Good Design, Bad Design Vol. 3 - Amazing and Awful Video Game Graphic Design ~ Design Doc
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- Опубліковано 8 сер 2018
- Let's talk about more examples of great and terrible graphic design in games. This time up: Persona 5, Sonic Chronicles, Mini Metro, Mortal Kombat X, NieR: Automata, and Fable 3 give us an excuse to talk about Diegetic UI, cohesiveness in UI and overall game tone, minimalism, juicyness, and breaking typographic rules in a smart way.
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/ warbot400 - Ігри
Menu cosplay sounds so dope.
tbf a cosplay of the Mario Party 8 menu would probably look better than the menu itself. I could see some of the patterns working on fancy clothes.
"9S, delete system32"
"Yeah all right mate"
One thing I have to mention about P5's battle UI is simply how its structure is so thematically appropriate for P5's story and setting. Persona has always been good with its battle menus since the reinvention of the series in Persona 3 with tying them into major motifs in the plot. Persona 3 has you summoning the persona with a gun-shaped Evoker, so the menu is shown as the chambers of a revolver. In Persona 4, all combat takes place in the world within the TV, so all the menus look like those you'd find for TV settings. P5 has you infiltrating heavily guarded palaces to remove the treasure core as a Phantom Thief, where you need to know your options and be able to act on them at a moments notice, and the UI reflects this. It's just brilliant in execution and I look forward to whatever genius we get in Persona 6
I just remembered katana zero "Tv pause" its so fucking good and immersive for the game
"Diegetic UI". FINALLY a name for the thing I kept trying to describe for Dead Space's interface. I kept calling it "in-universe UI" for years as none of my design professors knew the term but understood what I was trying to say lol. Thanks!
Metroid Prime did it as well, and in 2 actually had an enemy that can screw with your UI by hacking into your suit, which erases all your UI info, starts filling the screen with garbage text and causes the framerate to intentionally chug until you reboot your suit's OS.
tvtropes has an entire article on diagetic ui using that exact name actually, so that might be good to look at for more examples
I'm kind of concerned that professors in design didn't tell you the word you were looking for. Diegesis is kind of a big deal, right up there with gestalt.
IU UI
Destiny uses this too and i think its great depending on the game
Persona 5 and nier were my favorite games of last year
they still hold the position of favorite games in my case and It'll be hard to move them from there.
Persona 5 was a game that I wasn’t interested in but decided to try it out and now it’s one of my favorite games of all time. This game got me into the Persona series.
nier came out on 2010 tho. you mean nier automata
Samurai Donkey uhhhhhh
Samurai Donkey Sorry, it's a fanbase in-joke and it seems like I'm the first person you've heard that from? Didn't mean to upset you or for my comment to be taken seriously. I hope you're feeling better.
I see Emil's head, I click
I saw Emil in the thumbnail, and here I am.
Jaspertine same tho
+6 diamond video
Me too.
I'm actually kinda blown away at how good this video is, everything was solid and well narrated. New subscriber I guess. Also, I'm glad I wasn't the only one who felt that way about MKX's ui. It's a good ui, but it felt so out of place and it didn't sit well with me, especially in comparison to past MKs.
I guess you could say this video was well designed :D
Design Doc released 9 years ago some meager but by no definition bad videos to capitalize on the game facts trend, he then went under the radar for half a decade and then came back out of nowhere to snatch onto the late 2016 High Quality Post LP Trend and here we are now today💀
Nier Automata has one of the best UI's in any game I've played recently. The perfect blend of futuristic and nostalgic.
Also has the bonus on being an absolutely amazing game irrespective of the great UI.
Its an experience that I will never forget, everyone who owns a console or pc should play it sometime, truly a gem of a game and will be a classic to remember
I found Nier Automata boring and uninteresting. I refunded it even.
The details in that game are insane. You can really tell there was serious love (and Yoko Taro insanity) put into it.
I hope you're talking about the gameplay and not the story. Gameplay was fun, but nothing special, so i can understand that. However if you're talking about the story, I'm gonna guess you didn't go all the way to the true ending E
Have you ever considered doing one of these on audio design?
Good audio design is the difference between muting the game, thus wasting the work of an entire section of the design team, and always wanting to hear the game with volume on.
