The Commons is a cosy pixel-art social game that runs in your browser. You wander around the coastal town of Wrenport, hang out with other people, play minigames in the arcade, decorate a flat of your own and submit pixel art for the town. It's for ages 13 and up, it's very early days, and I'm building it on my own.
"I wanted somewhere to just be."
Where it came from
Late 2025, I'm walking through Glasgow with my very pregnant other half, ranting (as I do) about why there are no online social games anymore. Where did Club Penguin and Habbo Hotel go? My theory is that everything shifted to phones and passive scrolling, and the places you could just turn up and be with other people quietly disappeared. Some of us retreated into private Minecraft servers, or into the very strange back alley that is Roblox.
I wanted somewhere to just be. A town with a tavern, an arcade, a seafront, and other people doing their own thing.
I'd already made a small platformer for a game jam where you played as a little blob guy, and I loved animating him, so I borrowed the style for the player sprite. That's Quentin. From there it all just erupted out of me.
Almost a year later
It started as an excuse to build in public while I played around with WebSockets. My first Bluesky post was two sprites running around with an in-game chat. Today there are logins, minigames, cosmetics, shaders, scenes, mutes and bans, a full reporting system, a Discord bot and so so much art. Some of that is the fun stuff, and some is the stuff nobody sees but everything depends on (more on that in the next post). Where it goes from here
I have so many ideas, but I'm nearing the point where the best direction will come from the people playing. The way people play games has changed since I was in Club Penguin as a kid, and the technology has come a long way, so I want to take lessons from the greats and make them my own. I want to understand what makes a place like this properly enjoyable and crank it up as high as I can.
Alpha will start small and open up gradually. If you'd like to follow along, see the odd sneak peek, or give feedback that actually shapes what gets built, come and join the Discord: Click Here
Hopefully I'll see you there!
Come and see it
It's free, and it runs in your browser.