Gesture-based control of multiple game characters and other animated objects

A method of allowing a human user to control movement of plural displayed animated characters displayed on a display screen of a computing device in response to gestures manually inputted by a human player, the portable computing device comprising a CPU core connected to a memory, a display controller between the CPU core and the display screen, and an input/output controller connected to the CPU core, the method comprising:

• displaying at least first and second animated characters at respective display positions on a touch sensitive display;
• detecting a single gesture traced on the touch sensitive display by a human user;
• and
• selecting, in response to said single gesture, whether to control said first and second animated characters to move individually or in tandem, including selecting individual movement of the first and second animated characters in response to a detected first single gesture tracing a first path relative to display positions of said displayed first and second animated characters, and selecting tandem movement of the first and second animated characters in response to a detected second single gesture tracing a second path relative to display positions of said displayed first and second animated characters that is distinguishable from the first path relative to display positions of said displayed first and second animated characters;
• conditioning the selecting based on the starting position of the detected gesture path relative to the display positions of the first and second animated characters;
• selecting movement direction of the selected animated character(s) based on direction of the detected gesture path;
• and
• moving the displayed first and second animated characters on the touch sensitive display individually or in tandem in the selected movement direction at least in part in accordance with the selection of individual or tandem movement.