With a extra conventional side-on pixel artwork presentation, you would possibly assume that The Drifter takes a extra nostalgic strategy to its tackle the point-and-click journey than, say, Nirvana Noir. After all, given how synonymous Lucas Arts video games like Monkey Island have been with the style, they nonetheless had some plain affect on how Dave Lloyd of the two-person indie staff Powerhoof acquired considering making video games within the first place.
“I used to be making little point-and-click adventures again within the early 2000s, and I would at all times made comedy ones as a result of that was simply what you form of bear in mind as a child rising up with stuff like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle,” he tells me. “However [for The Drifter], we weren’t actually drawing inspiration from outdated journey video games, in reality, it is one thing that I used to be making an attempt to keep away from as a lot as potential. It is making an attempt to be extra trendy for individuals who essentially have not grown up taking part in these video games.”
Describing itself as a pulp journey thriller, The Drifter has a quicker, punchier tempo than a typical journey sport, particularly when it opens along with your titular protagonist Mick Carter waking from a boxcar to witness a homicide earlier than he escapes from gunfire, solely to wind up getting chained down in a reservoir to drown. Much more adrenaline-pumping than your normal inventory-puzzling and chatting to NPCs for clues, although that does nonetheless exist.
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(Picture credit score: Powerhoof)
A novel affect
“I used to be positively influenced much more by thriller novels and movies than by different video games,” says Dave. From the voiced dialogue, it is also evident that it is a sport set in Australia, the fictional metropolis that includes the form of crimson brick structure that you’re going to discover within the developer’s residence of Melbourne. Whereas it is one thing of a rarity to see Australian illustration in a sport, the setting was to maintain all the pieces grounded.
“I needed the character to really feel like an actual particular person, and I feel if I made them American, I really feel like I would not be capable to know whether or not they’d really feel grounded,” Lloyd explains. “I additionally actually like the brand new wave of Australian cinema and Ozploitation, when folks got here and acquired funding to make schlocky B-movies.”
(Picture credit score: Powerhoof)
The Drifter could be the developer’s first narrative sport as a business launch, as its earlier titles are extra arcade-like, sofa co-op affairs, however the sport’s origins had come from a sport jam in 2017 when in simply 5 days, Dave and studio associate and artwork director Barney Cummings made Peridium, a brief point-and-click journey sport that took a extra horror thriller vibe than the style’s extra typical mild and comedic mould.
“I used to be actually shocked at how a lot influence I used to be in a position to get simply with organising the scene with some writing and having the music and audio set as much as be actually pumping, including layers of stress, and having gritty artwork with lots of low color and excessive distinction,” Dave explains. “After we watched Let’s Play movies, gamers would begin panicking and clicking actually quick, though it is not an motion sport. Simply seeing that form of response made me actually wish to do one thing at full scale.”
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Lots of the design round Peridium has carried over to The Drifter, together with the PowerQuest, a instrument for making 2D journey video games in Unity that Dave made and has shared with the group.
“What acquired me into making video games within the first place was a extremely outdated instrument referred to as Journey Recreation Studio, which persons are nonetheless utilizing, as a result of it makes it really easy to leap in and simply begin telling a narrative on this style,” Dave says. “In order that’s form of what I needed to convey to Unity. I needed to have that workflow that is simply actually streamlined and satisfying to make use of, and you continue to acquired that energy that you’ve got with Unity and importing, if you wish to chuck in some 3D high-res shader artwork.”
(Picture credit score: Powerhoof)
Pixel artwork nostalgia
Powerhoof is, nonetheless, maintaining its aesthetic distinctly pixel-focused and crunchy, which Barney Cummings has hung out experimenting with, with inspiration harking again even earlier laptop video games with extra graphical constraints.
“Some actually outdated PC video games had solely 16 colors the place the artists needed to actually depend on some actually attention-grabbing color selections as a result of they’d have a color crimson and in the event that they needed a darker crimson, there wasn’t one, so that they needed to with purple, and also you’d get these attention-grabbing trying scenes the place you’d have purples, reds and greens all subsequent to one another,” Dave explains.
He provides: “One thing that Barney did quite a bit was he would possibly begin with a boring darkish blue after which push that into a cool inexperienced color. So you actually discover these colors that do not form of look fairly proper, however they one way or the other all work collectively. It is one thing that I am actually pleased with.”
Simply from the opening prologue you could play from the Steam demo, you possibly can respect how the low-res pixel aesthetic is executed, all of the extra spectacular with its nighttime setting, the place all the results you see are hand-animated with some deliberately wobbly backgrounds and with none trendy lighting results.
(Picture credit score: Powerhoof)
The Drifter releases for PC on 17 July, with a Nintendo Change launch deliberate for 2025. Go to the Powerhoof web site for extra particulars.
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