Snowman, the team that brought you the award-winning endless snowboard odyssey Alto’s Adventure, is hard at work on a major new title, Distant. It’s a brand new project that Snowman is co-developing in partnership with a talented Australian studio called Slingshot & Satchel.
As a platformer, Distant is quite a departure from Alto’s Adventure. The game is coming some time in 2017 to Macs, PCs, consoles and the fourth-generation Apple TV.
Here’s a brief snippet about the game:
Distant takes you on a wondrous voyage through pastel dreamscapes, to prevent a calamity from consuming the world you once knew. Along the way, you’ll confront an inescapable past, and learn how much you’re willing to sacrifice in your search for solace.
One thing is evidently clear from the official trailer embedded below: Distant will take you on a wondrous voyage through fantastical, lore-filled universe and some gorgeously designed pastel dreamscapes which you must save from destruction, as it appears.
“We know this first peek might leave you with more questions than answers, and we can’t wait for everyone to unravel Distant’s mysteries in the months ahead,” teased Snowman. The teaser video gives a glimpse of a cloaked character who can be seed jumping across a large gap between two rocky plinths in a dark cavern.
So far so good!
And if these screenshots are an indication, the game is packed to the gills with various obstacles and epic landscapes such as towering peaks, moonlit shores, vibrant meadows, cavernous labyrinths and more. Snowman’s Ryan Cash didn’t have any information about release dates or pricing for Distant at press time, but we’ll make sure to keep you in the loop as new information becomes available.
According to an interview with Megan and Chris from Slingshot & Satchel over at Kill Screen, Distant is a platformer focused on “the elegance of movement”.
In the team’s own words:
Exploring that juxtaposition between fluidity and precision led us to contemplate notions of the link between beauty and decay, which led to the seeds of Distant. That feeling of searching for home and trying to satiate the desire to belong is something that has very much guided the development of Distant’s story.
Without giving too much away, Distant is our attempt to take a meaningful pause and reexamine what aspects of traditional genres like platformers might be walled off unnecessarily. To marry traditionally disparate concepts like ‘zen play’ and tight, satisfying challenge and explore a tonal space where they might not be so mutually exclusive after all.
Not much else is revealed regarding Distant aside from confirming that the official website will be “gradually updated to reveal more of the game.”
By the way, Snowman also teamed up with Los Angeles-based studio The Game Band on Where Cards Fall for 2017, a puzzle-based game described as a “dreamlike journey through youthful uncertainty.”
You can read more about Where Cards Fall in our preview and watch a teaser trailer here.
To sign up to be notified about Distant news, head over to the official website.