Year/Tree
A bonsai grows one year at a time. So does this one.
The Japanese word for tending a bonsai is seishi. It translates, awkwardly, as: to restrain life.The Practice This Game Was Built For
You receive one tree, in one pot, at year five of its life. The tree is unique to you. No two trees start the same way and no two trees grow the same way. Light bends branches toward the sun across decades. Pruning redirects energy. Doing nothing has consequences. Surface roots emerge with age. Every decision accumulates. Every absence matters.
Each day you open the app, one year has passed. You see what grew overnight. You make exactly one decision. Prune a branch. Shift the light. Or do nothing. Then the year ends, the screen fades, and you are done. Come back tomorrow.
This is how real bonsai works. A bonsai master does not build a tree. They remove what is unnecessary. They wait. They decide when to stop. Year/Tree puts that practice in your hands, on the device you already have in your pocket.
One loop. One year.
See what grew overnight.
Open the app. The tree is older now. You missed the growth. That is the point.
Make exactly one decision.
Tap any branch to preview a cut. Shift the light to bend the next decade. Or pass, and let the tree be.
End the year.
The screen fades. The next year of growth begins without you. Return tomorrow.
The same tree. Ten years apart.
What you do, and what you do not do, compounds. Light from one direction bends a tree in that direction across decades. A single cut at year seven shapes everything that grows after.
The ring graphic beside the year counter is a cross-section. The tree's hidden interior, made visible. Pale green at first. Warm amber by mid-life. Silver and charcoal across centuries.
Year 5
Year 15
What this is, and what it is not.
- i. A space between games and meditation. Not a meditation app.
- ii. A practice of restraint. Not a productivity tool.
- iii. A relationship across years. Not a level to be cleared.
- iv. A quiet, accumulating archive of small daily choices. Not a streak to be broken.
- v. A garden you tend by deciding what to remove. Not a thing you build by adding more.
- vi. A finished tree, placed on a shelf when you decide it is done. Not when the app tells you so.
One pot. One tree. Many years.
Coming soon to the App Store.
iOS · iPhone · iPad