How to Keep Your Constellations From Breaking in Faraway, Out Today

After more than a decade of solo development, Steph Thirion's Faraway launched today on PC, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, published by Annapurna Interactive. Thirion, whose only previous release was the 2009 iPhone game Eliss, built an entire arcade game around a single input: hold a button, and your shooting star is pulled into orbit around the nearest star. Let go, and it slingshots off in whatever direction it was facing when you released, leaving a glowing trail behind it.

That is the whole control scheme, and it is also the whole difficulty curve. Faraway's score comes from connecting stars into constellations and closing them into loops, and the game punishes sloppy releases far more than it rewards fast reflexes. Here is what actually matters once you load it up for the first time, drawn from the game's own store description and from verified hands-on coverage of the finished build.

Understand what holding and releasing actually does

Every star you approach exerts a pull. Hold the button and your shooting star magnetizes to the nearest one, swinging around it in a widening or tightening arc depending on how long you keep holding. Release, and you fire off tangent to that orbit, continuing in a straight line until gravity from the next star takes over.

The practical catch is that "nearest star" is not always the star you think you are aiming for. When stars are clustered close together, Faraway's magnetism can latch onto a neighboring star instead of the one you were lining up for, sending your constellation in a direction you did not intend. Before you commit to a release, check which star you have actually orbited, not which one you meant to reach.

Read the trajectory ring before you let go

While you are holding the button, Faraway draws a ring around your shooting star that telegraphs the speed you will release at: a ring trending toward red means you are about to launch fast, while blue means a slower, more controllable release. Short, deliberate taps keep that ring closer to blue and give you a straighter, more predictable line to the next star. Long holds build up speed and a sharper turning arc, which is useful for cutting across a wide gap but much easier to overshoot.

New players tend to hold too long out of habit from other one-button games. In Faraway, a gentle tap is almost always the safer choice, especially early in a run when a single bad line can end a constellation you have spent several stars building.

Treat your own trail as the real obstacle

The single most important rule to internalize is also the one most new players break within their first minute: crossing a line your own constellation has already drawn ends that constellation immediately. The stars themselves are never the threat in Faraway. Your own path is.

This changes how you should plan a run. Rather than chasing whichever star is closest, it helps to start a constellation near the center of a dense cluster and build outward in a loose spiral, rather than cutting straight across the middle, so that later connections do not have to cross lines you already committed to. Boxing yourself in against the edge of a cluster is the single fastest way to end a promising run early.

Chase closed loops, then chase whole clusters

Two scoring systems sit on top of the basic connect-the-stars loop, and both reward patience over speed. Closing a loop, meaning routing your trail back to connect with itself, multiplies the score for that section of the constellation rather than just adding to it, so it is almost always worth the extra few connections required to close a shape instead of abandoning it for an easier star elsewhere. On top of that, using every available star inside a given cluster before moving on doubles the points for that cluster entirely.

Put together, the highest-scoring approach in Faraway's main mode is rarely the fastest one. Slow down, work a cluster fully, close as many loops inside it as the layout allows, and only then push outward toward the next group of stars.

Know the difference between Endless runs and the 16 stages

Faraway splits into two very different experiences. The main mode is procedurally generated and open-ended, built for leaderboard runs where the loop-and-cluster scoring above is what matters. Alongside it sit 16 handcrafted stages that behave more like puzzles than arcade runs: some ask you to recreate a specific target constellation from a fixed layout of stars, while others hand you a static field and ask you to find the arrangement of loops that produces the highest score possible from it. The handcrafted stages are a good place to practice reading the trajectory ring and planning loop routes without a timer or an endless field pressuring you to move fast.

Both modes share the same control scheme, so time spent in the stages carries over directly to better Endless runs.

Check your platform and settings before your first run

Faraway's Steam page lists full controller support alongside keyboard-only, mouse-only and touch-only control options, an adjustable difficulty setting, play that does not require timed input, custom volume controls, a contrast option and Steam Cloud saves. Given that the entire game runs on a single input, it is worth opening the settings menu first and picking whichever control scheme actually feels most precise on your setup rather than defaulting to whatever the game assumes.

On PC specifically, Faraway's Steam build is Windows-only with no native Mac or Linux version; Epic Games Store carries the same PC release as an alternative storefront. Console players have PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and Switch 2 versions to choose from, all released simultaneously today. Full details on each platform's listing, along with Thirion's own account of the decade-plus build, are in Annapurna's official launch press release.

Faraway's base price on Steam is $9.99, and the storefront is running a 20 percent launch discount that brings it down to $7.99 for a limited window. Steam Achievements and Steam Leaderboards are both active from day one, so an Endless run started today already counts toward the global rankings rather than resetting once the discount ends. If you are deciding which version to buy, checking that your platform's own store is running an equivalent launch price is worth doing before you commit, since discount windows do not necessarily line up across Steam, Epic, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo's separate storefronts.