Trailer: The dreamlike Where Cards Fall will arrive in 2017

Roughly a year into full-time work on a game supported by the team behind mobile hit Alto’s Adventure, The Game Band is finally ready to showcase a slice of its narrative-driven Where Cards Fall.

Last November, indie studio Snowman announced that it would lend The Game Band some of the talent that went into one of the prettiest endless runners to ever hit the Play Store — that’d be Alto’s Adventure.

Since then, Snowman has been supporting The Game Band with art, design and marketing for Where Cards Fall. The Game Band’s founder, Sam Rosenthal, has some solid cred of his own. He worked on Disney’s Where’s My Water and Activision’s toys-to-life series Skylanders.

But up until recently, all we had to go on, beyond impressive resumes and a story from The Verge, was a piece of concept art. But late last month, we got this:

Inspired by Radiohead’s “House of Cards,” a song that seems to be about breaking up to built something new, Where the Cards fall is a coming of age story in which the narrative is driven by cards you built up and knock down. The cards make up the game world. The compose houses, parts of the landscapes, landmarks and so on.

The same deck of cards can be reconstructed to solve puzzles and progress the story, The Game Band’s Sam Rosenthal said in an interview with The Verge. It’s a casual game that won’t deviate from its core mechanic, but it sounds like Rosenthal and company are hoping it’s the game’s atmosphere and experience that’ll resonate with players rather than hooking the in with addicting gameplay.

“We’re aiming for the game to feel like a bittersweet memory of adolescence,” says Rosenthal. “Our visuals and soundscape are welcoming, yet slightly unnerving and melancholic.”

It doesn’t have a release date yet, but Where Cards Fall ‘s launch has been placed in the wide window of 2017. No platforms have been announced for the game — we’ll keep our petitions handy just in case the Android OS gets snubbed. Will you be keeping an eye on this one? Let us know in the comments.