Slow Grove

Slow Grove puts a young Japanese maple on your real desk and asks for a few minutes a day.

Shape it with your hands: gold rings mark the cuts a bonsai teacher would make, pinch a branch to prune it, pinch and move to wire a bend. Water it and a season passes: spring buds, summer growth, autumn colour, winter snow on bare branches. A new day brings a new season, and the tree remembers everything you did.

Watch for visitors. A butterfly may land on your finger if you hold still; a ladybird climbs the trunk; a white-eye sings in winter. Twenty-four field notes record the moments you find. A journal replays your maple's seasons, and a photo mode clears the view so you can capture it with the headset's camera.

Slow Grove is free, with one maple. A seed grows another maple that is yours to keep in your grove alongside the first: ten cultivars, from the common green maple to numbered mythical seeds (Ghost, Midnight and Ember) that end when their run is complete.

Hands or Touch Plus controllers. Sitting or standing. Works best on a desk or table in your room (mixed reality on Quest 3, Quest 3S and Quest Pro). Needs an internet connection; nothing about you is collected (no accounts, no analytics).