Idyll
A downloadable world for Windows
Somewhere out on the oceans of the internet, an island resides.
Best enjoyed after a long day away, Idyll is a small social world designed around kinder forms of online conversation and connection. Wander around a gentle pastoral island, strike up small conversations with other passing players, and even toss out small letters into the wide open blue oceans of the internet.
hold small conversations with your friends and other internet strangers
record small poems, notes, and stories for others to read
and even discover what others have written
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awards
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some kind words
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"I think Idyll is a beautiful little thing to examine"
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Indie Games and the promise of better spaces
Nathalie Lawhead
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"Frog Chorus and Idyll reveal an interesting truth about the role of social media in our domestic lives. Online social spaces offer not only the chance to talk to other people but also feel close to them – to observe their reality and share in it, in some ambient way"
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Idyll
Jini Maxwell
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"There is a sense of grass, so thick it might feel like fur, and sand beneath it, and the island itself is made of hills as rounded as the watercolour Downs in a Ravilious painting"
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Idyll is a gentle social world from the creator of Library of Babble
Christian Donlan
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controls
This game requires a keyboard and mouse to play.
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some small reminders
- This game requires an internet connection to play.
- This is first and foremost a social space for small acts of social conversation and connection. Write with kindness and understanding, as instances of abusive or otherwise cruel language (misogynistic, racist, homophobic, transphobic or otherwise) won't be tolerated and offenders may get permanently banned.
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a small survey
This game was designed as part of thesis exploring how the design of our digital social spaces inform our social behaviours and the collective atmosphere of our communities.
If you have a small moment, I would simply adore to hear your thoughts on how Idyll made you feel → survey link
Your honest thoughts and feelings would mean simply the world to me, and I simply can't wait to discover what you think! ♡
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- A small survey on IdyllMay 23, 2023
Comments
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the servers are currently down, but I promise I'll get them up and running as soon as possible
thank you for your patience ♡
Hey, thanks for making this project. I just wanted to know if the project to open again the servers is still up ?
Game looks really cool, tried to play it but after I enter my name I just get a full screen of orange - I'm guessing it's a loading screen - where nothing ever shows up? Pretty sure I was connected to the internet, too. I'll try again but it's a shame cause I really wanted to check this out :(
Will there be a Mac version? I really wanted to try the game out but wineskin kept crashing :(
There's sadly no plans on having a MacOS version at this time sorry, the graphics just aren't being friendly with MacOS systems
Beautiful little world, very chill vibes. Love the vision but the mechanics are not really clear to me, feels incomplete and low-key confusing.
ETA: played some more... there seem to be people having conversations via bottles, but no one ever responds to my prompts. What is this, online dating?
This game is quite an experience. It had very little in it, but the people that left messages in the bottles made the experience truly nice to play.
In my playthrough, I didn't have anyone to talk to, but reading and responding to the messages in the bottles made me feel lonely. Like the messages are about people trying to reach out to someone else, and you can't reach back out for them. But despite that lonely first experience, I think I'll play some other time.
Good job!
Thank you so kindly much for your thoughtful review, this was so heartwarming to read through
I wish there were some way to make you feel a little less lonely, but I think it also captures a really bittersweet part of the internet ♡
Good morning ♡
I simply wished to murmur over my warmest blush of thanks to all of you who have wandered by and made Idyll your own.
When I first began designing Idyll I never would have believed that you would all give this small space so much love and kindness.
As you may know, Idyll was designed as part of a thesis exploring how the design of our digital social spaces inform our social behaviours and the atmosphere of the communities that emerge there. As part of this study, I'm conducting a small anonymous survey on your experiences in Idyll and how you felt while playing it.
If you're at all interested in participating in the survey, you can access it here 🌻 survey link 🌻
Your honest thoughts and feelings would mean simply the world to me, and I simply can't wait to discover what you think!
Here's to making the internet a kinder space to inhabit, together ♡
Wish we could claim game, don't have access to a pc now so i can't download it
Suggestion: If the world is underpopulated, tell the user about a "Big Day" that's at some specific time in the future, when they're supposed to return. Help people to coordinate to come on at the same time.
Mention the number of users who were present at the previous recommended time. If it works, it will be a large and enticing number.
The fewer users are visiting, the further in the future the next Big Day should be scheduled.
If possible, get the app to send a notification when Big Day is about to start, if the user expressed interest? I guess you probably need to be Installed to run in the background and do that but there might also be some windows calendar/event scheduling API you could access without that.
