A tree grows. Every ring records what the year was like.

Ringjahr is a puzzle game about tree rings. Place climate cards on a timeline, cut the trunk, and see how close you came.

Coming to the App Store

How it plays

Each level shows a target cross-section of a tree. You place climate cards on a timeline, cut your own trunk, and get a match percentage plus one to three stars. There are eight card types: normal year, wet year, drought, frost, wildfire, clearing, storm, and beetle year.

A round takes about 30 to 90 seconds. There is no time pressure.

The same card, a different ring

The puzzle's core idea: the same card does not produce the same ring twice. Rings narrow as the tree ages. A drought year leaves a kind of stress memory, so a second drought right after the first comes out noticeably narrower. A clearing tilts the trunk's growth over several years. A wildfire opens a wound that only closes over years.

That means you read a sequence while playing, not a lookup table.

Measuring, not guessing

Below the target slice, each ring appears as a bar. The target width is an outline, your own width is a bar inside it. When they line up, the bar turns green. No pixel-counting, no guesswork.

Gallery

Ringjahr home screen in light appearance, showing the chapter overview — Home screen (light)

Gameplay screen in light appearance: target slice and timeline with climate cards — A level (light)

The same gameplay screen in dark appearance — A level (dark)

Result screen showing match percentage and stars — Level result

Daily puzzle screen in dark appearance with streak counter — Daily puzzle (dark)

Workshop screen in dark appearance showing crafted wooden objects — Workshop (dark)

78 levels across 6 chapters

The Sapling
Cold Years
The Clearing
Fire Years
Storm and Beetle
The Methuselah

Six wood types

Oak, spruce, pine, beech, larch, and walnut each behave differently: every wood type has its own ring behaviour you need to factor in as you read the timeline.

Daily puzzle

Every day, everyone solves the same puzzle, and you build your own streak. Each one comes with a short note on a real, documented climate year: 1540, 1601, 1709, 1816, 1947, 1976, 2003, or 2018.

Workshop

Solved cross-sections get turned into eight objects in the workshop: coaster, bowl, stool, wall clock, shelf, table lamp, table, and sculpture. All slices are drawn procedurally, not composited from images.

Accessibility

Tap instead of drag
VoiceOver labels
Dynamic Type support
Additional high-contrast mode
Appearance set to System, Light, or Dark

Dark mode, on equal footing

Ringjahr is designed for both appearances. In dark mode, the timeline, cross-sections, and workshop are tuned on their own terms, not just inverted.

Details

Playable offline
No sign-in, no account
German and English
iOS 17 or later, iPhone and iPad