Alto's Adventure developer announces DISTANT – and we hope it's Android-bound

Snowman, the developer of the hit Android and iOS snowboarding game Alto’s Adventure, has unveiled its latest project, DISTANT. The game, which is being created in partnership with Australian indie developer Slingshot & Satchel, was revealed in a blog post yesterday along with its first trailer.

The video captures a similar ethereal tone to that of Alto’s Adventure and takes place inside a cavern. A caped avatar is seen attempting to jump between two columns and looks set to fall short. However, it is propelled forward by an unknown force to make it to the other side. Take a look at it in the official trailer below.

In an interview with Killscreen, Chris Wearing, who formed Slingshot & Satchel with his fiancé Megan Campbell, said, “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.”

Snowman said that DISTANT is coming to Mac, PC, console, and Apple TV in its announcement post, but added that it currently doesn’t have any information regarding release dates or pricing.

Though there’s no mention of Android there, a port remains a possibility: Snowman co-founder Ryan Cash confirmed to us that the game is being developed on Unity, a game engine renowned for its cross-platform compatibility. Moreover, the GPU requirements for Mac, PC and Linux on Unity is Open GL. Android and iOS make use of Open GL ES, so if I’m not barking up the wrong tree, any graphical limitations either don’t exist or should be relatively easily overcome. Alto’s Adventure was also ported to Google’s platform almost a year after being released on iOS.

You can keep tabs on DISTANT’s progress via its Twitter, Facebook and YouTube channels, as well as on the Snowman Blog. If you’re as keen to see DISTANT make it to Android as I am, feel free to throw your support behind a mobile adaptation via the social channels mentioned above.