The seeming omnipotence of social networking sites coupled with the rise of casual online gaming has recently given rise to a strange new type of interactive experience that floats imperceptibly between a communication tool and an actual game.
The latest example is Distant Shore, an iPhone app released at the end of last month by part-time studio, The Blimp Pilots. The set-up is simple - you're on a simple representation of a beach, and must sift through the sand to find shells; discover five and you can write a short message, stick it in a bottle, then cast it out to sea. The message will eventually wash up on the shore of another player's island, and they can then reply to your message. At the same time, other bottles will also wash up on your own lonely beach.
The messaging is all completely anonymous, and there's no real point to it all, you're just communicating for a few short moments with a complete stranger somewhere else in the world. The game could be a comment on the essentially ephemeral, impersonal nature of many online 'relationships', it could be symbolic of the yearning for human contact in the solitude of cyberspace, or it might be just be a silly app that seems to have caught the imagination of thousands of iPhone owners.
Whatever the case, the array of topics ranges from superficial questions to intimate confessions - it reminds me, in a way, of PostSecret, the ongoing community art project in which members of the public are encouraged to scrawl a secret onto a postcard and send it to artist Frank Warren. There's a similar sense of abandon for the sender, and voyeuristic pleasure for the reader. It's weirdly addictive, and I'm surprised more mobile games haven't tried something similar after all these years.
