Koi Rising: Calm Game

A pond on your screen, seen from above, and the koi know you are there. Hold your phone over the water and lean in. The school rises to meet you, the way koi crowd to someone standing at the edge of a pond. Draw back and they settle into the deep. Open your mouth, or move suddenly, and the whole pond scatters and dives for the bottom. The water is real water. Waves run at the speed their own length says they should, so the surface never repeats. Light catches the ripples. Rain comes and goes, wind gets up and dies away, and the weather is different in every pond. Eleven ponds, swiped left and right: • Clear Day — bright overcast water you can see a good way into • Ink Wash — sumi-e on paper, every koi in one loaded brush • Watercolour — wet-on-wet, the paper showing through • Moonlit — almost no light, and hard silver off the surface • Autumn — tannin-brown water with maples coming down…