The beam follows your feet

Today I turned in a slow circle, and a beam of light swept a dark sea on my wrist. That is Lighthouse. The Watch compass is the beam: face a ship and it lights, and you play it with your feet instead of your thumb. Hold the beam on a ship for a beat and it turns for open water. Miss it and it finds the rocks, with two low thuds on the wrist.

The first version had a wobble, so the sea slid around under the beam. We made the chart hold still to true north and the beam do the turning, and it finally felt like standing in a lamp room. Then we picked a look: a brass compass bezel, International Code signal flags for north and the rocks, enamel ships. The bell and the storm wind are real recordings.

The iPhone shows the same night on a bigger chart.

One honest thing. Dandelion was supposed to be the other game: blow on the Watch and seeds drift off. I tried it twice on my wrist and the microphone heard nothing, even after we rebuilt how it listens for breath. So Dandelion is paused until I understand why. We have not played Lighthouse's whole night on a wrist yet either, so how it feels over ten minutes is still a guess.

Sources and thanks

• Bell recording by qubodup, Bell-ring.flac, public domain (CC0).
• Storm wind from Killiney Hill, Storm Floris, also CC0, through Wikimedia Commons.
• The signal flags are the International Code of Signals, public domain.