ebb
a tended island
A small island you tend through the night. Shape the land, let the water find its way, and make room for whoever comes to live there.
Desktop only, for now. Plays in your computer's browser.ebb plays on a computer. Send yourself the link for later.
the night is longtonight
Nothing here asks you to hurry. You nudge the shoreline into a shallow bay, and the water follows. A few nights later, reeds have taken hold, and something small is singing in them.
what you do
Shape it, and see who comes.
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Shape
Raise hills, cut terraces, carve a pond. Water always finds its way downhill, and the tide rises and falls twice a day.
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Grow
Reeds and lilies, iris and sea thrift, willow and gorse spread by their own rules, each to the ground that suits it, through four slow seasons.
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Welcome
Creatures are never bought. Frogs, minnows, dragonflies and damselflies come when the island suits them, and stay while it still does.
the heart of it
Make them happy. That is the whole game.
Sit quietly near a frog and it slowly comes to know you, until one day it takes a name. Happiness shows in what they do: calling at dusk, raising young, staying.
- No timers
- No currency
- No hurry
- Nothing can be ruined
from the island
while you sleep
It keeps going without you.
Close the tab and the island moves on: moss on the stones, a sapling now a tree, frogs where the pond was bare. When you come back, a few notes are waiting for you.
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A field journal
It fills itself in words, never numbers: a page and a sketch for every living thing, and a web of what needs what.
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A score that listens
Original music arrives with the morning, steps aside at dusk so the frogs can sing, and never plays the same way twice.
first light
Go down to the water.
Leave the view from above and walk what you made. Cross a sandbar at low tide, kneel by a rock pool, feed a frog from your hand.
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Walk the shore
Go down from the diorama on foot, at a calm stroll, and see your island from the ground.
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Small finds
Anemones that close at low tide, periwinkles on the weed, lugworm casts laid fresh each tide. Every kind you find is kept.
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Keepsakes
The sea leaves one-of-a-kind shells, holed stones and bottles on the strandline. Keep what matters to you on a shelf of sixteen.
sunrise
And then you sit on the shore, and watch the sun come up over the water.
- Free, in your browser
- Desktop only, for now
- Your island saves on your device