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Feedback requested! -Exit 665 UI proposal-
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11 responses to “Feedback requested! -Exit 665 UI proposal-”
Very interesting choice of artistic movements for the pathway of the UI stylization.
One thing with constructivism is that simplicity and colors can communicate a lot. The less, the easier and more practical. A whole art study must be made.
I would suggest researching the other vanguardist artistic movements that are deeply linked or related to. For example:
I’m not well aware of Vidya games that might use the type of art style, but it is more common to find in shows or music videos. But I do have a few artists/videos that work in a similar style
Kevin dart
Adian Huges
La nueva Yma Sumac (Music Video)
Thank you for the recommendations, Kevin Dart’s work seems very interesting!
One thing I forgot to mention is that there are more visual media that use this type of style, but in more complex ways.
Another example could be found with other artists that apply texture to the flat colors to give it more “depth” to the drawing or design.
Dan Gartman
Mar Hernandez
Barbara DziadoszJennifer Hom
Bendito machine
Man… I don’t know anything about this kind of thing.
That being said, looking at the Persona 5 example, I could not help but draw parallels with Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (for those that played either the original or the remake), but Persona 5 is obviously a lot more refined and focused in what it’s trying to communicate. I’m usually the type of person that examines a lot of stuff outside of battles, so when things aren’t explained well in the item screen or the character ability screen, I can get a little frustrated. This is especially true when those screens have different information than what’s communicated in the battle. (I vaguely recall Xenoblade Chronicles X being this way).
I can definitely see the TDR style working out a lot, though.
My apologies for not being all that helpful–I usually take a lot of time and care in learning how a game communicates to me and figuring out how to work with it, so I guess I’ve always been more adaptive in that regard. I care more about the story and characters in most games, as it’s incredibly easy to just look up a “how to not be terrible at this game” guide. Being able to understand what the game is trying to tell me, however, is obviously something really important. Honestly, I think the UI I really enjoyed the most was from Alien: Isolation, but that’s a completely different type of game.
I don’t know much about UI design, but I am fond of the 2000’s aesthetic where everything goes without any hint of minimalism. One particular example would be Super Monkey Ball on GC, the words “ready”, “go”, and “goal” are all animated and colored differently.
One weird thought that came to my mind with UI design is the Guitar Hero series, especially around the World Tour era (with GH: Metallica being the best example of this).
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/UzujZp1LuLM/maxresdefault.jpg
The most important information that has to be provided for the player to actually play the game is the highway in the middle. While it has the notes that slide down, one thing it does to accentuate your performance is the very edges of the highway. If you have Star Power available, there is a light hint of blue that flashes on and off along the highway. Of course, you can communicate this as well through the Star Power meter to the left, as well as the phrase “Star Power Ready” popping up once the prerequisite amount (i.e., 3 bars) has been reached. The bar can also begin flashing red when the player is in the red section of the Rock meter, also on the left.
Speaking of the meter to the left, the Rock Meter and score are placed in sections that are easily readable for moments without overtaking the importance of the main highway. The only information that has been attached to the highway itself is the combo meter. In earlier games, the Rock, combo, note streak, and star power were all positioned in one corner of the screen. Easier to find, sure, but the information can be cluttered.
Separating the two also appeals to two sides of the fanbase. For a less-experienced player, the left side of the screen will have more appeal to them, as they need the information of the Rock Meter to understand if they are close to failing the song or not, as well as if they have enough Star Power to get them out of a potentially song ending section. A higher level player that’s chasing a new score can look at the section on the right to see if they’re on track to beat their own or a competitor’s score.
All of this is supplanted by the characters in the background performing the song. This section of the screen takes up the most space and is superfluous to the game (as evidenced by Clone Hero, where a player can take the stems of the songs and play them without the need for an expressive background). However, although it is not necessary to the core game loop, Guitar Hero as a franchise is nothing without its characters (or in this case, motion captured celebrities) performing in the background to make it appealing to a person who isn’t playing the game. People can hold an interest in watching a player hit a difficult section, but most onlookers want something stylish to latch onto (in a special case, nobody cares that I just barely missed hitting 100% on a solo because now Robert Trujillo is spinning like a helicopter, giving them an investment in my gameplay).
This also comes with one other aspect of UI that you somewhat mentioned when talking on Balatro; sound. There are subtle sound effects that don’t interrupt the current song when hitting certain note streaks (which is also met with a small visual cue at the top of the highway). When activating Star Power, the music for the instrument you’re playing becomes louder in the mix, and the crowd begins to clap along at the same pace. Another game that came to mind with this was Peggle, where chaining together multiple hits led to the crescendoing notes similar to Balatro, but also at certain intervals played a more rewarding and satisfying choir effect once the Free Ball point threshold is reached.
One thing we noticed with balatro is that it heavily uses Sherpards Tones when calculating score, a neat little extra trick to reward the player. I definitely like the idea of different sections of the UI being paid attention to at different points of skill mastery, I believe the same happens with pizza tower players. When just getting the right ranks on a level, they only keep track of the combo meter reaching ~50 at least once and the final rank itself, but when getting high scores the player is focused moreso on the final score tally itself.
That being said, we don’t plan on exit being any sort of score-based game, unlike something as arcadey as guitar hero or pizza tower. Maybe if we have something like minigames we can incorporate this sort of direction though, like if we decide to have some music segment somewhere.
Conveying a theme that reflects the UI and making it readable to the player is a challenge. Your proposal is going in the right direction too. The superflat pop theme is definitely an interesting one. Definitely look into real world iconography and try to incorporate it into the game. Maybe have it could look familiar to us while reflecting the theme or setting of the story. For example, look back at the old grocer menu ui, how about referencing how items are priced and tagged in real-life.Maybe it can convey this feeling that I’m in some corporate brand name store, grocery, or pharmacy. The most my eyes are focused on are the items and price tag/sticker. At the register, it’s usually the credit reader screen or the little display that reads the total on the register. I made this rough price tag below as an example of an item that explains the price, the title, and quantity while referencing how price stickers usually look and a generic image of some popular first aid kit brand. Real life images that are stylized really pops when placed against flat colors. That weakness that you’re team faced using stock backgrounds in previous games could be shrunk down to only cutouts. Maybe forming some sort of photo-book collage kind of thing. Lastly try playing around with the typography. I don’t really have much to say on the how though.
It’s something to consider, first we’re going to block out the precise location of all the information we want to give out with new UI, and then from there stylizing it. There’s a bit of a picture we haven’t posted yet that for example I think would work great if we retooled it into a healthbar.
The importance of having a good menu and not saturate of items will help a lot in the feeling of the game since the player will spend a lot of time in the interface, put symbols to classify what type of item is each thing and the effect they have I feel it is a good idea.
I attach an image as an example
Not too much to talk about UI other then saying your choices are very good! I LOVE the hydewars style, mixing it with the pop style would make an interesting twist to the game