Mind Your Monitor: The Screen Saver Jam

The Internet is full of guides to customising your gaming 'rig'--your 'hog', if you like; your 'beast'; your 'hotbox'; your 'ludobrig'--with lights and windows and plumbing and little seats so you can sit inside and escape the heat on hazy summer afternoons, but they all miss something vital. No pig-hot gaming PC is complete without a really cool screensaver to prevent burn-in on your sweet-as-heck 15" SVGA monitor. Luckily for those of us who can't afford After Dark, a load of game developers have made some delightful monitor-minders over the weekend in the #screensaverjam.

I've been poking around, so here are a few I liked (but there are so many more!).

Good forest and bunnies, this one (pictured above). This robot pilgrim's journey is calming. These colours hurt my eyes in pleasant ways. This marine worm is slightly unpleasant. I wish I had a Mac to see this. These pipes are looking a lot fancier nowadays. This bonfire is really quite pleasant! Hey, that's Dream Fishing as a screensaver! The Wall Street Excecutive in your life would adore this. I... am not this into Bowser.

I would actually use these blossom sprays if I hadn't, you know, set my screens to turn off when I've been away for a few minutes. I still might. They're really nice!

Okay, sure, many of these would actually be terrible at saving screens, causing damage themselves, and many aren't even usable as screensavers but... who cares. They're great fun to rifle through.

The jam, which was organised by Kitty Calis and Vlambeer's Jan Willem Nijman, received 122 entries in all. Go have a look yourself!