Bthere
A small app for staying close to the people far away — part gentle game, part check-in, part shared little gestures that make a person feel here when they're not.
Long distance is mostly silence.
The hard part isn't the big calls — those are fine. It's the dull stretches in between, where there's no real news to share, but you still want the other person to know you're thinking of them. Texting that gap feels like work; not texting it feels like absence.
I wanted a small app that filled those stretches the way two people in the same room do: tiny, unprompted, low-stakes gestures. A glance across a couch. A hand on a shoulder while passing the kitchen. Not a message — a presence.
Tiny gestures, lightly gamified.
Each interaction takes a second or two and earns shared "love" points. Enough points, you level up together and unlock something tiny — a new character skin, a new background. Silly on purpose. The point is showing up.
Inspired by Avocado's thumb-kiss gesture, but reimagined. Press a thumb to your screen; if your person presses back, the screens warm up and pulse together — small, silent, surprisingly addictive.
A pad that's open on both phones at once. Draw something messy. They draw on it. No save, no share — gone when you close it.
A single tap to say "I'm good / okay / not great." A whole conversation's worth of permission to ask back.
The two of you collect "love" points by showing up. Hitting a level unlocks a new character skin — tiny rituals that make daily check-ins feel like play.
A few of the in-app moments.
The illustrated character lives on both phones; when you do something, theirs reacts. A few representative loops.
Made for two people I love who lived far away. Never shipped — but the idea I was after, that's still it. Small gestures, often, lightly held.