Celeste vs Hyrule Warriors
Old FE vs New FE
I really dig this idea, wish I was a CC to make it become a reality.
Humans tend to specialize. Given his understanding of UI, there's a good chance the author doesn't have background necessary for audio design.
Would be a good idea for other UA-camr.
@@Cherryblossoms110 he doesn't just specialize in talking about video game ui design tho?
this is a job for scruffy
Terranigma is an old SNES title that did a menu very similar to Fable III, but it was actually very charming and interesting. The main character cannot pause until a specific item is obtained early in the prologue of the game. Once the item is obtained, the main character actually puts it on the floor and jumps into it, thus entering the menu. From here, it acts mostly like an ordinary menu, where you aren't actually walking around it, but just picking an option; however, it's done in a way that feels interesting and really adds to the game. It's not perfect, but it's too bad you didn't bring it up when talking about Fable III since a game that came out long before it did a much better job.
Jordan Smiley ARE YOU ME???? I WAS THINKING OF THE SAME THING WHILE WATCHING
Don't know the game but it probably didn't require to use the mechanik very often . In fable it is not only the space but also how often you are there. For every weapon change, spell etc that is the biggest problem. If they did that once and then reduced it to beeing optional it could have worked, maybe.
I really wish Terranigma gave you the option to walk around in it for the rest of the game instead of just when it is introduced. The pause menu is accessed infrequently enough that I think it would flow pretty well. One of the big differences is how much more equipment changing there is in Fable, in Terranigma it is something you do on occasion not constantly.
gromigur it uses it a lot. The main difference is that Terranigma doesn't have to load every time you go into the menu, and the areas are easier and faster to navigate because they're 2d
It's a good quirk but it's hardly in the same category. The third comparison focuses on diegetic UI and Terragnima isn't really that. And I'm pretty sure there are other cases where the main menu is integral to the game's story.
I lol'd at the Mortal Kombat school picture day jab
I knew before even seeing the thumbnail that you were going to mention NieR Automata. That game is a masterpiece in every way.
I actually like the core idea behind the mini-HUB menu of Fable III. However, it should have been a teleport just to your actual house where you can see your items displayed and interact with them while having a navigation menu in the similar fashion of the other games. That way you could always visit your house and see your spoils of war and other stuff without compromising the gameplay.
P5 and Automata were my games of 2017, and both were stylish as hell in very different ways. Fucking love these games.
Tiny text and grey text is my pet peeve too.
15:13 thats the worst name i`ve ever read
*runs away crying* :'(
But it's a JoJo reference
It's brilliant, making the dog a main Jojo means that Araki can't kill it right off the bat.
_That will look nice embroidered on a collar_
I saw you being about to remove your os chip
Give it like 20 - 30 seconds.
What I would like to note is that there are 2 types of games. Games that can get away with a certain amount of badness and those that die with it.
There is a certain amount of tolerance you have, especially in modern games, where a lot of the menus, UI pieces and things around it can be a bit bad because they are largely out of the way when you play the game.
A lot of older games, games of certain genres and a lot of indie games rely on these things to actually control the game (most of them are controlled almost entirely with the mouse). They are not only a minor annoyance but an active hinderance to you playing the game. They have overcomplicated menus where doing even the most basic thing takes way too many clicks, their elements are all over the place requiring way too much mouse movement and things feel generally unresponsive and sluggish. It makes ejoyable games into a chore that can't be enjoyed.
I was always worried that Persona 5 wouldn't be able to live up to its predecessor Persona 4, but they did it.
I wonder when Persona 6 will come 👀
Persona 5 spits out style and I love it. Also, your video is top quality and very good arguments.
I saw Emil on the thumbnail and I just had to click and watch immediately
4:40 These eyes were what lead to Ugandan Knuckles
Sonic Chronicles knew de wae before de wae even existed.
I hear that FTL music, we gonna have that show up on your channel anytime soon??
I went to post the exact same thing. FTL is a gem, and it does have some very good UI examples as well!
This channel is really informative and helps me appreciate something I might not have taken a second look at. Keep up the great work!
The MK one is interesting since it's so easy to imagine that working if there was just that little bit more flare applied to it because the fundamentals are very solid. They just polished a fundamentally sound UI in the wrong direction for the franchise making it frustratingly close to being awesome.
