Witness The Awesome iPad Game That Lets Your Fingers Get Intimate With The Universe

Steph Thirion’s games understand the power of touch. While most iOS games require tactile contact to play, so few translate what it means to touch in real life. Touching a thing or a person can connect you to it intimately. Think about touching ingredients when you cook or affectionate laying hands on a romantic partner. There’s an specific kind of pleasure and feedback that comes from that dynamic and Thirion’s Eliss — one of our iPad Bests — revels in that

While at GDC, I took a look at the indie designer’s in-development game Faraway. It lets you soar across the galaxy and draw constellations to harvest energy to keep a dying comet alive. Faraway‘s fun to play in a gotta-keep-going kind of way but there’s also a specific kind of poetry at work here, where going to new places and creating unique patterns generates its own rewards. I think Faraway‘s going to be great whenever it comes out.