Thank you so kindly much for the suggestion, though I'm not certain whether that's something I'm personally interested in
I think there's genuinely something really charming about there being spaces on the internet that allow for occasional motes of human interaction, without pushing for increased engagement
That makes sense. Well, okay, you could raise the frequency of Big Days to lower the number of people a visitor is likely to meet when they turn up. You can also reframe it, it doesn't have to be extroverted in theme. It can just be something like... "the egg will hatch in an hour". Or "a star will land way over there". Something a player will want to turn up and see. So will others.
this game is really nice
its interesting to hear other messages
and also some people are very lovely and caring in them
it doesnt run great but
thats ok
weird thing is after some amount of time had passed and i typed some messages into orange bottles, i wasnt able to enter a message anymore
maybe there is an intentional limit? i dunno
thank you so much for the thoughtful response!
that definitely sounds like a glitch to me, since there are no intentional limits on how many messages you can write, so I'll see what's causing it!
i love this game, silent feature is kind of awesome, i like to pair it with the album race by alex g, but i think beach music goes better
aww, thank you so kindly much!
I often listen to music while playing the game too, so I can't wait to check out album race ♡
Wow, very impressive. The art style fits nicely, and the movement feels nice enough. I didn't encounter anyone on first opening, but this has potential if the creator decided to take it further :)
oh, thank you so kindly much!
I'm taking a small break at the moment, but I've got a few small things brewing ♡
I have been looking into non violent co-op games. seems like this one is disapointment just like all the rest...
The files will open but it wont lountch any game... it is just folders and files on my pc... nothing more...
oh no, I'm so sorry ♡
as long as all the files are in the same place, tapping on the Idyll.exe file (the one that has a small green bottle as an icon) should open the game
otherwise, I can happily recommend downloading the itchio app, which makes playing these kinds of games so much easier!
Bright but silent, colourful but empty. Nice little world to build upon.
While the experience looks nice, I can't confirm whether it is or not. The lack of a tutorial or pause menu causes me to just fiddle around with my buttons, 90% of which open the chatbox. Lots of bottles came into my island, but I had no idea how to send one back. I still don't! The game also causes my PC to sound like a helicopter, and a graphical menu would do wonders for allowing me to limit FPS/resolution. Ultimately, a great idea, but a lack of basic features leaves a terrible taste in my mouth after it.
oh no, I'm so sorry to hear you had a bad experience
Idyll was independently designed, so sadly many of the features you may expect from more commercial games simply weren't feasible
I really adore designing games that feel a little bit delphic and mysterious, but I promise if you keep playing around with it you'll figure things out pretty swiftly ♡
Thank you! I did manage to figure out some things (like how you can only respond to orange bottles).
same, I couldn't figure out how to read the messages in bottles. I thought it was a matter of pointing the cursor and clicking on it, but nope. I tried most of the keys that weren't letters or numbers too
This looks lovely!
However, my GFX card isn't beefy enough to well at full resolution (4k) - is there a way to step down the res, or switch to windowed mode?
I totally get why you'd want the full-screen immersion (+simple execution) tho. Thx!
oh, thank you so much for the thoughtful feedback ♡
Idyll is definitely intended as more of a proof-of-concept, so I haven't necessarily taken much time to optimize it.
(Sometimes it's lovely just making something pretty, without necessarily needing to worry about optimization)
I may look into adding a windowed mode this week though, which thankfully shouldn't take too long to implement — thank you so much for the suggestion!
the game is silent and the world is empty for me. anyone else has that problem?
It's a silent game, only because I wasn't able to afford a sound designer or composer at the time
But I usually listen to some music while I play, and can so recommend doing the same ♡
other players may not always be online at the same time as you, but you never know who may show up if you stay a little while!
oh god i love it, i mean the graphics are insane, the drawing and the colors, also good to play it while listening to a lo-fi beat song, i'll review it on my instagram, can i get you'rs to tag you in it as the creator?
aww thank you, that's so sweet of you to say, I really adore playing it while listening to soft music too!
Of course you may, my handle is @cuddlepunks ♡
This is amazing and I love what you make. I talked about your Library of Babble in a presentation about libraries and community building recently and this is so great for that too.
thank you so kindly much for the warm support
I would simply adore watching your presentation if it's available for viewing online ♡
would love to check it out if it was playable in the browser
sadly I don't think that will be possible, sorry
I had a wonderful idyll! Thank you for this lovely place.
thank you so much for drifting through idyll, I'm so glad you had a lovely time ♡
Thank you for making this; it is phenomenal. Its a space to have unexpected encounters with others that are surprisingly impactful and can make your evening better. I thought the message bottles were a great touch to be able make your impact on the game even after you log off. Also wow super polished, the piece looks amazing!
thank you so kindly much!
although it's pretty small and humble, it took a lot of love and to time to design the interface, and I'm secretly really proud it ♡
can’t wait to try it out!! Love your games and projects in general, will play later today💛
aww thank you, I hope you have a really lovely time with it ♡
This is really nice! Though no one else was on at the same time as me, it was very pleasant to wander through the grassy fields and read messages
thank you so kindly much, that means simply the world to read ♡
this is so cute!! i love meeting random people and experiencing a bit of their lives, even just for a moment, and this is a great little facilitator of that
aww thank you so kindly much, that's so the experience I was hoping to capture!