Really Slick Screensavers

Welcome to the Internet's most visually exciting collection of original, open-source screensavers. Please see the downloads page for current releases for Windows and to find ports of these savers for other operating systems. If you are curious about anything, the FAQ has answers to many common questions.

The latest news

July 13, 2010 - Ken Mays has just ported Microcosm to Solaris. He now has all twelve screensavers running on Solaris. You can find it here.

July 1, 2010 - Faster than lightning, Nick Zitzmann has ported Microcosm to OS X. Thank you Nick. Now I sort of wish I had a Mac to try it on. Go get it.

June 23, 2010 - Microcosm is out. You can get the whole bundle of savers on the downloads page as an installer or a .zip file. In addition to the new saver, many requested tweaks have been made to the old savers. For example, stars, tunnels, and cosmic goo can all be turned on and off in Hyperspace, allowing you to better customize the visuals. And the camera in Skyrocket moves so that those with dual-monitors will not always have the action trapped on the border between monitors.

Microcosm has taken a long time because I have been spending way too much time working on a game. It's an old-school 2D shooter made with 3D graphics. If you like flying a thrust ship and blowing up evil aliens, you might like this game. It won't be free like the screensavers, but it will be a lot more fun. I'll try to get some screenshots out after some more progress has been made.

June 7, 2010 - A new review of this website was just posted on Instant Idiocy. Thanks for the press, Head Idiot.

June 4, 2010 - The new screensaver will be called Microcosm. Thank you to everyone who sent in name ideas. There were many suggestions for tiny sounding names, such as Atomic, Molecule, Virus, and Microscopic. All these ideas eventually led to the final name. Microcosm is basically a gooey, boiling mess of geometric shapes and patterns. I'm currently putting the finishing touches on it, tweaking old savers, and building an installer. After some beta testing, I'll be ready to release it. For now, more images:

May 2, 2010 - After starting this saver about five years ago, I finally dusted off the code and started working on it again. It looks like it will be such a heater that you don't want to run it very often, so I'm busy trying to optimize it. Let me know if you can think of a good name for it. Here are some screenshots.

February 10, 2010 - If you would like to pay Boris Lysak $9.95 for a screensaver that bears a striking resemblance to the completely free Skyrocket version 2, you may do so here. For more information, please see the comparison of these savers.

October 11, 2009 - Major Noia in Finland just used one of my savers in a music video. Neat!

April 24, 2009 - Someone just sent me a link to a review with a few of these savers in it. Good to see they're still getting some mileage after all these years.

These savers are free software. Feel free to give them to anyone and everyone. Some of them demand a lot of performance from your CPU and graphics card. These savers use OpenGL for graphics and will perform poorly without OpenGL hardware acceleration. All modern PCs being sold have decent OpenGL support, but the high-end gaming PCs will work the best.

Please let me know what you think of them. I always welcome constructive criticism or ideas for new savers. mogumbo 'at' gmail.com

Microcosm

A phantasmagoria of gooey geometric shapes, this saver will give you a splattering, writhing spectacle of 3D patterns and vibrant colors on your computer screen. Watch a single wriggling gizmo if you don't want your computer to heat up too much, or watch kaleidoscope mode for the full effect.

Hyperspace

Cruise through the far reaches of space really, really fast. Fly between the stars, across oozing cosmic planes, and through endless shimmering tunnels. ...really fast.

Helios

Throw together some attraction/repulsion particle effects and some smooth implicit surfaces and this is what you get.

Euphoria

This is about as psychedelic as screensavers get. I thought Plasma was at the top of the scale, but this one is even more nauseating. You'd better find one of those air sickness bags before you stare at this one for too long.

Skyrocket

The most full-blown fireworks screensaver ever. It has bright lights, smoke trails, clouds that are illuminated by the explosions, sound effects, and plenty of other eye candy. Keyboard commands allow you to launch various types of rockets, pause the movement of the fireworks, and control the camera with the mouse. OpenGL is used for the graphics and OpenAL is used for the sound.

Solar Winds

This is a very mesmerizing particle effects saver. Tweak the settings a little and you'll find that you can achieve an amazing number of different animated patterns. You can also connect the particles with lines for a very different effect.

Lattice

Fly through an endless world of linked rings. You can choose from several different textures for the rings and alter the comlexity of the lattice structure.

Flux

This screensaver rocks. If you know anything about strange attractors, you might recognize the patterns created by this saver.

Plasma

Probably the second most psychedelic screensaver in existence. Just try to picture all those colors moving around.

Field Lines

This is a simulation of the electric field lines between charged particles. Physics never looked so good.

Flocks

Here is a 3D variation on swarm savers, a favorite old theme. Try it out with Chromatek's ChromaDepth glasses for a cool 3D effect.

Cyclone

This screensaver makes tornadoes on your screen. I wrote it for my storm chasing buddy, but you can have it too. Have a look at his weather page if you're interested in meteorology and severe weather.

Contact: mogumbo 'at' gmail.com