Johnny Castaway Screensaver Island Full Of Things
Johnny Castaway Screensaver Island Series By Dynamix

In some weird way, that makes sense when I think about it, since JC was our little personal Youtube back in the early nineties: a small world that would make you smile and laugh, getting you away from lifes eternal worries at least for a bit.

Its a roguelike-like-like(unlike) screensaver with procedurally generated events during a day and night cycle.

Screensavers used to be pretty useful back in the eighties, when CRT first and plasma monitors then had burn-in issues: a static image shown for too long would burn in the screen like a ghost image haunting you from beyond the grave.

Thus, screensavers were created in order to keep a moving image or pattern on the screen, should the pc not be used for a set number of minutes.

Most screensavers were rather simple affairs back then, like a field of white points on a black background, but Johnny came and changed the rules.

Johnny Castaway Screensaver Island Series By Dynamix

Johnny Castaway was the best example of little bits of fun in a serious program; part of the Screen antics series by Dynamix which, as far as I know, began and ended there.

Johnny is a castaway, as his surname might have already clued you in, stranded on a minuscule desert island in the middle of the ocean.

Thus begin his antics: most of the time he would just stare at you through the screen or do mundane things like plucking a coconut to eat, sleep or read a book.

Other times random crazy things would start happening like a mermaid coming over for dinner or an army of Lilliput-like minusule men who would conquer the island with a swarm of fighter planes, like a scene out of King Kong.

Johnny Castaway Screensaver Island Full Of Things

This is a Zen-like experience that many people back then experienced: launching Kings Quest or waiting for the screensaver to run Terry Pratchett in Feet of Clay, described police inspector Sam Vimes as someone who thought that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme.

Johnny Castaway is always full of things happening, some of them rarely make sense, but thats the beauty of it, a program that also managed to inject a lot of fun in your daily routine.

I think that is the one valuable lesson for all modern software, not just videogames.

Its main design idea was years ahead of its time, randomly generating the comical events that would befall Johnny each time.

All the while in the background the plot progressed in real time, as shown by the raft that our hero kept building during the different vignettes.

Those were limited to a few sighs, screams and singing from Johnny, but they surely did the job.

I distinctly remember a few times when my family was having lunch and in the background the screensaver was running, sometimes the sound was so loud everyone would be startled.

Also, the sound effects acted as an alert that something not seen before was happening, so Id actually come running to see what was going on, like you would if you heard the Willy Prince of Bel Air theme song.

There was an overarching plot, which, most of the time would not exactly coincide with the first launch of the program but happen randomly, as with all things in Johnny.

So youd basically have to pierce the story together, like if youd be watching Downton Abbey on shuffle.

Ok maybe not that complicated The plot would also loop: our shipwrecked friend is saved by a woman who has received his messages in a bottle (cue Sting) and goes back to his boring office job.

Naturally, soon the routine wears his spirits down and he starts dreaming of the peaceful days on the island, thus, in the end, he goes back and everything starts all over again.

Randomly generated roguelike games were already a thing in the late 80s, so porting the same idea to a screensaver was the best design choice Dynamix could have made to render Johnny Castaway that one screensaver you always want on your computer.

Nowadays it can still be run on a modern Windows 10 PC, that should give you an idea on how much the program is beloved by fans.

I find its even better to run in the background one of the various lets play Youtube videos, some more than 7 hours long, while you go about your day.