If you’re an indie dev, isometric is where it’s at. We’ve seen a slew of isometric/top-down games in recent years. From the more recent Ruiner to the record-breaking Divinity 2, this is simply the way that indie games are going, and Fool’s Theory new game Seven, shows us exactly why. With a blend of old-school styles but with all the trappings of a AAA title in crafting and exploration, Seven looks to bridge the gap between mainstream and underground.

Seven: The Days Long Gone is created by Fools Theory, a new developer with a blend of indie game experience like Hard West and AAA experience like Witcher 2 and Witcher 3. But unlike Hard West, a game that suffered a bit from a muddled story, Seven looks more akin to the personality of the Witcher franchise, with a plethora of characters, quests, and an open-world to explore. And it was the open-world that caught our and everyone else’s eye.

Fools Theory admitted that the open-world is at the heart of Seven, but Seven seeks to portray it a little differently. The game captures the exploration and whimsy of old-school games like Fallout and Arcanum while bringing the cinematic feel of zip-lining and parkouring your way through dozens of environments. One of the things that felt the most restrictive of isometric games in the past was the inability to clamor around the environments, but Seven does away with that, encouraging the player to fully explore, to vault over objects and to find the most creative way into and out of every situation.

In the most recent trailer above, the player leaps off a roof, lands on a bridge, and bursts into a house only to open the window and leap out of it, running across a rooftop then rolling onto the ground after landing. Maybe in Assassin’s Creed, this would seem common, but in the likes of the top-down and isometric, it’s pretty far from normal.

Combined with a slew of skills and mini-games akin to both the lock-picking from Fallout 3 as well as the simple puzzles of Bioshock, Seven has ambitions far beyond its retro-style. The devs are quick to point out that players can build for stealth or combat, utilize ranged weapons or magic, and even explore a crafting system. The game is, just through concept and mechanics alone, on par with what one would expect from a AAA title, but it still looks like an indie game.

We’ll have to wait until Dec. 1 to find out if Seven is as good as it looks, but the stealth, magic, open-world, crafting we’ve seen so far has us pretty convinced.