Celestia's Magical Garden

aka1819
Feb 20, 2024
2 min read

Updated: Sep 15

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

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 potions. It's a relaxing sim with a brain-teasing twist, where progression is earned through cleverness and not just grinding to complete the potions or the game.

PC or Apple Computer Required

Itch.io

Obstacles:

Farming sims are surprisingly complex with their systems. The biggest technical hurdle was seamlessly connecting multiple complex systems such as gardening, inventory, crafting, and narrative progression so they felt like one cohesive experience. Also, we needed to develop a progression system that was more satisfying than just the player farming to sell potions for money.

How was it resolved?

As the Technical Game Designer for "Celestial's Magical Garden," I was responsible for structuring the data flow between all core systems. I designed the backend logic that makes the players' actions feel meaningful and well connected with the overall game experience.

UI Development

My primary task was making sure the gardening, inventory, and crafting systems could work together seamlessly without any issues. I designed a system logic so that harvested plants automatically became usable ingredients for the potions or brewing potions or even directly selling ingredients to get new ingredients in the game in order to create an immersive experience for the player.

Puzzle-Based Progression:

To avoid or prevent players from grinding or 'farming,' I designed and collaborated in creating the potions books progression system. Instead of buying recipes, players solve riddles or spells in order to unlock new potions to make and eventually sell after getting the required ingredients to make the potion. This meant designing a system that tracked unlocked recipes and locked new content behind puzzle solving instead of currency, creating a satisfying moment for players who are able to figure out the riddles.

UI/UX Polishing through Playtesting;

The initial UI was confusing to playtesters, especially for those who had never really played farming simulator-type games. In order to make a well-polished UI, I collaborated with my teammate and redesigned the UI based on the feedback provided by numerous people to clearly show things like how to farm and harvest, required ingredients, and available recipes, which reduced player frustration and increased player retention.

Conclusion:

As a Technical Designer, I was able to create a complex system foundation where all the features worked together smoothly. The puzzle-based progression provided a unique and clear core loop that set my teammate and me up for a nice cozy farming sim experience for players. This project was a deep learning experience into technical design and player data, providing me with the ability to adapt and create complex and connected systems that helped with the overall creative vision of the game.