L'étang du temps

L'étang du temps is a miniature French Bitsy poem by Velvet. Built for the 2020 Bitsy Haiku Jam, it compresses a pond, passing time, text, and music into a browser visit measured in seconds rather than levels.

What is L'étang du temps?

Some web games hand you a map; this one hands you a pause. L'étang du temps presents a tiny interactive haiku about the breadth of a pond and the breadth of time, using the spare vocabulary of Bitsy instead of a conventional challenge. Velvet made the text, game, and music, so the piece reads as one compact gesture rather than a poem pasted onto a separate toy. Its brevity is the point: arrive, move through the French lines, let the atmosphere register, and leave before the moment grows heavy.

What you can do there

• Read and navigate a very short Bitsy poem
• Use a keyboard or touchscreen

Why we picked it

It makes an unusually small promise and keeps it. The pond-and-time wordplay, seconds-long scale, and deliberately minimal form create a calm reset that feels native to the web rather than like a shortened commercial game.

How to get the most from it

Select Run game and use either the keyboard or touchscreen to move through the short piece. Read slowly enough for the French wording and soundscape to land; replaying takes little time if you want to sit with the poem again.

Good to know

The experience is in French and the listing estimates only a few seconds per visit. It supports keyboard and touchscreen input and is marked high-contrast. An underlying soundscape has been reported, but volume controls and its default playback state are not documented; the support button is an optional tip prompt.

Who made it, and when?

Velvet is the credited creator or organization. The earliest supported launch date we found is 2020.