Firewatch, which comes out for PC and Playstation 4 Feb. 9, is the first game from indie studio Campo Santo. Set in the late 1980s, it tells the tale of Henry, a woebegone fire lookout trying to escape the emotional toll of a ruined marriage. (Henry is voiced by Mad Men actor Rich Sommer.) It’s also absolutely gorgeous. TIME games critic Matt Peckham writes in his review of Firewatch:
I love the audacity of a game like Firewatch. Not just its grand WPA-style look, but Campo Santo’s attempt to lay out a quasi-open-world experience that’s not about fighting or collecting or “beating” anything, and where the action-adventure premise slyly becomes an experience tuned more to the frequency of a Raymond Carver or Richard Ford story. … Ultimately we need more games like this, not fewer.
Check out a few minutes of gameplay above.
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Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com