Have You Played... Zen Bound 2?

You may very well own Zen Bound 2, as it's been in two Humble Bundles, but have you played it? Next time you fancy a calming game, perhaps give it a whirl. It's a slow, methodical puzzle game about wrapping small wooden objects in string, studying their form, picking an efficient approach, carefully binding it, looping around nails, and finishing off with a small knot. Very pleasant.

Zen Bound 2's wooden models are things animals, geometric shapes, and posing people. The goal is to paint them by wrapping them in string which spreads paint to parts it touches. You're just trying to cover enough of their surface, really - the paint is a handy visualisation. And it's very calming. You turn objects over, planning your best approach, looking for a corner that might helpfully snag the string, or a groove that'll be easily to fill. If you take a wonky approach, hey, you can always unwrap it, reeling the string back in.

The string creaks as you stretch it out, as unsecured bits slowly drag across an object's surface. Music chimes away in the background. The objects themselves are pleasant to look at, as is the way the paint spreads. I enjoy getting to see objects both as collections of individual parts to cover and as a whole. It's all very nice and quiet.

It's a port of a mobile game and does seem to slightly suffer for that, making wrapping a bit more awkward than it might be with a made-for-PC interface, but it's still certainly worth a go. Have a peek to see if you've already got it lurking in a bundle, won't you?