The spaces between: the iPhone's first design-nerd game, Kern

I'm every bit as much a design nerd as I am a game one, and clearly I'm not alone: architect/designer Jason Franzen and musician/programmer Adrian 'Rust Cycle' Johnson have created Kern, the first game that manages to build fun out of the bane of every typographer's existence.

The game's hook is quite simple: upper-case Helvetica words fall slowly from the top of the screen, and you drag a missing letter from each to its properly kerned spot. The closer you are and the faster you manually drop the word, the better you do. Miss your goal by an inch and you lose a life... errr, ligature, which you can gain back by being right on the spot.

The game's beautifully designed (all on a grid, natch) but quite simple in its current form: FORMation promise more music and online leaderboards in a later update. The group's also behind Eye vs. Eye, a two player game where you mix RGB values to sight-match colors, and will be releasing Hexxis in the near future, which I can't help but think will be something on the order of bit Generations' Dialhex/Art Style's Rotohex.

Hit the jump for the full Kern trailer.

SPACE, THE FINAL FONT TIER [FORMation, App Store link]