TUAW's Daily App: feelforit
I visited IndieCade here in LA this past weekend, and I got to play some of the best indie games on offer over the past year. There are a few more write-ups on upcoming iPhone and iPad titles coming out later on today, but feelforit is one of the finalists that's already out for you to download (for free) on the App Store, so I suggest you give it a try. Developer Chris DeLeon is quite a character -- he made "an experimental interactive thing every day for ~7 months" for a game-a-day project. Just loading up feelforit shows you what he's talking about: interactive experiences that make you consider the world from a new angle. That's exactly what feelforit does -- it offers up random puzzles that require you to tilt the iPhone or iPad to a certain place in order to line up colored lines in the right locations.
Even after playing around with the app for a while, I still feel like I have no acuity for it (pardon the angular pun). But DeLeon was right when he told me that you can't think your way through it. You need to move the iPhone around until it "feels" like you're in the right place. It's barely a game since there's no time limit or requirement; there's just a reward once you've reached your goal. It's fascinating, though, and even more so because it only uses the iPhone's accelerometer, not the gyroscope or compass.
Anyway, the concept is hard to explain, but just trust me and give the game a download. DeLeon and his games are one reason that the iPhone and the App Store are so popular with indie developers -- they can easily release their experiences to a wide audience without having to worry about commercial pressure. App Store customers should be glad to have them around.
