Bottlegram: Letters by Sea

Write to someone you've never met. The sea does the rest.

Bottlegram is a slow messaging app, a message in a bottle for anyone who misses pen pals and snail mail. You write a letter, put it in a bottle and trust it to the sea. The current carries it around the world, until it washes up on another castaway's beach six to thirty-six hours later. If they write back, their answer takes as long to reach you. In a hurry? The sea doesn't care.

HOW IT WORKS

• Every day you get three empty bottles to throw. The sea picks who finds them.
• Every beach is a real place, and bottles travel real sea routes.
• You can follow your bottles on a nautical chart and watch them move on each time you look.
• The castaway who finds your letter can answer, and a correspondence begins. The ones you keep stay in your journal.
• Your letters carry your wax seal and the name of the ship you were wrecked on. That is all another castaway sees of you.

WHAT WAITS ON YOUR SHORE

• 250 beaches drawn by hand, from Norway to Antarctica. Each one changes at dawn, at midday, at dusk and at night.
• The Spirits of the Sea, who sailed these waters long before any castaway. Each has a life of their own to tell, and if one of them writes to you, count yourself lucky.
• Letters from every coast. Don't worry about the language: one tap translates them.
• The Wreck Emporium, with extra bottles, a bonfire for your beach at night, a sextant, and passage to a new shore.

THE RULES OF THE SEA

The Sea is a safe and peaceful place: you can report and block anyone who doesn't respect it. Every report is handled within 24 hours, and letters and castaways that break the rules are taken out of the sea. Bottlegram is for people aged eighteen and over.

Bottlegram is free to download and free to use, with no ads and no sign-up. The Emporium is there if you want it.