Zen Rake — virtual zen garden with pentatonic chimes

Zen Rake is a zen garden online: it brings the Japanese zen garden (karesansui) into the browser. A multi-toothed rake carves furrows into sand, working around stones placed at random. Fully encircle a stone and it "wakes up" — a pentatonic note rings, sparks rise.

How to play

Drag with mouse or finger to rake. Adjust tine count and spacing in the toolbar. Encircle a stone with a closed loop to wake it. Save your pattern as PNG when the garden is yours.

Why it's satisfying

Raking sand has something fundamental, almost archetypal about it. No goal, no score, nothing to lose. Just the clean trace of the rake, the sand reshaping itself, and the audio reward when a stone awakens.

The idea behind it

Japanese dry gardens, karesansui, replace water with gravel: the raked lines are waves, and the stones are islands or mountains. The most famous one, at Ryōan-ji in Kyoto, has fifteen stones placed so that from any point on the viewing veranda at least one is hidden. In temples the monks rake the gravel themselves as part of their practice, and the pattern is redrawn again and again, which is exactly the point: nothing is meant to stay.

About

Zen Rake is part of Alcy, fifty free contemplative micro-games. If you like the slow and meditative, also try Ripple, Breath, Strata.