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A ‘Firewatch’ or ‘Fire Lookout’ was a job favoured by rugged mountain men and poets of the Beat generation, now favoured by people who wish they had been poets of the Beat generation, those trying to get over bad break-ups, and recovering alcoholics. This Firewatch in particular is the first game by Campo Santo, a new studio made up of veteran game designers from the likes of Telltale Games (The Walking Dead series), Klei Entertainment (Mark of the Ninja, Don’t Starve, Invisible Inc.) and 2K Marin (Bioshock 2). With such venerable institutional knowledge behind them, and Firewatch’s deliberate attempts to be something of an ‘art game’, Firewatch could very much be the closest thing indie games have had to ‘Oscar bait’. Thankfully the fledgling studio have managed to create something heartfelt and affecting out of the hype.

Firewatch is something of a light puzzler and walk-’em-up in the vein of (and heavily indebted to) Dear Esther and Gone Home. Players control (although ‘inhabit’ may be a better term) the character of Henry, a schlubby guy approaching middle-age, who takes a summer job as a Fire lookout in the Wyoming wilds of 1989. Henry is running away from his life, for reasons that become apparent in the beautifully crafted introductory sequence. Combining a text-based adventure and a lightweight introduction to the game mechanics, players pick and choose some of the choice moments of Henry’s life, interspersed with his hike to the eponymous Firewatch. It’s a bold opening, offering little in the way of “gaming”, but managing to pack an emotional punch as memorable and melancholy as Up’s heart-breaking introduction. The rest of the game follows the flow of Henry’s brief hike; you walk, you climb a bit, and you take in the delightful, almost cartoon-like vistas of the National Park. Players looking for an adrenaline pounding action-adventure like Uncharted will have to look elsewhere, as Firewatch’s charm lies in its gentle pace, warm landscapes, and emotionally charged narrative.

Once you arrive at the Firewatch, you’re greeted by Delilah, your sole companion throughout the game. Delilah is staying in the other lookout; a small beacon of light on the distant mountain top, but the distance between you doesn’t diminish her presence. Delilah (video game voice acting veteran Cissy Jones) is hard to summarise as a character; she’s your boss, your mentor in the wilderness, your guide through the game, but also your friend, and an important presence for Henry during this strange summer in the wilds. A voice at the other end of a radio has rarely meant more, and the developing relationship between her and Henry (voiced by Rich Sommer, who Mad Men fans will recognise as the irrepressibly slimey Harry Crane, taking a wonderful left turn here) is the emotional core to Firewatch’s twisty, eerie plot and lightly-adventurous gameplay. It’s hard to understate how central this relationship is to Firewatch without giving much away, but it’s rare that a game has devoted this much energy to developing a relationship between its characters, and rarer still that that relationship feels as natural and genuine as Harry’s and Delilah’s.

However, this moving centrepoint is let down by Firewatch’s plot. It’s a well trodden path; you’re in the woods, isolated from civilisation and telephones, and weird stuff starts happening. Again, it is hard to delve into this plot without giving too much away, but when strange occurrences begin, they are a welcome interruption to the otherwise mundane duties of the lookout. Unfortunately, as the plot begins to build in momentum, these events – while staying credible and interesting, but increasingly weird – begin to overwhelm the much more relatable, personal relationship at the centre of the game. The ending manages to avoid Twilight Zone cliche, and goes for something much more human. Whether or not the mystery-packed plot will satisfy will probably rely on how invested you were in it, and for many I imagine it will leave them feeling a little short-changed. That said, over its all-too-brief six or so hour running time, Firewatch manages to do something astonishing. In a gaming landscape packed with cold-blooded super-soldiers, hyper-violent twitch shooters and bloated open world mayhem simulators, Campo Santo have crafted something gentle, warm and incredibly human. Firewatch won’t be for everyone, but for those who give it their time, they may find something bittersweet and beautiful out in the woods.