The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game PC by Tale of Tales, in which players represent deer in a peaceful forest without goals or the ability to chat. Pictograms above registered deer’s heads represent their names. Players communicate with one another through sounds and body language.
From the wiki: “During ‘abiogenesis’, every deer runs around, rubs against trees, or sits next to sleeping deer to cast Forest Magic on one another or party under a night sky filled with floral fireworks in a spectacle, created in realtime, by authors whenever the mood hits them. The Endless Forest can be run as a screensaver or an application.”
A notable aspect of The Endless Forest is the community involvement. The Tale of Tales website featured a forum and a community site where players could post their ideas and feedback, which might affect the game’s development. The creators of The Endless Forest stated striving to create an artistic game, a moving painting or, according to the developers, a “multiplayer online game and social screensaver”. The Endless Forest is not a mainstream MMORPG, not least due to its lack of violence and text/voice communication in-game.
The developers crowdfunded a continuation of the game dubbed “The Second Decade” via Indiegogo.