Island Keeper
Sail out
Other islands sit on the map, and you can go to them. Fill your bag with what only grows there and be home before the light goes.
Nullhaven Studio · early access
IslandKeeper
One otter. One island. A whole sea with everybody else's islands in it.
Plays in a browserFree in early accessKeeps going while you're away
The premise
She washed up with nothing. The rest is up to you.
Mo is a sea otter on a sandbar in the middle of nowhere. She can't light a fire, build a roof or fetch her own supper. You can. Chop, dig, cook, build, and the island slowly turns into somewhere worth living. Nothing hurries you, and nothing is out to get her but the cold and an empty stomach.
Night one
Nights are cold.
Wood burns down. Fires go out. Everything you do on the first day is really about the dark that follows it, and the fire is the only warm thing out there.
Supper
Something's down there.
Berries run out. The rings on the water off the beach don't. Cut bamboo, make a rod, land one, and cook it over the fire, or hang it on the rack for a night she needs it more.
Weather
The sky does as it likes.
Wind, rain, fog and full storms arrive on their own and overlap: a sun shower, a misty dawn, three wet days in a row. Soaked wood will not catch. Rain puts a fire out and fills the catcher. Fog hides the sea. There is a forecast, and it is worth reading.
Home
It becomes a place.
A firepit, then a shelter, a rain catcher, a lantern, a garden. Every one of them is still standing when you come back next week, and so is she.
Out there
Your island is one of many, and the sea between them is shared.
Everyone who plays gets an island of their own, all of them running on one clock under one sky. Build a boat and the rest of it opens up. Sail to an island somebody else is already standing on and there they are, working away, and you can both get on with it. Friends, visits you arrange on purpose, and sharing what you've gathered are all on the way.
Notes in bottles
A fresh bottle washes up each morning. Write in it, cork it, throw it out to sea, and it lands on somebody else's shore. Theirs land on yours.
Somebody else is here
Two of you on one island, right now, in the same weather. Wave, point, cheer or say thanks without typing a word at each other.
The chart fills in
The gull brings you a chart of what's out there. New islands go up as they're made, and everybody's chart grows: the sea you sail next month is bigger than this one.
Where it's going
She is going to stop needing you for everything.
Today she waits for you to feed the fire. That is the beginning of her, not the whole of her. She is being built into a character with a life of her own: one who gets better at the work you give her most, takes jobs off your hands, and can be sent out on her own while you get on with something else.
She levels up
Chop with her every day and she chops well. Fish with her and she fishes. The things you do most become the things she is good at.
She takes jobs
Send her off with something to do and come back to it done, or to whatever she brought home instead.
She goes visiting
Lend her to a friend's island to keep their fire in while they are away, and borrow theirs when you are.
The island grows with her
More ground to work, more worth building, and more for the two of you to be busy with.
None of this is in yet. It is what the next year of building is for, and it lands in pieces, on the list below.
What's new
Still being built, most weeks.
Everything that has landed, and everything going in next. Dates on the ones worth putting a date on.
Landed
Already on your island.
Going in next
In the order I'm working on them.
Getting in
You apply, and I set your island up myself.
It's early access and every island is a real machine somewhere, so places go out a few at a time. There's no sign-up form and no waiting list to buy your way past: you ask, and I write back.
01
You write to me
Your name, an email to reach you on, and a line about why. That's the whole of it: the form is in the game itself, on the door you'd sign in at.
Takes a minute. No account to make first.
02
I build your island
A machine of your own, with your otter on it, and a code that gets you in. I send you the code myself.
Usually the same day. A few days if a lot of you ask at once.
03
You keep it
First time you sign in you pick your own password. After that the island is yours, running its own days whether you're watching or not.
Stuck, or something's broken? Write back. It's me at the other end.
The island's resting just now, check back soon
Somebody has to
keep the fire in.
One island, one otter, as long as you like.
The island's resting just now, check back soon