itch.io

the servers are currently down, but I promise I'll get them up and running as soon as possible

thank you for your patience ♡

There's sadly no plans on having a MacOS version at this time sorry, the graphics just aren't being friendly with MacOS systems

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  ♡

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

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 ♡ 

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!

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 ♡

I won't give away too many secrets

but I promise if you keep walking for a few minutes, you will eventually find a few spaces to write in ♡

oh, thank you so kindly much!

I'm taking a small break at the moment, but I've got a few small things brewing ♡

otherwise, I can happily recommend downloading the itchio app, which makes playing these kinds of games so much easier!

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

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 ♡

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!

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!

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 ♡

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 ♡

thank you ♡

thank you so kindly much for the warm support

I would simply adore watching your presentation if it's available for viewing online ♡

sadly I don't think that will be possible, sorry

thank you so much for drifting through idyll, I'm so glad you had a lovely time ♡

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 ♡

aww thank you, I hope you have a really lovely time with it ♡

thank you so kindly much, that means simply the world to read ♡

aww thank you so kindly much, that's so the experience I was hoping to capture!

aww it's so lovely to see you here, thank you so kindly much!

sadly no updates are planned to accommodate that, that was a real shortcoming in how I designed the game. If you keep wandering though, you should eventually find a few spaces where nobody has written any stories yet

this was (in a small sense) my first foray into designing a small social space, and I genuinely didn't imagine how many people would take to it ♡

thankfully my financial system has changed since then, and the servers will continue to be up for the foreseeable future ♡ 

that was actually my exact reasoning for never adding one

I was exploring whether people would still write in a space without any extrinsic motivations, and the results so far have surpassed any of my expectations ♡

aww, thank you so kindly much!

I just had a small read through your zine, and it's so lovely!

that sounds simply beautiful ♡

I'm so sorry it took so long to discover a quill, I genuinely never anticipated that so many people would drift through when I designed the space. I've learned so much about scalable design through this one mistake alone

You're still able to write and upload your own messages, and they will appear for everyone else too!

I'm so sorry to hear so

To be honest mac computers have long been an issue, due to the way the terrain is being generated. It appears to work on most mac computers, including the one I test from, but sadly at this point I'm no longer in a position to verify how playable is for all mac configurations. 

I'm so sorry to read this

the servers are located in Sydney, Australia — so some people in Northern Europe have mentioned similar connection timeouts. Sadly at this point I don't have the time to transfer to a more reliable server-base, and the servers are likely to be closed down early next year (they've just gotten too expensive).

However, I will releasing an offline version about then too, containing all the messages people have written since. So hopefully you'll be able to discover all your messages in time ^^

Had the opportunity to drift through this realm a small while back, and simply adored the gradual sense of melancholy and wonder ♡

thank you so kindly much ~ 

in the most simple sense it uses a few perlin noise samples to generate a perlin texture, before applying a gaussian blur (smoothing things out) and separating out the generated perlin texture into nine different textures by averaging out the monochromatic color values (first texture contains all colors valued from 0-0.1, ect)

oh — I'm so sorry to hear that

If it's a bug it's not one I've presently come across
but that doesn't mean it's not one 

At this point I'm inclined to believe this may be due to the specific unity version this was built under, since it's only effecting specific devices.  I'm not really certain what the solution may currently be sorry, and am unfortunately not really in a position to explore this further at the moment either

thank you so kindly much, that's such a lovely comparison ~

there is currently a database, though I'm hesitant to ever make the messages publically available unless within a strictly academic context (such as a journal on digital humanities, discourse analysis or similar)

oh dear — I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm not really sure what may be causing that I'm afraid 

Thank you nevertheless for reaching out, time permitting I'll be sure to look into sometime ♡

I am — purely from a moderation stand-point. But rest assured all messages are anonymous, and there's no way I'm able to decipher the original poster (I check the database about once a week)