Case study 04 · Game design
Sunny Day
Sunny Day is a cozy meditation game where sitting still is the whole point. You breathe through a timed session and your plants grow with you, and the interface is a 3D room rather than a grid of thumbnails. Sessions earn credits you can spend on plants and pots by category, dragging them straight into the scene and watching the light shift with the time of day. It's a personal project, and I taught myself Blender so the UI could double as the illustration.
Overview
Most meditation apps count your minutes and leave it there. Sunny Day gives you something to show for showing up: a 3D room that fills with plants as your streak grows, lit to match the time of day. The reward for sitting still lives in the same space as the sitting, not in a separate shop, and the light does the emotional work, warmer after a good week and dimmer after a missed one. I am building it solo, and taught myself Blender so the interface could double as the illustration.
The concept, and how it plays
The idea
- Meditation apps track minutes but rarely give you something to show for showing up
- Tying plant growth to a streak turns consistency into something you can see, not just a number
- The reward for sitting still should live in the same space as the sitting, not a separate shop
- Light had to carry more emotional weight than furniture: golden hour after a good week, dimmer after a missed one
How it plays
- A timed breathing session is the core loop, done daily
- Plants grow with your streak; miss a day and they need care instead of growing
- Sessions earn credits, spent in a shop split into Plants, Decor, Rooms, and Special
- Special is reserved for streak-based unlocks, a hook to keep coming back rather than a purchase screen
- Everything you buy drops straight into your 3D room, lit to match the time of day
Process
The room started as illustrated sketches: golden hour and night studies drawn before any interface existed, because the meditation mechanic only works if the light feels earned after a session rather than decorative. Those sketches are now being consolidated into a real 3D scene in Blender, modeled and lit to match the mood of the drawings. The shop is split into Plants, Decor, Rooms, and Special so browsing never feels like scrolling one long list, and Special is reserved for unlocks tied to your streak rather than your wallet. So far the logo, asset library, and shop menu are done, and the session flow (timer, streak tracking, plant-growth states) is mapped. Once the Blender scene is complete, the interaction layer that ties it together comes next.
The biggest challenge
Blender was new to me, and the first room scene took three times longer than the UI would have on its own. It was worth it: the lighting now does work that no flat illustration could, and that matters more here than in a typical app, since the whole game is built around noticing it change from session to session.
The room, in stages
