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Zen Garden

A free bonsai pruning game for your browser

Prune a growing bonsai to send its life where you want it. Reach the light, open the blossoms, and keep the tree on its stone. No download, no sign-up.

Inspired by the Zen World in Poppit.Get Poppit!
Zen Garden in play: a bonsai in a glazed pot on a stone in a Japanese garden, reaching into a paper lantern's light

Drag across a branch to prune it; drag the stone to look around the tree.Drag a finger across a branch to prune it, or across the stone to look around it. Tap the fullscreen button for the whole screen.

How to play

  • The bonsai grows by itself. You never make it grow; you only choose what to cut.
  • Drag across a branch and it falls, with everything above it. The growth it would have taken goes to the branches that are left: the fewer you keep, the faster they reach.
  • Drag the stone to look around the tree. A stroke takes one branch, the nearest it crosses.
  • A cut usually wakes a bud lower down, the way pruning a real bonsai makes it break lower and grow denser.
  • Every lantern holds one flower. A branch that reaches into its light stops there and opens; the next branch has to go somewhere else. A branch with an open flower on it will not be cut.
  • The tree has only so much life in it, and everything it grows spends some. Cut early: growth already spent on a branch does not come back.
  • A branch that grows over the edge of the stone withers, and so does one that grows into falling water. Stone turns a branch and sends it round, and so does a bell; wind bends thin growth; a starling takes the highest bud.
  • There are 12 gardens to learn on, each a little harder than the last, and more after them. There is no score: a garden is finished when its flowers open, and the game remembers how far you have got.
  • When a garden is finished the tree stays on its stone. Look around it and take a photo, or rewatch how it grew and share that as a video.

About this bonsai game

We made Zen Garden for the ten minutes in a day when nothing needs winning. There is no timer, no score, nothing chasing you. There is a tree, there is light, and there is one decision: what to take off.

Pruning is the whole game because pruning is the whole art. A bonsai has a fixed amount of life in it and every branch takes a share, so a tree left alone sprawls and reaches nothing, and a tree cut to almost nothing races to the light. Somewhere between the two is the tree you meant to grow. The tree underneath is built the way a tree is: sap shared by cross-section, limbs thickening as they carry more, a cut waking a bud lower down.

The garden is the one the Zen World in our iPhone app opens onto: the wall and the gate, the raked gravel, the red maples under a grey sky, and the stone the tree stands on. The rain and the meditation bowls are that World’s too, and the bell you hear is the one the app rings when a pill is taken. Twelve gardens, from first light into evening, and beyond them gardens the game makes for you, each a step harder than the last you finished.

Questions

Is Zen Garden free?

Yes. It’s free to play, with no ads, no sign-up and nothing to buy.

Do I need to download anything?

No. Zen Garden runs in your web browser. Open the page, press Begin and you’re playing. Any recent version of Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge will do.

Does it work on phones and tablets?

Yes; it was built for them. Drag a finger across a branch to prune it, and drag across the stone to look around the tree. Turn a phone upright for the most room, or tap the fullscreen button.

How do you play?

The bonsai grows on its own; you prune it. Drag across a branch and it falls, and the growth it would have taken goes to the branches that are left. Get a branch into a lantern’s light and it opens a flower, one flower per lantern. A cut wakes a bud lower down, a branch that grows over the edge of the stone withers, and a branch with an open flower will not be cut. Drag the stone to look around the tree.

Is there a score?

No. A garden is finished when its flowers open, and that is the whole of it. The life bar shows how much of the tree’s life is left, which decides whether the flowers open before it runs out. When a garden is finished the tree stays on its stone for you to look around, photograph, rewatch and share.

Where is my progress saved?

In your browser, on this device: how far you have got, and which of the gardens beyond the twelve you have played. Clearing this site’s data clears it. Photos and videos you share are made on your device and handed to the apps you share them with; we never receive them.

Is anything sent anywhere?

Each game is recorded anonymously: the cuts you made and when, and the turns of the view, with a random id your browser keeps, so the gardens can be tuned to how people actually play them. No name, no account, no location; nothing that says who you are.

What inspired Zen Garden?

It grows out of one of the handcrafted 3D Worlds in our iPhone and iPad app — the garden you see behind the tree, the stone it stands on, the rain on the roof and the meditation bowls are that World’s own. Find out more about Poppit.

Credits