Designing ‘Faraway’

Rob Dubbin, writing for The New Yorker:

That year’s festival juries named Faraway a finalist (indie gaming’s Oscar nominee) for Best Mobile Game, as well as an honorable mention (benevolent Oscar snub) in the big-ticket category of Best Design. Faraway was not on my judging docket of randomly assigned games that year, so my iPad was not granted permission to install a provisional copy. At the time, I figured it wouldn’t be long until I could experience the game for myself, as a device-carrying member of the app-consuming public. I even got to try an unfinished version of it once, at the apartment of a friend of the developer, in a somewhat frantic thirty-minute session that left me both slack-jawed with awe and certain I’d no more scratched Faraway’s surface than I had physically exited our solar system’s heliosheath.

That was two years ago.

★ Monday, 6 May 2013