Shortly before Christmas, last year, I put myself into a bit of a routine.

It was of the meditative kind; drawing lines in the sand from dawn to dusk as I watered the greens, let out the hens, fed the goats and brewed cheese against a sunset interjected every odd day by the postman.

Actually I think he was a bit of business man because he did seem to bring with him bundles of goat-feed and goats that he’d willingly trade for some of my homemade cheese. But there were letters, always from family in the city.

These spelt doom most of the time and rightfully, little by little the chickens disappeared, the weather turned brutish, my goats wouldn’t eat nor would Mr. Postman show up. Yeah, that was pretty much Where The Goats Are left me.

You must imagine my interest then when I found its creator making a new thing some months later.

Which on the surface might seem like the old thing wrapped in a package of expanded narrative/visual depth but is probably offering more than meets the eye here, given creator Coyan Cardenas’ penchant for the minimal, intense and deliberate.

With Australian publishers Surprise Attack backing his attempts this time around, Cardenas brands The Stillness of The Wind a follow-up. Sure Talma, previously Tikvah, has pretty much the same described routine and letters to contend with.

But in place of the top-down field-of-view are wide-camera shots that welcome the sun. What was once a four-sided lot has proper room allotted to cheese-making, goats, crops and plenty of props.

A fine day.#indiedev #indiegame #gamedev #madewithunity #unity3d pic.twitter.com/5tUUQTqlDv

— MEMORYOFGOD (@MemoryofGod) January 12, 2018

The press kit additionally shows Talma tilling the soil in point n’ click fashion which hints at mechanics not previously featured on Where The Goats Are. Indoor shots and guns too.

Plus Mr. Postman is far more talkative than I previously remember him to be, and comes with a reworked user interface that boasts of an enlarged roster of items he has for sale – poppy seeds and shotgun shells even.

#TheStillnessOfTheWind is my new game about the last days of an elderly goat farmer, made as a rumination on life and loss. In just under six hours it gets officially announced! pic.twitter.com/BaZY2AUOeB

— The Stillness Of The Wind (@stillnessgame) April 10, 2018