Imagine a game where you’re stuck in a grindhouse Groundhog Day. You keep dying, and you have to find a way to stop the cycle.
And no, it’s not Elden Ring. It’s The Drifter.
The Drifter scooped the pool at the Australian video game awards in 2026. But what’s so good about this point and click adventure that it won Game of the Year?
I’d been watching the development of The Drifter for many years at PAX, excited to play a game that channelled my love of LucasArts point and click adventures into a truly Australian story. The demo got me excited enough to put it on my wishlist, but it did NOT prepare me for the gonzo, Terry Gilliam-style, brilliance of The Drifter. This game channels the iconic film 12 Monkeys into a gritty Australian thriller.
You play Mick Carter, a regular Aussie bloke hitching a ride on a train back home for his mother’s funeral, when weird shit starts happening. And I mean weird. Soon the carriage is attacked, and Mick’s on the run. Whether he’s pursued by supernatural forces or a secret military force is at the crux of the story. Every time he dies, he comes back to life moments before his death.
This gameplay loop creates moments of genuine tension. The puzzles are challenging, but not so hard that they’re unsolvable. Part of the logic is in figuring out what to do, then figuring out what order to do it in. You’ll die, and die again, each time hoping that this is the round that you get it right. Narrative designers take note. In creating this mechanic, the team has circumnavigated one of the biggest pain points of point-and-click adventures: puzzle lag.
Not once did I feel the story dragged, because everything I needed to do had a logical reason for it, and if I ever got stuck, talking to the characters propelled the narrative along. While the game is divided into chapters, I found myself compelled to see it to the very end. The Drifter should be studied by anyone making a point-and-click adventure. It takes the nostalgic format and makes it something new and exciting, with gorgeous art, a banging soundtrack, and writing that serves the story at every moment.
And if The Drifter inspires you to write your own game, the developers offer their narrative engine, PowerQuest for free on their website. This engine takes inspiration from the classic game developers – LucasArts and Sierra – to help you make 2D point-and-click adventures.
But The Drifter isn’t just running on nostalgia and a sick game engine. The pure Aussie humour ties it all together. Sure, there are classic lateral thinking puzzles, it’s just some are solved by deep logic and some by shitting people off with a leaf-blower.
Humour runs deep in the history of point-and-click adventures – you only need to look at the classics like Monkey Island and Discworld. But here, it’s not only paying tribute to the history of the genre, but also our Australian culture. You could be cracking jokes about someone’s dinky bucket hat one minute, then lamenting your divorce the next. That’s the Aussie way; it’s not that we don’t take these things seriously, but our laconic humour is our way of dealing with the tough times. I hope that international players will appreciate this humour; it was a gift to me to see my own culture represented so accurately in a game.
But don’t let the jokes fool you. Mick’s humour is a deflection mechanism for the deep trauma he’s experienced. He’ll suck you in with his dry sense of humour, then make you cry when he has to face his fears. He speaks with a laid-back charm, kind to those who deserve it, a dickhead to those who don’t.
Game writers should learn from this. Not everyone has to be likable in every moment. Characters can have complex histories and relationships with the people around them. Their backstory makes them who they are in this moment, and coming to terms with that complexity makes for a powerful story arc. The Drifter’s voice is helped greatly by the excellent voice performance by Adrian Vaughan, merging the words with voice to create a truly engaging main character.
What makes this a stand out game is how Mick’s story reflects on larger issues in society. One of the biggest themes in The Drifter is the mistreatment of marginalised people, and how people’s circumstances force them to become homeless. Mick has opted-out of society and his family because of deep personal trauma. The game treats people experiencing homelessness with dignity. They exist as characters, not just cliches.
Early in the game, Mick interacts with the homeless communities, and calls out a young journalist conducting transactional interviews. Characters around him are given agency, character and gentleness.
So did The Drifter earn its Game of the Year award? Absolutely.
It’s a brilliantly written game full of wicked Australian humour and heart. The Drifter takes the tried and true format and brings new mechanics to the genre.
On ya mate.
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