Celestia's Magical Garden

Magical Garden is a relaxing farming simulator. You play as a garden witch who harvests plants and brews potions.

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Engine: Unity | Team Size: 2 | Role: Technical Designer & Systems Designer | Genre: Fantasy RPG / Farming Simulator / Puzzle

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OVERVIEW

In Celestia's Magical Garden, you play as a green witch who grows plants, brews potions, and solves spell riddles to uncover magical mysteries and unlock new recipes.

The goal was to create a relaxing farming experience with meaningful progression. Rather than grinding for currency, players advance by solving riddles and discovering potion recipes through exploration and puzzle-solving. Focused on building interconnected simulation loops that prioritize discovery over repetitive grinding.

PC or Apple Computer Required

Itch.io

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CORE GAMEPLAY LOOP

At the center of the experience was a clear, interconnected gameplay loop:

Every action in the garden feeds directly into potion crafting, and every crafting action ties back into player progression. My role was to ensure these systems felt cohesive rather than isolated from one another.

THE CHALLENGES:

Farming simulators rely on multiple interconnected systems. The biggest challenge was ensuring that gardening, inventory, crafting, and narrative progression felt like one cohesive experience rather than a collection of separate features.

We also needed a progression system that felt rewarding rather than repetitive. The design had to support discovery and problem-solving over grinding

HOW WAS IT RESOLVED ?

As Technical Game Designer, I structured the data flow between all core systems.

I designed the backend logic that connected:

• Harvesting

• Inventory management

• Crafting and potion brewing

• Puzzle-based progression

Economy Scarcity: Preventing wealth bloat to ensure that progression remained driven by puzzle-solving rather than resource accumulation.

This required building a system where player actions in one area dynamically influenced another. Game clarity and consistency across all interactions were the two guiding principles throughout development.

UI DEVELOPMENT

My primary task was ensuring that the gardening, inventory, and crafting systems worked together seamlessly from the player's perspective.

I designed a logic structure where harvested plants automatically converted into usable crafting ingredients. Players could then:

• Brew potions

• Store materials

• Sell ingredients

• Unlock new recipes

This created a smooth gameplay loop where actions in the garden directly supported potion creation and narrative progression.

Puzzle-Based Progression:

To prevent repetitive farming loops, I designed and collaborated on a potion book progression system.

Instead of purchasing recipes, players solved spell based riddles to unlock new potions. Once unlocked, the system tracked:

• Available recipes

• Required ingredients

• Crafted potions

New content was gated behind puzzle solving rather than currency grinding . This reinforced the fantasy theme and created satisfying discovery moments.

UI/UX POLISHING THROUGH PLAYTESTING

Initial playtesting revealed confusion around:

• How to farm and harvest

• Which ingredients were required for each potion

• Where to access unlocked recipes

Based on that feedback, I redesigned the UI to:

• Improve visual hierarchy across all key screens

• Clarify recipe requirements so players could plan ahead

• Better surface available actions at each stage of play

• Reduce unnecessary clutter that was obscuring key information

After iteration, onboarding clarity significantly improved. Players crafted their first potion faster and reported less confusion during early gameplay.

MEASURABLE IMPACT

Through iterative system and UI adjustments:

• Early-game confusion decreased noticeably during playtesting sessions

• Players completed the first potion milestone more consistently across test groups

• Progression felt driven by discovery rather than resource accumulation

These refinements strengthened the overall cohesion of the gameplay experience.

Systems Pivot: Non-Linear Growth & Scarcity

Early playtests revealed that the harvest cycle was too linear, allowing players to bypass late-game 'riddle' content by brute-forcing resources. I redesigned the backend simulation logic in C# to follow a non-linear growth curve, introducing resource scarcity that required players to solve specific world-state puzzles to unlock high-tier seeds. This pivot transformed the game from a repetitive 'clicker' into a purposeful systems-puzzle where every harvest felt earned.

WHAT I WOULD IMPROVE

Given more time, I would conduct earlier usability testing focused specifically on first-time onboarding. Several UI clarity issues that surfaced late in playtesting could have been caught and resolved earlier with structured new-player sessions. I would also explore streamlining inventory navigation to further reduce friction between harvesting and crafting the two actions players performed most frequently.

CONCLUSION:

As Technical Designer, I built the system foundation that allowed farming, crafting, and puzzle progression to function as one cohesive experience.

The final result was a relaxing yet structured gameplay loop driven by discovery rather than repetition. This project strengthened my ability to:

• Design interconnected systems where every player action has a meaningful downstream consequence

• Refine UI clarity through structured playtesting and iterative redesign

• Built scalable backend logic that supports intuitive player experiences without exposing unnecessary complexity.