Constellations

Rest your eyes on a waiting star and it kindles.

An iPhone game played by looking at it. The front camera follows where your eyes rest — no tapping, no dragging, no hurry. There is no timer, no score, and no way to lose. Looking somewhere else simply does nothing.

First Dark is free iPhone XS and later Nothing is recorded
Cassiopeia half drawn. Four stars are lit and joined by a line of light; a ring is closing around the next star, showing how long is left before it kindles.

how it works

You look at a star. It waits, then it lights.

A ring closes around whatever you are resting on. When it finishes, the star kindles and a line runs out to the next one. Keep looking, and a figure comes out of the dark.

The sky learns your eyes as you play. Every star you light teaches the game where your gaze actually lands, so it is better at the end of a session than at the start — and it remembers between them. There is a calibration screen, but it exists to start over with rather than to get through.

The Southern Cross, finished — four bright stars joined into a kite, with its story written underneath.
A figure finishes Each one closes with a single line about what it meant to whoever named it.
Your sky: seven finished constellations laid out in a grid, seven of forty-three drawn.
The night fills up Everything you have drawn, kept. Nothing is ever taken back.
The end of First Dark, with the line: everything here was lit by somebody, once.
A night ends deliberately About twenty minutes, then a real ending. Ending well is a feature.

built to be playable

Every accessibility control is free, forever.

How long a star waits before it lights is yours to set, from brisk to very forgiving. It is the difference between restful and impossible depending on whose eyes are reading it, so it is never behind a price — and neither is anything else here.

  • The dwell — how long a star waits, from brisk to very forgiving
  • The reach — how close your gaze has to land
  • Play by touch — hold a finger where you would look, with nothing withheld
  • Blink to choose — so that reading a menu is never choosing from it
  • Reduced motion and a colour-blind-safe palette
The How you play screen, showing the dwell set to 1.15 seconds and the reach to 75 points across, with toggles for touch, blink to choose and reduced motion.

the sky

Forty-three real constellations, across seven nights.

Every figure stands where it truly stands. First Dark is the sky you already half-know — the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia, the Swan, the Southern Cross.

First Dark. The Long Cold. Emberfall. The Green Hour. Highwater. Last Light. And The Far South, the half of the sky that never rises over most of the world. Each night has its own palette and its own drone, and each one ends rather than rolling into the next.

The three prices: one dollar ninety-nine, four ninety-nine, and nine ninety-nine, all unlocking the same sky.

what it costs

The first night is free, and it is not a demo.

First Dark is a complete night — seven figures, about twenty minutes, and an ending that says so. Nobody knows whether eye tracking will work for their eyes until they try it, and asking for money before that is asking somebody to gamble on their own face.

The six nights after it open together, once, for whichever price is right for you. Same sky at every price. Bought once, never a subscription.

$1.99 Someone lit this for you Take it. No reason needed.
$4.99 Light your own sky The ordinary price.
$9.99 Light one for somebody else Pays for a sky at the first price.

privacy

Nothing is recorded. Nothing leaves your device.

No photograph, video, or audio is captured, saved, or retained. The camera feed is read frame by frame by Apple's face tracking and discarded — the app never receives an image of you and has no code capable of storing one.

Your calibration, your settings and every figure you have drawn are written only to your own device. There is no account and no login.

Read the full privacy policy →

It costs us nothing to make, because we never wanted the data in the first place — we only ever wanted to know which star you were looking at. From the privacy policy

before you start

Two moments need a hand.

Face tracking needs an iPhone with an A12 chip or later — iPhone XS and newer. Without it the game plays by touch instead, with nothing withheld.

Two moments belong to iOS rather than to us, and neither can be driven by looking: the camera permission prompt, and the App Store payment sheet. Everything in between is yours to do by eye.