Living Worlds – Mark Ferrari

Pixfabrik

About this app

** Includes live wallpaper! **

This Living Worlds app is a modern recreation of a set of dynamic pixel art scenes first published in the early 90s as part of an "illustrated personal organizer" named Seize the Day, and seen as screenshots across the Internet since then. These scenes were created by Mark Ferrari, legendary artist from such classic games as Loom and The Secret of Monkey Island as well as the recent Thimbleweed Park. Now, 25 years later, Ian Gilman, the original software developer, has resurrected the Living Worlds, with Mark's support and additional code from Joseph Huckaby. There may be copycats, but this is the only authentic version from the original creators!

This release of the app contains all twelve of the original scenes in their full glory. The sun rises and falls in real time, storms pass through, flowers bloom, the moon and stars cross the sky. Smaller details like chimney smoke and animal footprints come and go. The image "lives" throughout the day, drawing you in, suggesting stories, and rewarding quiet observation.

In addition to the classic graphics, each scene includes a new "Logbook" story written by Mark Ferrari and ambient soundscapes designed by Ian Gilman.

Join us for this 25th anniversary celebration of these unique artworks!

Ratings and reviews

The art is absolutely gorgeous and I've enjoyed just occasionally pulling up the app to watch from time to time. I would consider this money very well spent! That said, there are a couple issues- as others have noted, the contrast between the device font and some of the backgrounds is rubbish (especially noticeable with white font and a snowy January, or dark font and any night scene). It's also hard knowing that I am missing some of the art just 'cause I don't want to have empty screen space.

Gorgeous and nostalgic! My only current gripes: 1. The wallpaper and the app can either get out of sync or aren't synced at all. It's jarring to look at the environment in one state on the wallpaper and then open the app to have it looking entirely different. 2. It would be nice to have a range of aspect ratio options, so that we don't have to choose between large bars and cropping the sides. 3. "Alt wallpaper tech" is an inexplicable setting. What does it do? Who knows!

The app itself does what it says on the tin, and it looks very pretty and dynamic... But when used as a live wallpaper, it frequently stops working leaving me with the default background. It seems to mostly crash at night and it's possible some sort of system feature is causing this. I still enjoy this app, but I wish it would work a little better.

What's new

* December sounds!