BONSAI 3D · Zen Garde

Three years for every real day. Wire the trunk, prune the branches, water daily — and spend a hundred years shaping a tree that is yours alone. A quiet growing game.

■ One day. Three years.

The bonsai in this app grow in real time. Branches stretch while you sleep; open the app in the morning and the tree is not quite the one you left. Set the trunk's line with wire, tidy the branches with shears, deepen the leaves with daily watering, and spend a hundred years shaping a tree that is yours alone.

■ Shape it

• Wiring: trace with your finger to bend the trunk's flow
• Pruning: cut back overgrown branches. Cuts can be undone, so be bold
• Watering: once a day. Keep at it and the leaves grow deeper, the tree more vigorous
• Fertilizer: in a hurry? You can move time itself forward

Formal upright, informal, slanting, cascade. The same seedling becomes a completely different tree depending on your hands. A built-in style guide means you need zero bonsai knowledge to start.

■ Grow it

Black pine, five-needle pine, maple, weeping cherry, plum. 14 species and 17 pots. The seasons turn inside the screen, too: spring buds, deep summer green, maples burning in autumn, snow settling in winter. One tree, four faces a year.

■ Display it

At one hundred years, your tree goes before the exhibition. Form, vigor and harmony are judged. It receives written comments and a gold, silver, bronze or honorable-mention award, then takes its place on your shelf, where you can pick it up and admire it anytime.

A shelf lined with gold-award trees is a record of the time you spent.

■ What this game doesn't have

• Purchases: none. Everything is free
• Forced ads: none. Only opt-in rewarded ads
• Punishment: none. Forget to water, and your tree lives on

Open it daily, tend it a little, and simply watch. A game that never rushes you. Time, the bonsai way.

• Your garden transfers via iCloud. New phone, same trees.