Belljar

Inside a sealed glass bell jar, pick a type and plant moss, ferns and pebbles. The greenery then grows on its own, moss creeps outward, ferns mature, and tiny critters appear where the moss grows thick. Your jar keeps growing even after you leave.

• Pick a plant or pebble type, then click or drag to place it
• Watch growth advance on a slow, steady clock
• Encourage thick moss to draw out tiny critters
• Progress is saved, so the jar evolves between visits

• Desktop: choose a type, then click or drag to plant
• Phone & tablet: tap a type and tap or drag inside the jar to plant

• Seed moss early and let it spread before adding ferns
• Cluster plantings so growth fills in faster
• Step away and return, the jar will have quietly grown

Belljar is an original game resting on a real invention. The sealed glass case that lets plants live in their own humid atmosphere is the Wardian case, devised by Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward in the 1820s — a discovery that made it possible to ship living plants across oceans and reshaped both botany and empire.

The domestic descendant is the terrarium, which keeps the sealed atmosphere and drops the shipping. That is the object this game sits inside: plant it, close it, and the point is that you then stop intervening.

Everything after planting runs on its own clock. Moss creeps outward, ferns mature, and small creatures appear where the conditions suit them — so the design asks for patience rather than attention, which is an unusual thing for a screen to ask.

Belljar is an original calming terrarium toy in the slow-growth, no-fail genre, a free browser game about tending a tiny ecosystem under glass.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium. No download, no install.