The screensaver depicts a man, Johnny Castaway, stranded on a very small island with a single palm tree.

While Johnny fishes, builds sand castles, and jogs on a regular basis, other events are seen less frequently, such as a mermaid or Lilliputian pirates coming to the island, or a seagull swooping down to steal his shorts while he is bathing.

The screensaver can be manipulated into showing these features by adjusting the computer clock to correspond with the date of the event.

The Johnny Castaway screensaver was distributed on a 3½-inch floppy disk and required a computer with a 386SX processor and Windows 3.1 as its operating system.

[8] According to Ken Williams, the screensaver was one of several products by Dynamix that were not costly to create and yet very profitable, like The Incredible Machine and Hoyle Card Games, also published by Sierra.