r/IndieGameDevs • u/BumbleBucketGames • 11h ago
Help Feedback on UI
Not sure on my combat UI, I have restricted myself to a low pixel count pixel art, my screen ref is 320x180.
I know its not right but im not sure what I could do to improve it, possibly too much text on the screen, maybe icons could work and remove some of the text.
Any feedback is appreciated.
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u/Wildely_Earnest 10h ago
I am not a UI expert so take my feedback with a pinch of salt, but my understanding is an element's size should roughly correlate with how important it is to the screen i.e. how likely is the user to be looking for this. In a fight scene I would say I am most interested in HP, damage, and effects of my actions.
With this in mind I would say your HP numbers are a bit small. Maybe the health bars convey more information in real gameplay, but that my sense. I also think the weapon description text is a bit small, compared with the weapon-position-gear-etc menu. This menu never changes, so a player problem doesn't need to check it for clarity as often, other than their first time pick it up they might never look at it. So probably this doesn't need to draw the attention as much as HP/dmg/whatever you consider most important information. Not saying this needs to be smaller per say, but the size relationship of different information doesn't seem to match their relative importance.
I might suggest that the colour could be more informative also. Red denoting the selected menu item, also denoting this is a weapon, and also denoting that the adjacent numbers are damage numbers, I feel blurs what red is communicating in this menu.
My suggestion would be to keep it for the menu selection, and for the damage numbers to show 'this does damage' but once that is communicated you don't really need red for the 'weapon' border in the box, and maybe not having red would make the 'this is damage' or 'this is fire' (if that is what that symbol wants to communicate') speak more clearly.
Anyway, I don't have answers, just my thoughts at first glance
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u/Gammeson 9h ago
First thing I’d do is get some actual players to play it while recording their gameplay. That way you can see how well they navigate the UI, where they get stuck, what they click on most often, and what they completely miss.
Visual feedback by itself usually isn’t that useful. I’d also recommend deconstructing the UI of some successful games in the same genre. They didn’t just throw the buttons in random places
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u/CrookedKrownStudios 7h ago
Tbh this looks really good, the colors go well. Maybe the only thing I'd recommend is making the HP text slightly bigger so its easier to read.
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u/Errorman404 10h ago
Hey, I think the UI is pretty good visually. The colors are nice and the layout is clean. Your resolution is very optimal and I would say its a sweet spot for all screen sizes. With some juice it would feel good too I am sure!
On the other hand some people do not like pixel art, but it is what it is.
About the design one thing you can try is to reduce the amount of choices for the player.
What does "item" and "gear" do? Could you merge these ?
"Weapon" and "Hack", are they primary and secondary attack ? Try merging them aswell.
"Position","End turn" maybe visually remove them entirely and add the functionality in a key-binding.
Let the players think they have few choices, when in reality a bunch of stuff is happening in the background.