Bubble-Berry Acres

Bubble-Berry Acres is a cozy incremental idle farming game developed for Global Game Jam 2025 in collaboration with Games for Change. Players cultivate, expand, and automate a vibrant farm through relaxing, impact-driven gameplay mechanics.

Title

Bubble-Berry Acres

Role

Producer / UX Designer & Developer

Quick Stats

Genre: Incremental / Idle Farming Simulation / Serious Game
Engine & Tech Stack: Unity 6, C#, Blender
Team Size: 3 Team Members
- 1 Artist
- 1 Gameplay Programmer
- 1 UX designer / Producer
Development Cycle: 48-Hour Game Jam

Game Overview

The Vision

Bubble Berry Acres is a cozy, incremental idle farming game developed in a fast-paced jam environment for Global Game Jam 2025 in partnership with Games for Change. Built around the GGJ theme and Games for Change’s focus on positive impact, the game pairs relaxing, approachable idle mechanics with a cheerful aesthetic centered on growing, harvesting, and automating a bustling berry farm.

Key Features

The Core Loop: Plant, Harvest, Discover Secrets, Repeat.
Incremental & Idle Automation: Upgrade your farm to yield more crops and unlock new plant types.
Impact-Driven Design Alignment: Educational focus to highlight the real-world struggle of hunger.

Technical Architecture

Key Features: Engineering the Mechanics

The Core Loop: Plant, Harvest, Repeat

Interactive Cultivation: Players manually seed and harvest bubble crop plots to accumulate initial capital and resources.
Scalable Acreage: Earned currency allows players to unlock new plants and diversify crop yield.

2. Incremental & Idle Automation

Meta Progression: Progression unlocks secret research points that can be used when your farm is reset to upgrade plants.
Secret Upgrades: A multi-layered upgrade system boosting growth speeds and sell prices encourages long-term progression through resets to make the farm more profitable with each run.

3. Impact-Driven Design Alignment

Impact-Driven Outcomes: Developed with the Games for Change initiative in mind, incorporating themes of sustainable management, growth, and rewarding positive feedback loops directly into the core economy. To win, players must grow enough food to sustain the global population, ending world hunger.

Production Pipeline & Team Leadership

Team Architecture

3 Developers (1 3D Artist, 1 Gameplay Programmer, 1 UX Developer / Producer)

Development Lifecycle

48 Hours (Global Game Jam 2025)

My Role

Developing a game in 48 hours with just three people is equal parts chaotic and thrilling. As both the Producer and UX Developer, my main job was making sure our 3D artist, gameplay programmer, and I were all pulling in the same direction—without scope creep sinking the project halfway through.

Because our team was so small, communication had to be dead simple and constant:

Keeping Us on Track: Right out of the gate, I mapped out a strict milestone schedule for the jam. I made the tough calls on what features were absolute "must-haves" for a functional idle loop versus what needed to be cut so we could actually ship on time.
Building the Front-End & UX: On the dev side, I took charge of the entire UI/UX pipeline. I coded the menus, upgrade panels, and live resource trackers, focusing on keeping the interface clean and satisfying to interact with.
Bridging Code and Art: I worked hand-in-hand with our gameplay programmer to plug my UI right into his backend systems, so every time a player bought an upgrade or a plot harvested, the feedback felt instant and snappy. Meanwhile, I kept our 3D artist in the loop on scale and asset formats so their models dropped seamlessly into the engine without hitching.
Crossing the Finish Line: In the final stretch, I ran quick playtesting passes to catch game-breaking bugs, tweaked the WebGL build settings to keep browser performance butter-smooth, and got our page published on Itch.io before the timer ran out.

Key Pivots, Technical Challenges & Scope Adjustments

1. Meta Progression: We ended up getting the core gameplay loop running faster than expected. This gave us time to work on a prestige-style system.

Results & Links

Outcome

Released on Itch.io with over 300 plays.