Gurn is live
It cleared review. Gurn is out.
If you’re new here: it’s the runner you play with your face. Open your mouth to jump, tilt your head to change lanes, tuck your chin to duck, puff your cheeks to float — the iPhone’s front camera reads all of it live, on-device. And while you play, Gurn films you and trims the funniest stretch into a clip you can post in one tap. The game is the excuse. The clip is the point.
What’s in the box, day one: the runner, the face controls, a daily challenge everyone runs on the same seed, honest leaderboards, achievements, and a full touch-control mode for when you can’t — or won’t — make faces at a camera. It’s free.
And two things I originally planned as updates that made it into the launch instead (my first review sat in the queue long enough that the next two versions caught up — a solo-dev launch story for another post):
- Your voice is in the clip. Put your AirPods in (or plug in a mic) and your running commentary — the gasps, the bargaining, the small scream at the end — becomes the clip’s soundtrack. This is the feature I can’t wait for people to find; the clips get a lot funnier when they sound like you.
- A shop that sets the world on fire. The first cosmetics you can actually pay for: a fire trail that sets the roadside alight, laser trails that bounce and torch, an explosive way to go out. All cosmetic, all clip-visible.
A few things I won’t break, stated plainly:
- Your face stays yours. Tracking runs entirely on your device. No face or depth data is ever stored or sent anywhere. The only thing that leaves your phone is a clip you choose to share.
- You can’t buy your way up the board. Nothing purchasable touches your rank — ever. Cosmetics make your clips funnier, not your runs faster.
- Sharing is always free. Every clip exports in HD, watermark and all. There’s no “upgrade to share.”
The nerd footnote, because it’s my blog and I get to: this is my first game, after 25 years as an engineer at big companies. Every framework in it is Apple’s — ARKit, SpriteKit, Metal, StoreKit, Game Center — no third-party SDKs at all. Every sound effect is my own voice. And I built it in public, with Claude as the pair.
That’s it. Go make a face at your phone, and if it makes you laugh, post the clip. That’s the whole game.
Get Gurn on the App Store → — free · iPhone with Face ID (touch mode if not).
— Adam