Constellations: First Dark

Rest your eyes on a waiting star and it kindles. A line follows. Keep looking, and a figure comes out of the dark.

Constellations is 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

The first chapter is a complete night: seven figures, about twenty minutes, and an ending that says so. It is free forever, and it is not a demo. Nobody knows whether eye tracking will work for their eyes until they try it, and asking for money before that is asking you to gamble on your own face.

THE SKY LEARNS YOUR EYES

Every star you light teaches the game where your eyes actually are. 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 is there to start over with rather than something to get through.

BUILT TO BE PLAYABLE

How long a star waits before it lights is yours to set, from brisk to very forgiving — and it is free, forever, like every other control here. So is the reach, reduced motion, a colour-blind-safe palette, blink-to-choose, and a full touch mode for anyone the camera cannot read or who would rather not switch it on. Nothing about accessibility is ever behind a price, and nothing you have already drawn is ever taken away.

NOTHING IS RECORDED

No photograph, no video, no audio. The camera feed is read frame by frame by Apple's face tracking and discarded. Nothing about your face, your gaze, or your sky ever leaves this device.

FORTY-THREE FIGURES, SEVEN NIGHTS

Every figure is a real constellation, standing 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 deliberately rather than rolling into the next. Twenty minutes is the session this is built for. Ending well is a feature.

BEFORE YOU BUY

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 need a hand rather than an eye, and both of them belong to iOS rather than to us: the camera permission prompt, and the App Store payment sheet. Everything in between is yours to do by looking.