We’ve talked at length over the years about our fondness of developer Kenny Sun’s work, so I won’t belabor the point here. Let’s just say that Kenny is a master of designing intriguing puzzle-like mechanics that marry with striking visual patters to create little digital toys that are a joy to manipulate and play with on our little touchscreen devices. And all of that makes this new Kenny Sun game, Tender: Creature Comforts, feel like quite the departure. Perhaps that’s because this is a collaborative effort with writer Gideon Lazarus and artist Jie En Lee with Kenny responsible for programming. Whatever the case, I’m loving what Tender: Creature Comforts is showing off so far. Its name is a play off the famous Tinder dating app, and that’s because this is described as “a narrative game that explores connection and rejection in the era of swipe culture. It’s a story told by and through the modern interface for finding love."
The nice thing about Tender: Creature Comforts is that you aren’t limited to just the 7 billion or so folks here on Earth, but you can expand your reach far into the galaxy as you try to meet and connect with all manner of lifeforms. And man, the dating scene nowadays seems brutal. As someone who’s been in a committed relationship for well over a decade I’ve completely missed out (is missed out the right phrase?) on the whole app-based dating phenomenon, which is just fine by me, but living it vicariously through Tender: Creature Comforts seems like the next best thing. Of course if you are entrenched in the modern dating scene there’ll likely be plenty here for you to relate to. There will be hundreds of intergalactic profiles for you to swipe through, and you can try chatting it up with your matches and even schedule dates on your calendar and play them out in real time. Everything about Tender: Creature Comforts looks just adorable, and you can pre-order it on the iOS App Store or pre-register for the Android version on the Google Play Store ahead of its launch on April 21st.
