Going home
ROLE
UI/UX Designer ▪ Programmer ▪ Puzzle Designer
Software
Unity ▪ Figma ▪ C#
PLATFORM
PC (Itch.io)
Timeline
May - June 2025
The Desktop Wizard is a block-pushing puzzle game where the player takes control of a little wizard mouse, Vesper, to help people address their desktop-related problems. Platform around levels and use Vesper's magic mop to push desktop icons into each other to create organized files. The game was created over the span of three weeks for the 2025 thatgamecompany Game Jam.
My central role on this project was to design the game's puzzles, but I also designed the layout of our main menu, co-concepted the aesthetic, and programmed the UI's functionality.
Overview
What I Made
Concept
Once we settled on the game taking place within PC desktops, I knew the main menu should be a PC desktop. Windows 95 was our target aesthetic, and I worked alongside our artist to concept what our icons and sub-menus would look like.
I made a wireframe that laid out similarly to a PC desktop. We had further discussions about what desktop elements should be present, and we decided on just to include icons for the buttons for clarity sake.
Postmortem
The ultimate failure of this project was that we did not make the deadline. This was due to the last week getting busy for us, but more so due to over ambition and scope-creep. The UI design was done early on, and so most of the setbacks had to do with other factors.
Even with the deadline missed, we did not give up. Shortly after the jam we continued with the project and even brought it to Classic Games Fest 2025 in Austin, TX. It's important not to let your failures define you and prevent you from growing, so we made sure the game got to a state we were proud of. Check it out on Itch.io!