Looking forward to Smash Ultimate coming out so you can feature another Smash game on this series, sadly it's looking like it will be in the Bad Design heading again. While my initial thought is that it looks better than 4's (Especially if that censored green mode is something significant like a story mode rather than being along the lines of Smash Run and Smash Tour, just moving the options menu to the new sidebar menu rather than burying it... Somewhere... Is a huge improvement), but we've still got Smash as a submenu option of Smash, and the vague to the point of useless Games And More main menu option is back (Though Challenges is no longer a main menu option, it's been replaced with Vault - Wouldn't want to guess if it's in Games and More or Vault, though, because even though my hunch is Vault, literally everything can go into Games And More and make sense there.), and having a stage select screen with 103 stages, and a character select screen with what's looking like it will be 70+ characters, is not the time to get cutesy by arranging them in order of appearance in Smash.
I think that if they simply titles the Games and More option More, that would probably do a much better job of conveying the idea that it is literally just a second page to the menu that they added to avoid running out of space with the visual design they went with. It wouldn't solve the other issues with prioritizing things, and having stuff be in places that only make sense with some thinking about it is a bit odd, but it would at least be more clear. And to their credit, anyone who would need one now has an extra portion on their health indicator to show stuff like charged power, while 4 only did this for Little Mac and previous titles never did so at all with how no one on the roster needed that much outside of R.O.B., who conveyed it with his design anyways and who now gets to have even more of his model show relevant information.
I do hope we have a subspace 2, but its more likely that it isnt
It's not as if Nerherrealm cares about its presentation that much anyway, with how consistently bad their animation is and how forgettable are their games' soundtracks.
Sakurai is very good at a lot of things, UI design is not one of them. Even Kirby superstar was... questionable
I see NieR I click, but I also stuck around for the fascinating discussion of UI, very cool!
This was in my recommendation but I’m glad I saw this Chanel!!! This will help me learn about designs since I’m currently majoring in graphic design.
I am so glad I found these videos. I am going for my degree in graphic design and some of the things my professors talk about have gone over my head. After finding this channel and this series, everything my professors discuss makes a lot more sense to me. From designing a poster to making menus for websites, these videos helped me understand the elements of design that I used to frustrated over not understanding.
These videos are so great, especially shining light on an aspect of game design that really most fans (and even developers) don't often seem to care about. I also like that you use examples of pretty big and well known games for the bad most of the time, since it can be easy to go for the low hanging fruit of a Steam greenlight game. Might be interesting to even compare games that have changed over time. You did FFVI of course, but like how the Witcher 3 had it's whole UI mostly revamped from the ground up, since that was one of the weakest aspects of an otherwise incredible game. Or even Skyrim, which still has not changed the UI. Instead modders updated the UI to the degree where SkyUI is an almost essential mod to have.
thinking about ai: the somnium files and its corkboard flowchart, form options page, and the case files for info.. and the eye opening/closing as you go thru the menus.. its all very nice and clean, and uses the protag’s a.i. eye and police setting really well.. very fond of it
I didnt even notice the zoom in mini metro until you mentioned it, I had to rewind to see it. Thats amazing
Yesss for giving a shout out to Mini Metro!! I play it all the time and yet no-one seems to know about it. I'm so impressed by how it does so much with so little in terms of UI. It doesn't even feel like you're playing a transit routing game, it feels like you're just connecting arbitrary shapes lol, but the mental model is so strong and so well executed! My only complaint is that if you're trying to break an existing line and re-create it, it gets really difficult to do so without screwing up something else. I've had to restart high score runs simply because trying to re-route an established line made it break two other stations (and interchanges). But these are minor gripes. The game overall is so good!
Great video as usual! Can I ask what the game you showed at 5:15 was? That interface looks really cool.
“Developed by Platinum Games”
I don’t wanna hear anymore people saying Nier is from Square Enix.
Who would ever confuse the developer with the publisher?
Ty_ teynium NieR IS from SE, just they didn't developed any DrakenNieR game.
Mechanically, they didnt produce Nier or Drakengard (this is actually why mechanically everything aside from automata is so flawed, cavia doesnt have a good track record in game mechanics).
However, Yoko Taro, the creator of the series and the source of the large majority of what makes Nier and Drakengard games what they are is a square enix employee. Because of this, it's just as much from Square as it is from Platinum.
