Screen Sprout

Screen Sprout is a little creature that lives on your desktop. It opens no window, asks for nothing and has no menu screen: it just shows up over your wallpaper and gets on with living while you work.

It walks, falls with gravity, runs away when the cursor gets too close and follows you when you've been gone. You can grab it with the mouse and throw it: it bounces, spins and picks itself up. Leave the PC alone for a while and it falls asleep.

It uses your windows

Open windows become platforms. Drop the creature on one and it sits on the title bar, walks from end to end, and falls off when it goes past the edge. Move the window and it rides along; close the window and down it goes. It never climbs up the face of a window or walks through the middle, so it never covers what you're reading.

It has moods

Hunger, energy and attention drain in real time, even while your PC is off. A hungry, tired or lonely creature changes color and behavior: it gets skittish, runs away more, sleeps earlier. Playing with it restores attention, the tray has a feed button, and sleeping restores energy.

With two or more on screen, they find each other, say hello and play together. They also follow the clock: a greeting in the morning, sleepy at night.

Yours, your way

Anyone can make a new creature: it's a folder with JSON and PNGs, no coding. There's a streamer safe mode that mutes ambient sound, controls for scale, FPS and volume, and the creature hides itself when you open a fullscreen game.

PC (Windows). The download comes as a key, with no copy protection: once it's downloaded, it's yours.