Resource-management adventure for autistic players · 2025
Wish it Away
A single-player fantasy adventure built for autistic children, and the first game Matthew hand-coded end to end in Unity. You get three wishes for the whole game and resources that only ever arrive once, and every wish comes back at you: each one makes the dragon waiting at the end stronger. It is now played by children at the CM Child Development Clinic.
Design pillars
Three wishes, three rules
You get three wishes for the whole game, granted by a hooded figure you can summon at any moment with W. A wish can't give you more lives, can't kill an opponent and can't buy more wishes — and every wish has a side effect. Wish for a super jump, and your jump takes longer to recharge.
Every wish feeds the dragon
The consequences don't stay small. Each wish you make strengthens the final boss: wish for healing and the dragon regenerates; wish for double damage and so does it. The game never lectures about consequences. It hands them back to you in the last fight.
Every resource arrives once
Nothing replenishes. Spells can be upgraded but only cast a set number of times, and each spell is strongest against a particular kind of enemy. Scarcity is the whole teacher: spending without thinking is felt immediately rather than explained afterwards.
Straightforward on purpose
The goal is simple — defeat the evil spirit that has taken over your kingdom — and the mechanics are plain, deliberately. For this audience clarity isn't a simplification, it's the requirement: a rule you can't parse is a rule you can't weigh, and weighing the rules is the entire point.
Level design
Level by level
Each level has its own terrain, its own enemies and its own way through — and each one teaches something about spending a wish.
01The man in the hood
The game opens with the man in the hood, the wish-granting AI, offering you wishes. Accept, and he warns you that every wish carries a consequence, then vanishes. Refuse, and he vanishes anyway — but he comes back at the end of every level to tempt you again.
02The tutorial
Each part of the first area teaches one thing. The cauldron teaches potion-making, the chest teaches looting, the garden teaches gathering resources and a skeleton teaches combat. At the trees, the man in the hood appears and shows how a wish works.
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The volcano
The first real test puts those skills to work on a volcano-like climb. You can simply wish your way to the top — but if you do, the man in the hood shows you what you missed: a few steps up, a portal that would have taken you there for free. Then he offers to rewind time so you can take the wish back. The lesson is to search the whole map before spending a wish. Some levels are easier with one, but every level can be beaten without.
04The wish tower
The second level is a tower, and every floor is harder than the last because every floor reflects a wish you made. Wish for stronger weapons, and the enemies on the next floor carry stronger weapons too.
05The dragon
The final level is the sum of your wishes. This player wished for healing and for double damage, so the dragon regenerates and hits twice as hard — and because they never made a third wish, it has only those two powers. Your wishes decide both what the final boss can do and what it looks like.
Process
How it actually went
Designing around the players I know
This was the first game I made in Unity, and I wrote every system in it myself. I made it for the autistic kids I work with at the CM Child Development Clinic, where it is played now. Many of them act on their first impulse — whatever pleases them most in the moment — without stopping to weigh what comes next. In a classroom or at home, where someone is watching, that is usually fine. In the real world every decision carries a consequence, good or bad. The wishes and the tight resources are there to make a player think twice, three times, even four times before spending anything.
Taking the wish from Slay the Spire
The wish system is modelled on how Slay the Spire makes you commit: a powerful option you can reach at any moment, priced so that reaching for it is never automatic. Wishes are granted by an AI shown as a hooded figure, summoned with W, so the decision has a face attached to it.
A kingdom worth exploring
The world is an ancient medieval kingdom, built to be explored the way The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is. That matters here more than it would in most games: the cheapest way past a problem is often hiding somewhere you haven't looked yet, and a player who explores spends fewer wishes. It is all pixel art, because pixel art is my favourite form of art.
Friendly heroes, mixed-up monsters
The characters take after Undertale and Stardew Valley — small, simple and readable at a glance, so a player can take in the screen before thinking about it. The enemies lean the other way, towards Monster Hunter: I designed them by combining species that don't belong together, like a snake samurai, a stump hydra and an ice golem. For the final boss I referenced Fatalis, both its look and the way its attacks are patterned.
Using colour as a warning
The world is bright and saturated, closer to Tears of the Kingdom; the enemies are much darker and more desaturated. Putting those two palettes side by side does the work a tutorial would otherwise have to do — the contrast itself tells the player when to slow down and choose carefully.
Gallery
Click any image to see it full size.
Outcome
- Played by children at the CM Child Development Clinic
- First game hand-coded end to end, solo, in Unity
- Designed for autistic children aged 7+, and for anyone who likes resource management with some excitement