The design side of things also had them bring in the one who designed the bravely default characters, which is another series developed by a studio that's part of square so there's that as well.
Platinum made the mechanics (with input from Taro here and there), but mechanics are only part of a game. It's a joint effort.
SE also publish Tomb Raider, dies that mean they developed it?
Or the new Doom coming from Bethesda?
NO, a publisher has nothing to do with the developer. Think aobut Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1, both published by EA, both on the same platform (Origin) But one had one of the most memorable shooter campaigns of the last years that sadly got published at a bad time, the other is a nostalgic rehash.
Puratinum*)))
Great video!
I almost cried when I saw hotel dusk... not so many people know that wonderful title (last window too)
Looking through Masayoshi Suto's credits I think this guy should be as celebrated as much as Shigenori Soegima because dude, he is a HUGE part of what makes Persona what it is.
Fortress of Lies... god i love nier automata.
My mind is cast back to some old Dos games, can't remember what they were called it was so long ago. But there was a small trend of really bad design I noticed in a few - text using the default on-screen font (fair enough) but, changing colour every three, two or even one word - background as well as foreground! In a big long wall of actual sentences. Using all 16 colours available to it. Owch! This may well have been my early introduction to the concept of being picky about this sort of thing. It was just... so bad. It was like someone was trying to emphasize certain words, but they wanted to emphasize ALL the words. Your "dark text on a dark background" bit in this video is what reminded me of it.
I love the UI and world design of Yoshi's Woolly World, for much the same reason as why you liked Brütal Legend's design in the first video. The gameplay mechanics aren't much different from other Yoshi titles, but the "woolly" hand-crafted theme is just so all-encompasing throughout the game. Environments, platforms, enemies, and Yoshi himself look like they were crocheted out of yarn. Coins are replaced with colorful beads. And every cloud, puff of smoke and lava plume is animated with colored cotton fluff. The theming even carries over to menu design. The title screen when you first boot up the game looks like it was hand-embroidered, and the pause menu is a square of denim, with your various "continue", "quit", etc. buttons written on little felt patches that were stitched on.
Great video as always, I absolutely love these design analysis, and that Mortal Kombat X analysis was just amazing.
Hey, i'm a graphic designer and i was really into game design (but still not working there ... Dammit) but i want to thank you for showing all of this series because its really open my eyes and i think i will have a lot of good design material. Once again, thank you so much :)
You should do an episode on Difficulty Curve, how well games convey the introduction of more complex mechanics and things you have to juggle. I love Bit Trip Runner's difficulty curve. The way the game works is that you're constantly automatically running to the right and obstacles and collectibles are thrown at you to the beat of a song and each action you can take makes a note you obviously have to match up to the beat (every game in the Bit Trip series is rhythm-based). You can only move on to the next level if you maneuver around all the obstacles with no errors (the windows for which are just strict enough). If you do make an error, you're just forced back to the beginning of the stage and the song restarts; no game over screen, no menu, just instantly booted back to beginning of current stage. The collectibles are technically optional, all collecting all of them each level will do is give you a bonus round to rack up a higher score at the end of each level. You start off just being able to jump, that's it, that's your only controllable input. First it gives you the mechanic, then the next level it will give you a obstacle you still have to avoid the same way, just to tell you "not all the obstacles are going to look the same, focus more on how it looks like you're supposed to maneuver around them and less on what they look like". Then it gives you a new controllable input/mechanic, rinse and repeat. In other words, it gives you a new mechanic every two stages, as if to say "here's a new thing you can do. Used it now? Good, here's another new mechanic". And the game progressively makes you juggle more and more move inputs to maneuver around a stage.
Let's talk about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in the next one. The game itself is great, but has some really strange UI decisions. When scrolling through menus, the amount of time it takes to get from one menu to another after clicking the button is about a second, for some kind of transition to play. In many of the menus, scrolling through options is very strange. For example, when in the character menu, you see a character and their three blades. If you hold right to start scrolling, the selection will go from the character, to the first blade (positioned right of the character,) to the second (positioned right of that), to the third (positioned on the FAR RIGHT), then it does not loop. It stops right there, even if you continue holding right, even though everything is to the right of you. There is a similar issue in the Merc Mission screen, but it's amplified. This menu is displayed in a circle. Similarly to the blade menu, it does not loop. Why? What is the point of having it in a circle then? I know you can just press the right button again and it will loop, but why did you need to let go and press it again in the first place?
