Videogames have a dearth of good Americana. We're lacking many games about exploring the frontier, or living in a dead-end town; those small, slice of life stories that that rely on mood and setting to portray a facet of what it means to be a normal person living in the isolated parts of the United States.

That's why I'm so excited for Firewatch, a first-person narrative game developed by Campo Santo, a small independent team of industry veterans based out of San Francisco. (Formerly, founders Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman led the development and writing of Telltale Games' acclaimed adventure game version of The Walking Dead.) Even more exciting, a release date was just announced: the game will be available February 9, 2016, on Windows, Mac, Linux, and PlayStation 4.

Firewatch takes place in the Wyoming wilderness. You play as Henry, a Colorado native who takes a job as a fire lookout in the middle of nowhere to escape his failing marriage and generally collapsing personal life. Henry's only companion is Delilah, his supervisor, available through a small handheld radio. Other than that, it's just him, the orange rays of the sun, and whiffs of smoke in the evening air. Or so he thinks: the few hints of plot shown focus on a mystery of a strange, possibly dangerous man who keeps appearing in the distance.

What I've seen of the game so far does an excellent job of capturing the feeling of hiking in remote parts of the country, feeling like you're the only person for miles, knowing that you probably are. It helps that the visual style is so arresting. It's a little cartoony, a throwback to the heyday of cel-shading in the mid-aughts that gives Campo Santo room to move away from strict realism in the interest of getting the feeling of the place right.

The colors, in particular, heavily saturated and cut with an abundance of sunlight, are perfect. The trees become extra stylized the further away on the horizon they get, making the Wyoming outdoors feel impossibly large. It's enough to conjure every state park I've ever stood in awe of.

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The game seems poised to offer an experience that feels American in a way most games don't, gesturing toward the way the country's open spaces shape the way we conceive space, relationships, and ourselves. That's a lot to ask of any game, but Campo Santo so far is hitting the right notes.

There are other elements of Firewatch that pique my interest—the voice acting appears to be excellent, and the dialogue in the trailers is lively and clever. But it's that sense of distinctly American frontier majesty that has me waiting, hiking boots in hand, to see if the game lives to its promise.