Auran Tides. Which means basically nothing, but sounds cool. Since pirates are all the rage these days, and most Iphone games are more about being cool than actual gameplay, I figure this has a decent shot at success. The game is much like Pac-Man: you can't truly win, but your goal is to get the highest score possible. Therefore, you compete against previous games you have played, and against the scores of other. The mechanics: you have a ship. The ship normally sails straight, but if it is going to hit a rock, turns a little bit. If an enemy is within range on either side, it fires cannons. If it is rammed from the side, it takes a lot of damage. Cannon blasts do a little bit of damage. Rocks sink. How does the player interact? They can draw currents with their fingers. Doing so depletes your 'god power', which replenishes slowly. Killing enemies causes a boost. They can also tilt the phone to make wind. Currents would move all ships within them in the direction they were drawn in. They can be used to move enemies into rocks, your ship away from enemies, etc. Wind effects every ship on the screen, very minorly. They're mostly used because they can also change the arc of a cannon ball by a little bit. Also, the player can 'ram' other ships, by hitting them from the side. Doing so sinks the enemy ship instantly. The player's score increases over time, with bonuses for kills. The player's health will be gradually damaged over time, but can be repaired by finding lumber, which can be randomly encountered, and drops from dead ships. There will be storms, which make control far harder, and shallow water, with lots of rocks, and reefs, where the ship will not know where the rocks are (but you do). Ideas?

it suffers from a lack of conceptual artistry

also the preliminaries are all obfuscated.

Sounds like fun to me. Have different kinds of ships with different sails, that react differently to the wind, different combat characteristics, etc. I think that you've basically got it, though. It'll just take some testing to balance the power-refill and current mechanics.

Ya. I was planning on having some ships which were 'rowers' and had no sails, some that has no oars, but huge sails, and everything in between. The main ship would move very, very little without guidance, but should react reasonably well with both currents and wind. Most of what it does it turn.

I would use the two suggested forms of interaction to do two different things. For example, use the tilting to control the current, which uses more "god power" but is more accurate and can be used for finer control. However, drawing wind with your fingers uses less "god power" (as changing currents is a far rarer event that changing winds if you want a story :P) but is more guess work. Sounds like quite a neat idea though.

I also like the idea of building your ship. For that, I would do things like increased range decreases damage, more speed equates to less health etc. This way players modify their ship to suit their play style without creating a positive feedback look where the game quickly becomes easy.

Yeah. In the settings, I could imagine letting the players customize their ship. And new parts could be unlocked ingame, either through a spore-like pickup method, or by getting higher scores.