Design and Conjure easily drew my eye at PAX Aus 2025. Anything witchy is going to inspire me immediately, but when you add in colourful, cosy Unpacking-like organisation gameplay, and a pastel 3D art style that renders objects as cute and blobby, you’ve got a game with a very clear hook.
Putting on a headset and diving in, I was immediately charmed by this upcoming cosy game. To play it was to be transported from the show floor, into a space without crowd noise or tired legs. Instead, I was in the bedroom of a young witch, ready and keen to organise and decorate her own home space, alongside her cat.
If you’ve played Unpacking, you might know a bit about what to expect here. You enter a room, and you get boxes to unpack – each click bringing one new item or another, to be placed wherever you choose. Some items have loose bounds – for example, they can only fit in certain spaces, or on a wall – while others can be placed anywhere. Even in this familiarity, Design and Conjure offers something new.
You can spend your time changing every colour of every item in your room, if you wish, until it matches your perfect idea of a cosy room. You can make items larger, or smaller, rotate them, flip them around. Whatever makes you happy. Your only real goal is to fit everything somewhere. There are no checks for logic in your choices – only the encouragement to press on.
What results from your choices is a lush living space filled with personal touches, that tells your story as much as it tells the story of young witch protagonist, Dalia. Even gazing on screenshots shared by developers, I can see the difference in how they built their version of Dalia’s room, compared to mine.
Meanly, I assigned Dalia’s cat to their own bed, rather than Dalia’s. I put the PC on the dresser for room, so I could use the alcove by the window for a display of potions and photos, as a sort of a mini-shrine. Design and Conjure allows that freedom, and reveals much about who you are in how you play.
Design and Conjure: Tiny Kiwi Games
Speaking to the Tiny Kiwi Games team on the booth, one developer described a particular PAX Aus 2025 guest who chose to turn every item in the game green, because that was their favourite colour. Another player turned everything big, and then struggled to fit it all in.
Where Unpacking is slightly more rigid in its design, telling its own unique story in each item placement, Design and Conjure feels more flexible. There is a clear story, as with Unpacking, and you’ll actually get dialogue here to reveal more about Dalia and her companion. But a sense of looseness lets you pick and unpack as calmly, aesthetically-minded, or as chaotically, as you choose.
No matter how you choose to build up your living space, you’ll find yourself lost in this bright, cosy world and its many tiny, toy-like objects. It’s a lot like arranging a virtual dollhouse, and for the organisationally-minded, it’s a brain-tickling exercise.
For me, it was a bright and welcome escape from the loudness of PAX Aus 2025, that swept me up for a solid quarter-hour of careful, cosy item placement and good vibes.
Design and Conjure brims with a warm charm, and enthusiastically encourages you to get lost in its virtual sandbox world. It’s certainly a game I plan to watch closely in future.
For now, Design and Conjure doesn’t have a firm release date, but you can wishlist the game on Steam.
