reminder through development that I didn’t have to get things perfect as long as it goes hard.
Coller: What design decisions helped maintain momentum and reduce traditional adventure game friction like excessive backtracking while preserving clever puzzles and deep storytelling?
Dave: I kind of lucked into that in the game jam we did. With such a short deadline I had to stick the character right in the middle of the action from the start and just throw stuff at him. We had moments where he was trapped and the player really only had to click one thing at a time to progress, but with the tense atmosphere it created this cool feeling of flow. That started the idea that we could do a fast-paced take on what’s traditionally a slower-paced genre.
I realised in the larger game that I couldn’t keep the pace at 100% the whole time; it gets exhausting, and the player needs times they can slow down and do some investigating. As long as they have clear goals, it keeps the pace up enough, and I made sure it wasn’t too long before throwing them back in the deep end with some more drama.
Coller: The protagonist’s repeated deaths and reliving moments add a unique tension. How did you balance these sections to feel intense and logical rather than frustrating, and what challenges did they present in puzzle design?
Dave: It was certainly a challenge, and I definitely didn’t get the balance right for everyone. I knew I didn’t want any timers in the game and it was designed to reward taking your time, sitting back and thinking about how to best approach a situation. However, because they’re tense situations players do the opposite; they panic and try to click things faster, which only makes it harder! It was an interesting thing to design around for sure.
Coller: The game features fully voiced dialogue and a strong cinematic soundtrack. How did you approach casting and sound design to heighten the paranoia, horror, and emotional weight?
Dave: A point and click isn’t the most natural fit for an exciting thriller atmosphere, but it feels like magic when you start layering on sound, voice acting, and music and see the tension ramp through the roof. Music communicates and underlines the emotions of a scene, sounds give it impact, and the voices bring it all to life.
Adrian Vaughan, the voice of the main character (and five others in the game), is an old friend of ours. We’ve done heaps of games together over the years, and the initial idea for the character Mick was written for the gravelly voice he does so well. I had help from a casting director with auditions for finding others. This was at the end of development so I felt like I’d known the characters for years by that point and some actors just seemed to fit!
Coller: The Drifter features a unique twin-stick control scheme for controllers. What inspired this approach, and what were the biggest challenges in designing and refining it to feel as intuitive and responsive as traditional mouse point-and-click while making the game comfortable for couch or handheld play?
Dave: When bringing it to console, I wanted to keep what I like about the feeling of point and clicks. Therefore, I had to work out what I’m actually doing when mouse-ing the cursor around the screen; it’s quite different to moving a character around and interacting with the A button like in an RPG.
What I realised was that the mouse cursor works like an analogue for the character’s perspective on the environment; when you’re scanning it around, it’s like they’re looking around, thinking about what action they could take.
That led to me wondering if I could do that with analogue sticks, then to the character being at the center of a radial menu, showing points of interest from their perspective. It was very experimental, so I was very happy (and relieved) when I got it in people’s hands and realised that it made sense to them too!
Coller: Why did you choose not to include hints or a more guided option, and how do you respond to players who got stuck and felt it hurt their experience?
Dave: Mainly naivete on my part! I didn’t intend to stump players with puzzles, and hoped our playtesting had found the places people got stuck and the soft hints we’d added there would get them through, along with the topics system to nudge them toward their goal. I think it was the right move for designing the game in general, but a built-in hint guide wouldn’t have hurt as well; it’s so easy to miss something in games like these!
At least nowadays it’s only a matter of pulling out your phone to look something up if you’re really stumped – and perhaps there’s nothing wrong with that. I do that for action games when I’m stuck on a boss… even if a lot of the time the answer is “git gud”.
Coller: The strained relationships with Mick’s sister Annie and ex-wife Sarah feel very raw and specific—especially the scenes at the funeral home and Annie’s apartment. How much of Mick’s backstory and family tension came from personal experiences, and how did you balance the emotional dialogue trees with the thriller pacing?
Dave: I think a lot of Mick’s character flaws I drew from exaggerating a version of my own negative traits – intrusive thoughts, social awkwardness, general grumpiness – so I could always relate to him even when he’s being a jerk. I wanted a balance of the serious character stuff and the fun too. I was very specifically writing genre fiction. I’ll leave literary stuff to smarter folks than me, but in all the cheesy thriller novels I love there are real human stories at the core, and relationships that feel well realised. Usually that’s what hooks me, and the monster/crazed killer/terrorist plot is the icing on the cake.
Coller: As the story expands from a personal framing/murder mystery into the bigger picture involving evil corps, missing homeless people, and evil experiments, were you ever worried the shift would alienate players who were hooked on the earlier grounded chapters?
Dave: I’d always had it in my head that it was a tech thriller, and those elements are there in opening scenes, in the box-car and soldiers you see at the start, so during development I never really noticed how it shifts – but it does ramp up sharply towards the end and that throws some people for sure. I like to fake people out and keep them guessing. I love games that flip my expectations, so I tend to do that to a fault!
Coller: Now that The Drifter is out, what’s next? Do you see yourselves continuing in adventure games?
Dave: Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever stop making them. I have a demo out on Steam for a smaller retro-styled fantasy one called The Telwynium – that’s 100% a cosy nostalgia project for me, just a bit of fun after The Drifter. Barney’s been working on his hardcore psychedelic combat platformer Acid Knife, and between us we have loads of other games we’d love to be making. Just never enough time!
Bonus question: If you could do an adventure game featuring a Nintendo IP, which one would you choose and why?
Dave: Kirby would be fun, sucking up items and characters to solve puzzles, but I’d love to dig into a story with Wario. I think the way he’d interact with other characters would be hilarious; just a treasure-obsessed maniac. It could borrow some of the fun, quirky interaction from WarioWare games, and I can picture him being a bit like Ben from Full Throttle with his dedicated “kick” action replaced with Wario’s shoulder bash whenever he doesn’t feel like solving a puzzle.
Cubed3 extends huge thanks to Dave Lloyd at Powerhoof for taking part in this interview. The Drifter is out now for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC.
good answers