Zen Stones

About Zen Stones

You are given a flat rock by a lake and one stone at a time. Drag the stone to where you want it, let go, and it settles onto the cairn. Then the next one.

The twist is where the ground is. The rock is your phone, so the real direction of gravity decides which way the stones want to slide. Lean the phone a little and the cairn leans with it; tilt it back the other way and you can catch a stack that has started to sway. Even the small movements of your hand reach the stones, which is why it pays to breathe out and keep still while you build. Lay the phone flat and there is no down left at all, and the cairn comes apart.

No two stones are the same. Each one is shaped and coloured on the spot, from light granite and warm sandstone to dark basalt, some with a white quartz vein running through them. Flat ones are easy to build on, rounded ones rock, and part of the game is choosing where each one goes and how to turn it.

Calm is the game at its simplest: build until the cairn falls. Challenge hands you awkward stones instead, wedged, domed and rounded underneath, together with a shakier hand and stronger tilt, and keeps a record of its own.

The game works offline and needs no account. Your best heights are saved on the device. Only if you sign in to Google Play Games are they sent to the leaderboard, under your Play Games name.