Johnny Castaway (open-scrantic)

What it is

Johnny Castaway was a Windows 3.1 screensaver: a man stranded on a tiny island who fishes, builds sandcastles, waves at passing ships and, over many days, works through a story. The original no longer runs on modern Windows.

open-scrantic is a new engine, written in Rust by Glauber Lima, that reads the original files and plays them as the old screensaver did: the scenes, the story by the calendar, day and night, and the holidays.

This build adds two changes:

It also runs the September 1992 build of the screensaver, which upstream doesn't yet recognise.
--cover-others shows the island on the main monitor and turns the other monitors black, for computers with more than one screen.

It also has proper installers: a setup program for Windows that adds it to Screen Saver Settings, and an install script for Linux that can start it after a few idle minutes.

What you need

The pictures, animations and sounds belong to their owners and are not included. You need three files from your own installed copy of Johnny Castaway:

SCRANTIC.SCR    the original screensaver program
RESOURCE.MAP    the index of its pictures and scripts
RESOURCE.001    the pictures, animation scripts and sounds

Use the files from an installed copy (usually C:\WINDOWS on the old PC). On the floppy disk RESOURCE.001 is a small placeholder and the real files are packed as SCRANTIC.SC$ and RESOURCE.00$.

Windows

Put the three files in a folder, for example your Downloads folder.
Run open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-windows-x64-setup.exe. Windows may say the program is not signed: click More info, then Run anyway.
When it asks for Your Johnny Castaway files, choose the folder with the three files. They are copied to %APPDATA%\OpenScrantic.
Leave Screensaver ticked to add OpenScrantic to Screen Saver Settings. At the end, tick Open Screen Saver Settings, choose OpenScrantic and set the wait time.

The Start menu gets Johnny Castaway (full screen) and Johnny Castaway (window). Uninstall from Settings, Apps, or the Start menu; it asks whether to keep your three files and the story progress.

The setup needs administrator rights, because Windows only lists screensavers kept in System32. If the administrator account is not the one you use every day, copy the three files to your own %APPDATA%\OpenScrantic afterwards.

Prefer no installer? The zip has open-scrantic.exe (put it next to the three files and run it) and open-scrantic.scr (copy it to C:\Windows\System32\OpenScrantic.scr and the three files to %APPDATA%\OpenScrantic).

Linux

For 64-bit PCs. It installs for your own account only, in ~/.local/share/open-scrantic, with no root needed:

tar xf open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-linux-x64
./install.sh --data ~/johnny                 # the folder with the three files
./install.sh --data ~/johnny --screensaver   # and start it after 3 idle minutes
./install.sh --uninstall

You then have Johnny Castaway (open-scrantic) under Games in the menu, and the command open-scrantic.

--screensaver uses swayidle (Debian and Ubuntu: sudo apt install swayidle) and works on Wayland desktops such as KDE Plasma 6 and GNOME. It starts Johnny after three idle minutes and closes him when you move the mouse or press a key. If your desktop blanks or locks the screen at the same time, set its own timers later than that.

Sound needs ALSA (libasound2), which nearly every desktop has.

Keys and options

Esc closes it and F12 saves a screenshot next to the program.

--fullscreen      fill the screen instead of a window
--cover-others    with --fullscreen: the other monitors go black
--dedither        smooth the 1992 checkerboard dithering into solid colours
--soft-audio      cleaner sound, without the 8-bit hiss
--sounds=0        no sound (also --clouds=0, --waves=0, --background=0)
--help            the full list

Settings and the story progress are kept in SCRANTIC.INI, next to the three files, as the original did.

Downloads

Version 0.5.0-k1, November 2026: open-scrantic 0.5.0 with the two changes above. Tried on Linux (KDE Plasma 6, two monitors) and in Wine; not yet on a real Windows PC.

Windows setup (64-bit)

Installs the program, the Start menu entries and the OpenScrantic screensaver, and copies in your three Johnny Castaway files.

open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-windows-x64-setup.exe · 735 KB · 11 November 2026

SHA-256 8a72b04452ffb40c39f42015f6e684c789617027de13f4687936c50556c6cc3f

Download

Windows zip (64-bit)

open-scrantic.exe and open-scrantic.scr without an installer, with the read-me and licence.

open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-windows-x64.zip · 872 KB · 11 November 2026

SHA-256 ce13245450b8c03e2dd4e2b8ce1380cac3dac619a0bb44f4efae001b7f480f51

Download

Linux (x86-64)

The program and install.sh: per-user install, menu entry and an optional idle screensaver.

open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-linux-x64.tar.gz · 1.8 MB · 11 November 2026

SHA-256 433de2c3059c71621ef952e78ba12da622594d4805ebbf43073c222164b1eb86

Download

Source code

The Rust source of this build, with the installers (packaging/). Build it with cargo build --release.

open-scrantic-0.5.0-k1-source.tar.gz · 2.2 MB · 11 November 2026

SHA-256 8f78c163df394738088797876679deb909fcc68c37de420fc21b1a476756a3b8

Download

Also on the BBS in the file area Heisenbergs Files. Checksums: SHA256SUMS. Read me: README.txt.

Credits and licence

open-scrantic is Copyright © 2026 Glauber Lima and is released under the MIT licence; the source is at github.com/glauberlima/open-scrantic. The changes and installers in this build are by Michael Slater, under the same licence. The source of this build, with the installers, is in the downloads.

Screen Antics: Johnny Castaway was made by Dynamix and published by Sierra in 1992. Its art, animation and sounds belong to their owners; none of it is in these downloads.

Contact

Problems with these installers: email slaterm@theiguru.au, or leave a message for the sysop on the Kalgoorlie Retro BBS (telnet bbs.theiguru.au). Problems with the engine itself are best reported to the open-scrantic project.

Email the sysop open-scrantic on GitHub