If you’ve not seen it yet, the trailer for a Russian indie game called Stealer is the best game trailer I’ve seen this year, by a wide margin:

So who is the man who made this utterly beguiling combination of Limbo, Hotline: Miami, and Blade Runner? The developer goes by the nom de game Winged Doom and he’s a bit of a mystery. He describes himself on his website as “random guy who likes oldskool”. Above this line is a moody, smoke-shrouded image. If this indeed Winged Doom, he looks like a man who has looked too far into the art of games and now bears a heavy burden communicating its truths to the world.

After Stealer received a flurry of attention over the past few days, Winged Doom yesterday posted this notice on his site:

Thanks to all guys who liked STEALER’s trailer. It is inspiring and gives strength to move forward. And thanks to all guys who irritate this video because it is not clear what will be the game. You helped me with understanding my motives and point in all this. 

The video does not feature scenes with gameplay, this is a promotional video. It passes author’s vision of project and mood, yes it’s mockup. To be perfectly honest I’m not sure about gameplay. Working on it now, but don’t know what i get, because I’m novice. Will it be a game in final? I do not know, I groping in dark. The only thing I can be sure that i want to create a living world. If I fail with gameplay or will not justify expectations of people who saw movie and say “wow!” I’m not too upset. My main goal extract this world from head to virtual reality. And gameplay resources for this purpose is ideal. 

I do not see anything wrong or irritating in this conception because imho that essence of indie movement – do what you like, without looking at anything. 

So what kind of game is Stealer, other than an awesome one? On the Mod DB page for the game, Winged Doom describes it as “something like Sokoban, but platformer, with focusing on atmosphere and exploration.”

So we don’t know a lot. What we do know is that Winged Doom’s Twitter description now reads like a prophecy:

@WINGEDD00M

came out of nowhere and is gonna be famous @phubans