Let me say from the outset that Kyoto, from indie developer Illogictree, isn't a game in the traditional sense. It's billed as an "interactive ambient musical visualizer" and "half audioreactive experiment and half tech sandbox." It won't be for everyone.

It's also free. So I don't want to hear any squawking. 

I find Kyoto quite soothing, even mesmerizing. After I downloaded it the other day, I spent a couple of hours with it.

It basically consists of a tree sitting in the middle of a clump of tall grass surrounded by water, with a starry sky and full moon in the background. You interact with the environment using your mouse.

You can move the tree's branches. You can run imaginary fingers through its foliage, the grass and the water.

You can interact with comet-like balls of color. Changing aurora-like colors that are quite beautiful emerge in the background and are reflected in the water.

The scene eventually changes, yielding the same tree with a different background, different lighting and new objects with which to interact.

I did three run-throughs of Kyoto and it never unfolded in exactly the same way.

Things moved quite slowly in the build I played. But the developer has stated that in the current build, which was just released today, rendering has been optimized and the speed is approximately 10 times faster. I understand that an ATI game-crash problem has been fixed as well.

All of this may sound boring to some, but I found it to be a pleasant, calming and enjoyable experience. If you're interested, you can download Kyoto here.