The Drifter is a pulpy point-and-click from the developers of Crawl

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A bloody thriller about a drifter called Mick.

The team behind competitive hack-and-slash Crawl, one of the best local multiplayer games on PC, have announced The Drifter, a pulpy pixel art point-and-click starring a murdered man who's brought back to life.

You'll play Mick Carter, who's having a very bad day. As soon as he returns to his old home town he witnesses a gruesome murder before meeting his own demise at the hands of mystery assailants. Then—and this is where it gets weird—he regains consciousness a few seconds before his death, only this time he's been framed for the original murder. You'll have to clear your name while also finding out who's hunting you, and why.

Australian studio Powerhoof's story description on the Steam page is pretty vague, but expect corporate conspiracy, plenty of exaggerated violence, and a dash of the supernatural: Mick reckons "something followed him back from the other side".

It'll control like a traditional point-and-click, but the puzzles won't be as tough as the classics. The emphasis is very much on story, with the puzzles being "down-to-earth [and] unobtrusive", Powerhoof says.

"We're keeping the pacing quick and lean, you'll never be wandering around lost for long periods—Mick is propelled through the story at a good clip, from one situation to another," the team says.

The release date is simply listed as "when it's done".

As well as The Drifter, Powerhoof are working on platformer Acid Knife, which Shaun was keen on after his hands-on earlier this month.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.