Dérive
A rowing boat, an endless ocean, and what swims beneath.
A contemplative game, played in your browser. You row, you watch, you fill the notebook of a naturalist who set out in 1911. No score, no clock: the sea takes the time it takes.
Dérive grew from the wish for a game about nature and the ocean, one that lets you discover them gently. Everything moves fast these days; here you take the time to watch, and discovery comes at its own pace.
Made by
Under the hood
The sea is painted by WebGL2, pixel by pixel; the creatures swim in a simulation written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly; the sounds are synthesised live. Together, with no server: the boats talk to each other as equals (WebRTC).
Accessibility
In Settings → Accessibility: creatures easier to see and their shadows darker, larger text, stronger contrast, Élise’s hand in a readable italic, fewer flashes and blinking lights, a calmer camera, captions for the sounds that matter, and a game with no gestures to hold. Everything can be played from the keyboard, and screen readers hear the seas crossed and the species noted. Something in the way, an idea? Write to me.
Typefaces
Sound & music
The species
The 51 species in the notebook all exist, but one, met only in a storm. Their pages are written after Wikipedia.
Free software
React, three.js and Basis Universal, meshoptimizer, Trystero, hash-wasm, noble-secp256k1, idb, the Phosphor icons (MIT, Apache 2.0, ISC).