Weed Lands

A web game where growing crops mines cryptocurrency

Overview

Weed Lands was a web game that combined crypto mining with virtual farming: players grew cannabis crops that contributed to cryptocurrency mining. As lead product and brand designer on a four-person team, I owned the product design and the brand from the ground up.

  • My contribution

    • UX Research
    • UX Design
    • UI Design
    • Design System
    • Prototyping
    • Graphic Design
    • Branding
    • Animation

  • Team

    • 1 x Lead Product Designer ✦
    • 1 × Cryptocurrency Developer
    • 1 x Full-stack Developer
    • 1 x Product Manager

  • Tools

    • Figma
    • Illustrator
    • Javascript

  • Year

    • 2021

Problem

Crypto projects at the time leaned on dark, technical visuals. We wanted Weed Lands to read as a game, so we chose an approachable, almost whimsical look instead of the usual gritty cannabis aesthetic. That decision shaped the color palette, animation, and UI from the start.

Visual direction built to keep Weed Lands approachable and playful.

Approach

Gameplay used a top-down, pseudo-3D style. Players progressed through five cultivation environments, from a basement setup to a spaceship farm, upgrading equipment and choosing strains along the way.

Hand-drawn vector assets for each cultivation environment.

The interface stayed simple: managing crops, upgrading farms, and collecting rewards took only a few taps, with animations borrowed from mobile game conventions to make each action feel worth doing.

UI components kept consistent with the game's cartoon style.
Gameplay footage showing the core interactions.

Outcome

Weed Lands picked up attention in the crypto community ahead of launch, and traffic on release day required scaling up server capacity quickly. But the cryptocurrency mining mechanic turned out harder to sustain than expected. As the in-game currency's value fluctuated, we made the call to shut the service down.

Reflection

Weed Lands was a real experiment in mixing gaming and crypto mechanics, and it didn't last. It taught me to think harder about whether an economic mechanic can hold up before designing a product around it, a lesson that's shaped how I've approached later projects.