How I Built a “Grow a Garden Calculator” (and what I learned along the way)

Hey folks 👋

I’ve been experimenting with building small side projects to sharpen my skills, and recently I created something fun: a Grow a Garden Calculator.

It’s a simple tool designed for players of the Grow a Garden game. The idea is to make it easier to:

calculate crop, pet, and item values,

compare trade offers,

and help players make fairer in-game decisions.

🛠 Tech Stack & Approach

Frontend: just use html + css + js

Backend / Data: no backend

Data Handling: simple structured text → normalized values → trade calculation logic

Deployment: vercel

The main challenge was figuring out how to make the calculator logic feel intuitive — I didn’t want it to just spit out numbers, but rather show results in a way that made sense for casual players.

⚡ What I Learned

Keeping the UX minimal really matters. Many game players don’t want to read long instructions, so I designed the tool to work with as few clicks as possible.

Handling edge cases (e.g. very rare items or multiple item types) required me to rethink my data model.

Deploying small projects quickly helps me iterate much faster — I’ve already updated it a couple of times based on early feedback.

💡 What’s Next?

I’m considering:

Adding more calculators (fruit values, pet XP, etc.)

Making it mobile-first

Maybe even letting users share trade comparisons with a link

👉 If you’d like, you can check it out here: Grow a Garden Calculator

I’d love any feedback — either on the tech choices or the UX for players.
Do you also build small side projects around games? I’d be super curious to hear about yours!

Thanks for reading 🙏