There are plenty of games with a bonsai in them. As far as I can tell, there has never been a game that was actually about bonsai — the species, the seasons, the wire, the waiting. Yamadori is my attempt to be the first one that takes the art form seriously, and this is what “seriously” means in practice.

Most gardening games treat a plant as a progress bar wearing a costume. Tap, wait forty seconds, harvest, repeat. The plant doesn't matter; the loop does. Bonsai deserved better, because bonsai is the opposite of a loop — it's a long conversation with a living thing that answers slowly.

Real species, not reskins

Every species in Yamadori carries its real Latin name and its real temperament. The jade (Crassula ovata) is a drought-loving succulent, so it wants water roughly every four days — flood it daily and you're not helping. The Fukien tea (Carmona retusa) never wants to dry out, so it asks for water every single day. The deshojo maple (Acer palmatum ‘Deshōjō’) flushes scarlet in spring, the same weeks its real counterpart does. None of the nine launch species is a palette swap of another; each has its own silhouette, bark, branching habit, and moods.

Techniques that work the way the real ones do

Pruning is the signature act, and it behaves like the real thing. You cut; the branch falls with real weight; the wound seals over days. And then — this is my favorite system in the game — the tree backbuds: a clean cut wakes one to three new shoots near the wound over the following real days. Snip today, find buds tomorrow. Tear a branch instead of cutting it cleanly, and nothing buds at all. That's not a game-design flourish; that's horticulture.

Wiring works on wire's schedule, too. You wrap a branch, bend it, and then the wire has to stay on for about six real days for the shape to set. Take it off early and the branch relaxes half of what you gave it. Big, dramatic shapes — a cascade, a windswept line — are staged across calendar weeks, one patient bend at a time, exactly as they are on a real bench.

Scars are the story

Every scar on the trunk was once a choice.

In real bonsai, a tree's value is its history — the healed cuts, the movement set decades ago, the deadwood a storm left behind. Yamadori keeps the same ledger. Every cut you make leaves a permanent mark that heals but never vanishes. Every tree is grown branch by branch from a seed, so no two are alike, and after a year of your decisions, your tree could not possibly belong to anyone else. Even neglect is honest: a thirsty tree slumps and fades, but it never dies and resets. Missing a day costs you a day. That's the whole punishment.

What we refused to build

Taking bonsai seriously also meant refusing the machinery most mobile games are made of. Yamadori has no energy meters, no streak-shaming, no timers to beat, no ads, and no way to pay to skip time. A session is a few calm minutes — water, look closely, snip once, leave. The tree is the interface, and everything else gets out of the way.

Seriousness, in the end, is just respect. Respect for an art form that measures progress in seasons, and respect for the player who chooses something slow on purpose. And it's why our reward system could make a promise no other game has made: grow a tree for a year, and it becomes real.

— Chase