First look at World of Finger, a unique indie mobile game from Taiwan

This article is part of our coverage of TGS 2013. Be sure to keep an eye out for our new gaming-focused site, Games in Asia, coming soon.

It’s easy to get jaded at a big show like the Tokyo Game Show, where you see a dozen different shiny versions of what ends up being more or less the same game. But that makes the truly unique games all the more interesting, and “unique” might be the best way to describe World of Finger, a casual mobile god game from Taiwan-based indie developer Elidea.

In the game, users take control of a small three-dimensional spherical world that’s split into sections in much the same manner as a soccer ball. Each section has different environmental conditions — one might be an ocean with a shark, for example, while another might be farmland. In the game, users influence this world in a variety of ways — they can replace terrain, deploy animals and other creatures including the titular “fingers”, cute little guys (pictured above) who can do lots of things including building cities and gathering resources.

As for your goal in the game, that’s up to you. When I asked Elidea founder Ikaros Huang how you win it, he chuckled and told me that there’s no real goal. You can try to make the world better or aim to destroy it; work to defeat all its wild animals or try to amass as much wealth as possible. Of course, since it’s a mobile game, this doesn’t require the day-long playthroughs Civilization veterans may be imagining; World of Finger is more of a bus or train pastime.

For now, the game is only on iOS, but Huang says Android may be in the company’s future plans. World of Finger is Elidea’s first game, but from the way Huang talks, it won’t be the last. I hope that’s true; for an indie game it looks quite good, and the imaginative design and gameplay is something I look forward to seeing more of when the game officially launches this October.

(Editing by Steven Millward)