Faraway, the minimalist arcade game Steph Thirion has worked on alone for more than a decade, now has a release date: November 5. Annapurna Interactive is publishing it, and the console versions are new. It launches the same day on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, the original Switch and PC, through both Steam and the Epic Games Store.
A shooting star that has to keep moving
The idea fits in one sentence. You are a shooting star, and you stay alive by drawing constellations. Fly through stars to link them, and every link gives back some of the energy your fading light keeps burning. Stop collecting and the star goes out. The developer calls it an endless, procedurally generated arcade game built around mastery, and the structure follows from that: each run starts from nothing, and the universe is generated in real time around how well you are playing.
The better you play, the faster you go. Skilled runs carry the star into more demanding regions of space and higher up the leaderboards, so the game's difficulty is tied to your own performance rather than a set of fixed levels. The store page describes the controls as flowing and the rules as simple, with depth in advanced techniques that earn extra energy and points for players willing to take risks with how they shape each constellation.
Sixteen puzzle stages beside the endless mode
Endless runs are the core of Faraway, but they are not the whole package. The game also includes 16 handcrafted puzzle stages, built to make players rethink how the mechanics work, find techniques they might never stumble on in a normal run, and sharpen the skills they bring back to the endless mode. It is a sensible pairing for a score-attack game: the puzzles teach you things, and the endless mode tests them.
Everything on screen is generated in real time rather than drawn as pre-made art. That is where the look comes from: glowing comet trails, fields of tiny stars and large fields of colour that swing from deep navy to cyan and saturated red as a run goes on. Thirion is a musician as well as a designer and creative coder, and the game is pitched as an audiovisual experience as much as a test of reflexes, made for discovery, replays and long-term mastery.
Ten years in the making, by one person
Faraway is a solo project. Thirion built it single-handedly over more than ten years, and Thirion is best known for Eliss, the multi-touch puzzle game that earned a cult following on early iPhones. That background shows in Faraway's design: one clear rule, a small set of inputs, and a ceiling that keeps rising the longer you play.
Signing with Annapurna Interactive puts the game alongside a catalogue known for distinctive, small-team projects, and it is the reason Faraway is arriving on so many platforms at once instead of starting on PC alone. The console versions were announced together with the release date, so console players are hearing about the game for the first time just over two weeks before launch.
Platforms, date and what we don't know yet
Here is what is confirmed for November 5:
- PlayStation 5
- Xbox Series X|S
- Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch
- PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store
Annapurna has not announced a price yet, and the Steam page does not list one. It is open for wishlisting now. Online leaderboards are part of the design, but whether scores are shared across platforms has not been confirmed. Expect pricing and pre-order details closer to launch, most likely on each platform's store page.
For a game this simple to describe, the challenge is all in execution. If the one-more-run loop holds up, Faraway could be one of the quieter surprises of a crowded November.
