Tag: touch

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You’re one step closer to actually touching Lumino City

The narrative arc of history bends towards our being able to reach through a screen and actually touch Lumino City. Everything between now and then is just a stopgap measure.  Meet the latest stopgap, Lumino City for iPad and iPhone: You may have noticed that it looks just like Lumino City, as well it should. The buildings are all still made out of paper and delicately pieced together. The scenes have still been filmed with a shallow depth of field, giving everything a toy-like quality. This world is still full of puzzles that the game’s animated lead must traverse. The…
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Cultivate a meditative bonsai garden in your pocket with Prune

We have a lot to thank trees for. Aside from—you know—letting us breathe and all, science also tells us that cultivating plant life can actually boost your serotonin (like an antidepressant) and your immune system. Permaculturists call it the “harvest high,” known to both quell anxiety and build a sense of self-worth. Like players in a videogame, gardeners love seeing their visible and positive impact on the world around them, watching the fruits of their labor take shape right before their eyes. Games like Harvest Moon show just how similar the reward system for gardening and gaming can be—though, granted, the feedback loop…
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Helix, the weirdly sedate new game from Michael Brough, is out now

In his first proper release since last year’s titanic cyber-roguelike 868-Hack (which made our top ten games of 2013), Michael Brough aims for something weirdly sedate. The aesthetic remains defiantly his—glitchy, esoteric, and weirdly lithe—but the movements now are not excruciatingly economic or abstract but simple: you’re drawing circles. Circles and circles and circles. In a post on his blog, Brough details the thought process behind the game: initially an experiment in making touch controls work, it laid dormant for several years, needing a handful of polishing touches that he couldn’t convince himself to sit down and do. He apparently…
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Who needs iPhones when we have gigantic storytelling ribbons?

Touch-screens are pretty great for mobile phones, except when you’re typing, and cutting-and-pasting, and, well, a bunch of other stuff, but using a touch-screen at a museum takes the ritual out of running your fingers through those old archives. So The Museum of The History of Polish Jews in Warsaw commissioned this statuesque, narrative ribbon that looks like a gull with spread wings on which to present the stories of Semitic Poland. Called Macrofilm, this one-of-a-kind slide projector allows visitors to spin a hand-sized wheel to scroll through cards. It was important for them to come up with an unique experience…