Maximilism Minimalist

Calm and loud

I always liked the Expedition 33 UI that keeps calm and minimal while Persona series always makes it loud and stylish. Here’s me trying to find the right balance to get the best of both worlds.

Words & colors

I could not stop thinking about accessibility. Like hyper accessible, even down to the fonts and the colors. Me myself are colorblind and some people have trouble with certain fonts.

So I’ve decided to go with the font-face Atkinson Hyperlegible, the Braille Institute's typeface made so low-vision readers can tell letters apart.

Then AI assisted me with proposing good color contrast ratio from industry standards. That goes through my human judgement as well so it's not only stylish but with actual substance.

Noob friendliness

Out of all the games I gave my 5-year-old, the Kirby ones never got him stuck or confused on the controls. While Masahiro Sakurai did not direct the Kirby series my kid plays, The Forgotten Land or Return to Dream Land Deluxe.

Sakurai’s DNA wanting to make it so that anyone can pick it up is still there, and my son never got stuck in either. Next up, Kirby Air Riders is where Sakurai came back to direct, and his channel on creating games explains a lot of that thinking game design decisions.

Early mockups

I mocked up a few styles and iterated until the final look. It was picked part by part from a couple of mockups.

Once I saw it moving in combat, all felt crowded. So I cut it back to only what you need with heavy inspiration from what already works as you can see.

It looks a little plain now, but hey, plain is what the fight needed. Because as a guy who already lives in the terminal. Obligatory, “I used Arch btw”, plain is all that you need.

Still a lot to improve

Once the game hit a public play test with run with from real players other than my son, their feedback is where the next round of the HUD comes from. So it is always gonna be a continuous improvement cycle.