Daily iPhone App: Year Walk exudes a mysterious and personal feel

We posted last week that a new app from Simogo called Year Walk was coming to the App Store, and it's now out and available for download. And man, what a piece of work it is. Simogo consists of two Swedish developers named Simon Flesser and Magnus 'Gordon' Gardebäck, and they're known for their funny, but great little games, like Bumpy Road or Beat Sneak Bandit. Year Walk, however, is much more personal and intimate -- it's just about the most artful game I've seen on iOS yet.

The basic idea of the game is that your character is thinking about going on a "Year Walk", which is a sort of a Swedish quest of legend that's meant to predict the future in some way (there's so much Swedish folklore in the game that Simogo has released a free companion app for it). And so much of the game consists of you "walking" through the woods by swiping around the screen -- left and right to travel, or up and down to swipe forward or back through the woods. As you go, there are a number of Myst-like puzzles to figure out, but the whole tone of the game is serene, mysterious and vaguely creepy. Year Walk is an experiment in using the iPhone's touchscreen interface to immerse you in a feeling, in a mood, and on that count it is very, very successful.

I'm still sort of reeling from my experience with Year Walk -- I haven't yet finished the game by a long shot, but even the little time I've spent with it so far has left me with a huge, great impression. This is a very, very artful and well-designed project that obviously means a lot to Simogo (even if it may be a little confusing for more casual gamers), and I have a feeling that once we roll around to the end of the year and start talking about the best iOS experiences of 2013, Year Walk will be sitting there among them. Definitely don't miss out, but do enter into it with an open, ready mind: It's available for US$3.99 on the App Store.