There is no combat in Sky, no leaderboard, no way to lose. There is a fallen kingdom in the clouds, seven hand-crafted realms to wander, and other players — real people, drifting through the same golden light — whose candles you can light and whose hands you can hold. Thatgamecompany, the studio behind Journey, built a social adventure about kindness as a game mechanic.

You play a child of the light, restoring fallen stars and finding your way home across realms that shift from green meadows to rain-soaked forests to a city in the clouds. Flight is the joy of it: catch the wind, ride updrafts with a friend in tow, solve gentle puzzles together. Strangers communicate in honks, gestures, and emotes learned from Elder Spirits, and a surprising amount gets said.

Progress is measured in candles earned each day and friendships kept. You can race a friend, sit around a campfire, share a bench at sunset, or join the enormous in-game concerts that once set a Guinness record for a virtual-world concert audience. New seasons refresh the realms and bring cosmetic looks — capes, masks, hairstyles — which are also the only things the game sells.

It is free to play with no ads to break the mood, and cross-platform, so your friends are here whatever they play on. Apple named it Mobile Game of the Year, and it keeps winning design awards for a reason: Sky is the rare online game that leaves you calmer than it found you, usually with a new friend from another continent in tow.