Firstlight is a small god game for iPhone and iPad, out now on the App Store. You begin in an empty dark with a handful of drifting specks, and your only power is your hand: pick things up, throw them, and smash them together. Do it well and you'll make stars, worlds and, eventually, life. Then that life starts looking back.
It began as a deliberately small project. I gave myself two or three days to build a browser game around one idea: what if you were a god, but all you could do was throw things? The idea turned out to have more in it than I expected, and those few days grew into the most complete game I've made. It costs £1.99, with a launch price of £0.99, and there are no ads, no in-app purchases and no account. You pay once and the whole game is yours.
Creation
Everything in Firstlight comes from a pair of things and a speed. Two specks of hydrogen thrown together gently make gas. Throw them hard and they make a star. Rock and ice become worlds, worlds thrown at a star fall into orbit, and a world in the temperate band, neither scorching nor frozen, can grow life.
There are 26 recipes to find, from comets and nebulae to neutron stars, black holes and Dyson swarms. Each one goes into a recipe book in the menu once you've found it, so you can try for the rest on purpose.
Civilisation
This is the part I'm proudest of. Given time, a living world becomes a civilisation, and civilisations grow up. First they raise shields, and hard throws bounce off. Then they learn to push your throws aside, and then to shoot them down. The move that built their solar system no longer works on it.
They don't only react to you. They spread to other worlds, make peace or go to war with their neighbours, and in time send probes out into the dark to look for the hand that made them.
What kind of god are you?
Once they notice you, the game stops being about how much you can make and becomes about how you treat the people you made. A gentle throw into a shield is taken as a gift, and gifts build trust. You can tip the balance of their wars, or leave them to it. You can hide from their probes, strike them down, or let one find you.
Those choices decide how your universe ends. There are six endings, and some of them you're unlikely to find on your first playthrough.
Game Center
Firstlight has 26 Game Center achievements, from your first star through to every ending. Your universe saves on your device, so you can close the app and pick up where you left off.
Try it first
The opening of the game is free to play in your browser at casualfridays.co.uk. It runs from the first speck to your first living world. The full game picks up where the demo stops, at the point where life starts looking back.
That's Firstlight. It's £0.99 on the App Store until 27 November, then £1.99. If you play it, I'd love to hear which ending you found first, and a rating or review on the App Store goes a long way for a small game like this.