Designed & shipped solo · Studio Kunj
Designing for the thrill of the near miss.
SkyGlider is a one-touch arcade game I designed and shipped on my own. Hold to climb, release to fall, and thread the gaps between scrolling gates. It is small, but it is a different design muscle from my product work: this one is all about feel, the feedback, the juice, and the pull to tap one more time.
02 /The design problem
A one-touch game lives or dies on feel.
There is only one control: hold, or let go. With a surface that small, everything rides on the feel of it. Failure has to land as fair, or the player blames the game and leaves. Success has to land as earned, or it is worth nothing. And the whole thing has to make a person want to tap again the instant they fail. None of that is content. It is timing, feedback and forgiveness, tuned by hand.
03 /How I thought about it
Three moves that make a hard game feel kind.
Forgiveness as onboarding
The first few runs let you bounce off a wall instead of dying, with a gentle hint, then the safety net quietly drops once you have the idea. The game teaches by letting you survive your mistakes, not by explaining them.
The near miss is the reward
Squeak through a gap and the screen kicks, the combo climbs, and a focus meter slows time for a beat. The risk is the thing the game pays you for, so close calls feel like the point, not a brush with failure.
Polish that respects the player
Haptics on the moments that matter, a reduced-motion toggle for players who need it, and an auto-pause with a three-two-one countdown when you come back. Care, even in a throwaway arcade game.
04 /The game
Tap. Climb. Survive.
A glowing astronaut, scrolling gates, and a streak you do not want to break. The whole loop, from a gate threaded to a new personal best to one more try.
StartOne control, and a high score to beat.
Thread the gateHold to climb, release to fall, mind the gap.
Build the comboClose calls stack into a streak you protect.
One more tryA new best, and the button that pulls you back in.
05 /What this proves
A different muscle, shipped.
Most of my work is about clarity. A game is about feel, and the two need different instincts: the timing of a reward, the kindness of a failure, the small loop that makes a person try again. Shipping one, solo, to a public store is proof of that range, and proof that I can take a thing all the way to live, not just to a prototype.
It is a small, early game with modest installs, so the claim here is range and craft, not scale. I include it because feel is a discipline of its own, and this is proof I can design for it and ship it.
06 /What carries forward
Make failure feel fair, and people will try again.
The most useful thing this taught me has nothing to do with games. When a person fails at something you made, the design decides whether they blame themselves, the tool, or no one. Build in a little forgiveness, make the near miss feel like progress, and put the next attempt one tap away, and they keep going. That instinct, that failure is a design surface and not just an error state, is the part I carry back into everything else.
Role and credit: SkyGlider was designed, built, and shipped end to end by me under my independent label, Studio Kunj.
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Summarize in 3 lines
1. A one-touch arcade game has only one control, so it lives or dies on feel: fair failure, earned success, and the pull to try again.
2. I designed three moves to make a hard game feel kind: forgiveness as onboarding, the near miss as the reward, and polish that respects the player.
3. Designed, built and shipped solo to Google Play. A small game, so the claim is range and craft, not scale, plus proof I take things all the way to live.