Research

Before my planning step I began to research different ways games have created functional menus and HUD elements as well as look at HCI in general, I was mainly searching for games like platformers or more cartoony styled games since my games theme and aesthetic is similar to these genres. I found a few designs I did like and would like to try incorporate but one of the key elements I found that I thought would complement my game would be simplicity. I didn’t want overly complicated menus with lots of text that would decrease the player’s enjoyment while interacting with it before they even get into the game so this is going to be the theme I will stick with for the remainder of the unit.

Once I had decided on a simplistic theme I had look at what games generally use this same mentality, and one that repeatedly came up was indie games which I then went onto research and this lead to some interesting results in terms of aesthetics I think would work in my game but none quite hit the mark but I would use some as a base like;

Cluster Truck

This game uses its own in game world as the background and has very thin stylized text which doesn’t stick out too much and I thought fitted with my design choice of simplistic, the main thing I would take from this would be the background the design once I seen it I knew it would be effective to do on my level because of its colorful and stylized nature.

Limbo/Inside

Both of these games use very little to almost no menu while still being a functional game and I know that it seems counter intuitive to look at these kind of games for design choices and inspiration but the fact that have barely anything yet are so popular and loved interested me as concept, these both use the theme I’m going for which is simplistic but maybe a little too much for this unit since I need make sure I have extra functionality for the purpose of showing I can create it. But still I would like to try incorporating the use of simple colors and also try not over populating the screen and make it messy, this is something I would like to use in my own menu.