What it’s about
I want to try new things more often, savour things properly and look more closely. Apps where you tick off habits turn that into a duty with a score. Stöberby is not meant to become that. Time in the app is short: remembering, showing, planning. Life happens outside.
A handful of quests hang on the board, short ones for a few minutes and long ones for weeks. A long one is made of stages, because nobody learns to paint in a day. The texts sound like a friend giving you a nudge: “Order the dish whose name you can’t pronounce. Point at it. That counts.” Every quest belongs to one of four regions, from enjoying to making, and leaves something fitting on the island; for enjoying, that might be an orchard. Doing something for the first time clears fog; doing it again makes the place grow, from saplings to young trees to a full orchard.
So far the concept, the drawing style and a kit of parts are done, and there is a first pile of quest drafts I am still sifting through. Of three style directions the felt-tip one stayed, because a house, a mill and a lighthouse are still recognisable in it at thirty pixels high. The parts of the kit come from my own image generator, with a reference sheet for the style, and are varied slightly on the map: hue, size, mirroring. A prototype of the map runs in libGDX, with drifting clouds, trees swaying in the wind and the time of day from outside.
The island is already online too: on stoeberby.de it clears as you scroll, and you can sign up there for the app’s test round.
