User Interface (UI) Design for Games: Best Practices and Trends

Game UI design has attracted people since the 1980s due to the boom in the number of people investing in digital games. Since then, people have spent a lot of time and effort studying game design theory. In turn, they have wondered why players prefer certain games over others. Let’s figure this out and also explore what’s UI in games and how to create UI effectively.

What is game UI? This is a system of visual components that allows players to interact with the game story and penetrate the game space. While the world of game design can be diverse and vast, all games have some commonalities. Some of these might be genres, goals, rules, and feedback. The players and the goal can take any form the designer wants, but things are different when we talk about rules and feedback.

Common elements of game user interface design

Mechanics

The rules are what make the game possible, as well as the interaction with the players and the game itself. For project teams, this is also called mechanics. We can describe it as how the game works, and how the concept determines what happens in the game. These mechanics are ultimately the mechanics of video game simulation, which relates to the importance of feedback.

Feedback

Feedback can be taken both positively and negatively when it comes to a game’s user interface design. This is very important as it is the good and bad signals a player is giving. Things like new achievements gained or some amazing item received are part of the positive feedback that allows the player to progress in the game. Negative works in a similar way, with lost items or progress. These things make it harder to progress in the game.

Plot and players

There are long video games with deep storylines that allow the players to immerse themselves in their story and their world for hours. But some games accomplish the same thing without the necessity of extensive plots that hook the player despite the lack of good stories. What matters today is the ability of games to attract players and keep them coming back to the game.

Level design: world, system, and levels

An interesting aspect of game UI design is that it can be divided into multiple levels. This allows the designers to pay attention to detail and not overlook anything.

• Ensuring that navigation and interactions are intuitive is a must, as it helps enhance the overall gaming experience.
• The creation of the world or universe in which the game takes place. This should accompany the story and set the tone of the game, creating a concrete map for players to follow as they progress.
• System design. Many design teams view this role as more technical, dealing with the more technological and mathematical aspects of game UI design. It’s essentially defining the rules of the game and the technical requirements to fulfill them.
• Level design is very important as it is what shows the player’s progress. Here, designers use the rules, the story, and the world created for the game to create the levels that the player moves through.
• Finally, there’s also content design. This section includes character creation, missions, and any other type of content that the team needs.

How to make game UI designs shine?

To make a game “enjoyable”, usability is just as important as functionality. The functionality of a video game can be visualized by listing all the required actions and ensuring that the user can complete them, but usability is more difficult to quantify. If the interface allows you to perform all the necessary actions, its functionality is correct, otherwise, it is not. However, usability issues are not so obvious. Maximizing the usability of a game requires common sense and iterations of “trial and error”.

Below you’ll find a list of six guides on how to create a game UI to maximize its usability.

Provide feedback for controls

Controls always have to provide feedback when they are used. Users use controls to communicate with the app to do something in the game world. If nothing obvious happens when a control is used, players will wonder if the game has captured their action, and may even become frustrated by the lack of results. Therefore, controls always require feedback, or the game may suffer from poor usability.

Minimize confusion

Very often new players do not know how to play the game, and even experienced players may not remember how to play at first. Without sufficient guidance, players can become confused: they may know what they want to do, but they may not know how to communicate it to the game.

As an interface designer, you always want the player to learn the interface quickly and for users to be able to use the controls “intuitively.” There are 3 recommendations for reducing confusion:

1. Reduce the number of controls needed. The more types of controls, the more complexity and more opportunities to confuse the player. If you as a designer find it difficult to fit all the functionality into an understandable control scheme, a possible solution is to modify the gameplay to reduce the complexity of the interface.
2. Highlight inaccessible controls. It should always be clear to the player that a control is inaccessible. For example, in an action game that allows the player to quickly switch weapons, it would be annoying to see a control option displaying that option when an additional weapon is unavailable. A game should never suggest to users that they can do something they actually can’t.
3. Consistency is the most important aspect of interface usability. Similar controls in an interface should function the same way. Interfaces should never have to do something that surprises the user. In terms of visual control, interface elements that perform similar functions should be visually similar. For example, buttons in an interface should look like buttons and anything that is not a button should not look like a button.

Minimize inconvenience

Any action that players must perform that does not directly result in the desired action is an inconvenience.

• A critical consideration when designing control schemes is to make the most important actions as accessible as possible. Any action that a player has to perform frequently should be assigned to one of the main controls.
• What should be especially considered are the steps a player must go through the first time they play. Simplifying the presentation of the game to the player is especially important in demos. If players have not yet made a financial commitment, they are more likely to leave because of any inconvenience.
• Another method of reducing control speed is to minimize all the information that is requested from the player to perform a certain action. An example is reducing the number of steps a player needs to attack an enemy. In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, a character can automatically select, move, and attack an enemy when encountered. Since this behavior may not always be desirable, artificial intelligence capabilities are provided to give the player more control over how the character should be controlled.

Don’t make the player’s life too easy

Many of the guidelines listed above aim to improve usability by making things easier for players. However, it’s possible to go too far with this philosophy when designing a video game interface, and that’s not a good thing either. In video games, usability is about providing the best gaming experience possible, not just maximizing usability. While many players worry about the results, such as winning the game, the satisfaction comes from the experience and the effectiveness of the result.

Anticipate accidental mistakes

Actions that can frustrate players should be difficult to commit by accident. This rule is especially applicable to errors that may occur during a tense segment of a game. For example, if the “B” and “X” buttons on an Xbox controller are used for different combinations of attacks, and the “A” button opens the inventory screen, the likelihood of frustration is high because the player may accidentally press “A ” when switching between the “B” and “X” buttons. Be especially careful when assigning certain types of actions to the console controller’s analog joysticks. In normal analog joystick use, the player can easily press an analog joystick button, activating any assigned action.

Gameplay support

Your interface should always support the game. This guide pretty much covers everything else, but it’s worth mentioning it separately to emphasize the importance of how the game and interface work with or against each other if we’re not accurate. Maximizing the usability of your control scheme can be a challenge, as a seemingly small change can affect many aspects of your project: a critical problem is solved, but new problems arise. When working on your control scheme, think about the impact a change might have on any other system.