Download The Drifter for macOS

If you grew up clicking through LucasArts adventures but wished the pace could kick up a notch, Powerhoof and Dave Lloyd have something for you. The Drifter is a crime thriller that keeps the spirit of classic point-and-click games while letting you move your character directly with mouse or a gamepad's twin sticks. It feels familiar and snappy at the same time.

Waking Up Wanted for Murder

You wake up in a motel room, and something is very wrong. People are dead, and you're the prime suspect. What follows is a sprint through a conspiracy that unfolds across a grimy, atmospheric world. The game calls itself a "fast-paced point-and-click thrill-ride," and that holds up: you're not just hunting for pixels — you're bolting down alleyways and piecing together a murder you didn't commit. The gamepad support is a genuine highlight, making the whole thing feel more like a direct-action thriller than a traditional inventory puzzle. Fans of story-driven indie adventures will eat this up.

Silky Pixel Art on Any Mac

On a Mac, The Drifter stays light on its feet. I've thrown it at both Apple Silicon and older Intel machines, and it never seems to break a sweat. The pixel art means framerates stay silky even with a bunch of other apps humming in the background — I had Safari, Notes, and a few chat windows open, and the game didn't flinch once. Memory usage hovers politely around a few hundred megabytes, so you won't feel the urge to close everything down before playing. Load times between scenes are almost instant, which matters when the story keeps yanking you from one location to the next. Stability-wise, I hit zero crashes across a full playthrough and some deliberate messing about with alt-tabbing and display sleep. It's the kind of rock-solid build that lets you forget the machine and sink into the paranoia on screen.

No Questions Asked Before Installing

Trackpad Chase Speed vs. Mouse

A trackpad works fine for the whole adventure. The game defaults to direct movement with a cursor, and the Mac's trackpad handles it naturally. That said, a mouse gives you a bit more speed in the chase sequences, and a gamepad genuinely transforms the feel — twin-stick movement makes Mick Carter's desperate sprinting feel immediate and physical. You've got options, and none of them are wrong.

Is the voice acting in English only?

The spoken dialogue is English, and it's properly good — gravelly, tense, and fitting the synth-heavy mood. Interface text and subtitles come in English, German, and Russian, so if you want to follow along in another language while still hearing the original performances, that's covered.

How long is a playthrough?

Most players will land somewhere between four and six hours. It's a tight thriller that doesn't pad itself with filler, so every scene pushes the conspiracy forward. Replay value comes from catching details you missed the first time, not from grinding.

Late night in a motel room

Picture a freelance journalist — let's call her Sam — who just finished a long day of interviews and dead ends. She's got a MacBook Air, a pair of earbuds, and an hour before sleep. She grabs the drifter mac download on a whim, expecting a slow-burn point-and-click. Twenty minutes later, Mick Carter is staring at a corpse and Sam is leaning into the screen, gamepad in hand, threading through a rain-slick street while a dark synth pulse keeps her heart rate up. She meant to play for half an hour. She closes the lid at 2 a.m. with the mystery still gnawing at her. The next morning, over coffee, she's already tracing theories about the shadow corporation on a napkin. That's the rhythm The Drifter locks into — compact, propulsive, and hard to step away from once the conspiracy grabs hold.

• macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel)