The Drifter

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

The Drifter is a Graphic Adventure released in 2025 on PC and ported to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026. In this game, players take the role of Mick Carter, he game’s titular drifter. A homeless man who’s spent five years away from his hometown and his family, Mick reluctantly agrees to hop a train and return to attend his mother’s funeral. However, things go awry when Mick discovers a conspiracy preying on homeless people resulting in madness and disappearances, with some connection to a dark spec ops team using high-tech gear to kill homeless people who seem to have specifically targeted Mick. Due to unfortunate circumstances, Mick is suspected in the killing of a homeless friend of his, and must contend with both the law and a murderous conspiracy hunting him down while he also tries to contend with his personal family issues.

It’s an interesting and unique story that carries with it some excellent questions that drive the player to continue: what is the nature of the strange conspiracy and why is it targeting homeless people? How will Mick clear his name or evade the authorities when the truth seems so unbelievable? What is the nature of the odd visions Mick is having? What is the truth behind the monstrous creatures that seem to be hunting Mick? What exactly happened to Mick in the past that led to him fleeing his life and becoming a drifter? And why does it seem like Mick keeps dying and then going back to just before his death to try again (apart from, you know, the fact that this is a videogame)?

To the game’s credit, it does a good job handling these questions, thanks to excellent writing with strong characters, and some superb voice acting for everyone involved. Everyone gives a great emotional performance with some good nuance that helps to flesh out their characters. I particularly liked Officer Hara, the police detective hunting down Mick and despite being an early antagonist is just so darn amiable it’s hard not to like him all the same.

I also really respect this game’s handling of the homeless, using an even-handed approach to show us both the good and the bad: Yes, they can be smelly, gross, rude, possibly violent, and at times mentally unstable… but they’re also people, who mostly want to just live their lives as best they can, not be hassled or preyed upon, yet are often dismissed by society as a whole as subhuman, denied even common courtesies and disbelieved before even getting a few words out.

The rest of the presentation here is quite good, with nice 2D pixel art visuals in the classic “Lucasarts” style, with fluid animation and lots of personality, with everything in the scene moving slightly due to the lighting conditions in a way that makes the game’s world look alive. This is backed by an atmospheric soundtrack that works well to set the game’s dark and foreboding mood.

In terms of gameplay, this is a pretty standard “Point and Click”-style Graphic Adventure that uses an interesting mechanic where interactive options in the environment can be easily displayed in a wheel around your character so you don’t have to search for them, so long as they’re reasonably close to your character. This mostly works quite well, though sometimes you have to search for an option a bit longer than you may like because the wheel doesn’t always make it clear which option is which.

Another issue that comes up is that this game doesn’t have any sort of hint system and it can sometimes be maddeningly frustrating figuring out exactly what it is you need to do or where you should be going, sometimes across multiple locations. This gets particularly frustrating when Mick is in imminent danger and you need to figure out what to do quickly, or else die and have to repeat things all over again over and over until you figure out what the game wants from you.

Perhaps more seasoned fans of the genre may find this forced decision-making under the gun to be thrilling, but for me, after the fifth or sixth time dying in the same scene because I didn’t know the exact sequence of actions the game wanted from me, I just found it frustrating. Unless you’re one of those seasoned fans, I recommend having a walkthrough at the ready just in case, and be ready to scan back through it quite a ways, because the thing you may need may be something you missed multiple scenes ago and need to retrace your steps to get.

Still, despite these genre frustrations, The Drifter’s excellent story, characters, voice acting, and presentation are enough that players will still likely want to give this a shot, even if they do so with a walkthrough guide. This may not exactly be the most accessible Graphic Adventure, but it is nevertheless a very good one.

tl;dr – The Drifter is a Graphic Adventure where players control the titular drifter, a homeless man returning to his family after five years only to find a town consumed by a mysterious conspiracy targeting homeless people. The great story, characters, voice acting, and presentation all make this a game well worth playing, even if the unclear gameplay elements and scenes where players are forced to make urgent life-or-death choices are both frequently frustrating. However, as long as you have patience (and possibly a walkthrough guide), the positives here will well outweigh the negatives.

Grade: B

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

The Drifter – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

Genre: Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Another day, another 2D pixel art game inexplicably getting a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. However, this time around there’s reason to hope it may be well-justified. After all, as a “point-and-click” style Graphic Adventure, this is the perfect opportunity to add Mouse Mode controls. Plus, with this being a free upgrade for players who own the Nintendo Switch version of the game, why wouldn’t you upgrade? Let’s have a look and see what you get here!

I’ll just cut to the chase – yes, the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of The Drifter adds dynamic Mouse Mode support, and it’s quite good too. Players can swap their item by using either analog stick, highlight hot spots by pressing a face button, and can deactivate an equipped item by clicking on a non-hotspot area. This last bit seems a bit clunky, but otherwise this is a pretty ideal setup. And the moment it stops working for you, just pick up the Joy-Con 2 and you can go right back to standard gamepad controls.

The eShop page for the game also advertises higher resolution and better framerates but… well, I couldn’t really detect any difference there. This isn’t a super-fast moving game, and the pixels it uses are pretty chunky, so any difference isn’t going to be very noticeable.

There is one other improvement however, and that’s loading times – on Nintendo Switch, it took 26 seconds to load the game to the title screen, and another 4 seconds to load a game save. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times were cut down to 17 seconds and 2 seconds, a nice improvement!

However, I think it’s fair to say that the big improvement here is going to be the addition of Mouse Mode, and that alone makes this well worth its free upgrade. If you have The Drifter on Nintendo Switch and you own a Nintendo Switch 2, you should absolutely download this upgrade.

tl;dr – The Drifter is a Graphic Adventure where players control the titular drifter, a homeless man returning to his family after five years only to find a town consumed by a mysterious conspiracy targeting homeless people. The great story, characters, voice acting, and presentation all make this a game well worth playing, even if the unclear gameplay elements and scenes where players are forced to make urgent life-or-death choices are both frequently frustrating. However, as long as you have patience (and possibly a walkthrough guide), the positives here will well outweigh the negatives, with the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition even adding in some nice Mouse Mode support!

Grade: B

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