Xenoblade in general (X in particular) has been something I've thought about tackling for this series for a while. It was originally going to be in this volume but, I haven't decided how I should approach it. Possibly in the future but I won't make any promises on that yet.
Alright then!
The best part about Automata's UI was when you played the second time, you got to see yourself screw around in the options menu, leaving you to yell at past you to get on with it.
Just want to say thank you!!! I’m an aspiring ux/ui designer and wanted to approach designs critiques objectively ! Your videos help!!
Love your channel, and I was wondering what you guys think of the Metro series and its graphic design. Specifically, how it changes between the Standard mode and Ranger mode.
is this a re-upload or why do i feel like i saw this before?
Mini Metro is a little gem, it needs all the love it can get !
I think i have both a good suggestion for Good Design Bad Design and a good suggestion for it's own episode.
For good design, I want to nominate LEGO Dimensions. It's UI has all the conventions of a LEGO title's UI, with the standard font and layout used throughout most of their games. You have in either upper corner a portrait of your current character, your healthbar, and in levels your studs (money), with the stud total being in the center for overworld areas. However, unlike most LEGO games, this one is a crossover with thirty different works featuring playable representatives. As such, it makes use of different designs to the portraits based on what universe a character is from.
For just a few examples, LEGO Movie characters have the series standard portrait and brick built hearts like their own adaptation game, DC characters have standard hearts and comic book style portraits, and Lord of the Rings characters have ornate portraits and hearts. Portal has a portal for a portrait, and companion cubes for hearts. Chima characters have Chi orbs for health, Sonic gets a Green Hill loop and item boxes, and for good measure, while from the same universe and sharing a portrait, The Doctor has doubled up hearts while Cyberman has mechanical hearts, reflecting their anatomy. About my only issue with this is the fact that Jurassic world has it's portrait set up that it blocks the character's face unless they get raised up, meaning Owen Grady is higher up than everyone else while the ACU Trooper is cut off by his own frame.
Furthermore, different characters can change shape, or have multiple characters with a single figure. For some characters, they change to another form temporarily, shown by a ring around the portrait that is also used for Chima and Ninjago character's unique Chi and Spinjitzu mechanics. Freeform shapeshifters, and characters with sets of equipment they can select, have a menu similar to the character selection menu show up. Ones with multiple people in one figure cycle through them on the character select, similar to past games. The Doctor, again, uniquely changes which regeneration he is from the TARDIS console, and can also automatically change which version he is on death.
In addition, other UI elements are also designed with the setting in mind. Text boxes look like the game's original elements, for example. Passeltounge spots use the older glowing spot to show where to stand when most such things use a newer ring. Sonic's world has rings replacing studs. In series standard fashion, outside of areas made entirely of bricks, objects being brick built makes it clear what can and cannot be interacted with.
And as a final touch, the game takes advantage of being toys to life for actual gameplay. Its competitors are hardly bad as games, but here the toy element is still vital, as Master Building and the various Keystones actually use your character's position on the gamepad for input, and the Stealth, Illumination, and Relic Detector likewise can optionally be used via the toy pad. And being based on a real toy allows for easy customization as well, unlike it's contemporaries.
Overall, it's a really good example of how you can have the UI fit the world it's in, and have lots of continuity nods at the same time, while also intentionally having many different visual elements at play at any given time. And it sacrifices no usability to do so either, making sure everything important is clear.
As for a standalone episode, I think talking about gameplay and story integration, how the story and mechanics work with or against each other, would be cool.
A good example of this is Psychonauts; every mechanical elements, from pickups to powers to an inability to swim, has a narrative justification for it. And likewise the levels are designed with the story in mind just as much as the gameplay; for example, the bipolar actress Gloria van Guten has her mental world be shown as a stage, where you need to find who's trying to sabotage the performances of her inner sunshine. You go through different sets as you explore it, and furthermore can change the mood between comedy and drama via the spotlight in the corner. By having plays performed based on her childhood, you gain access to more in the area until you can explore the catwalks above. The plays themselves wind up bringing happy elements to sad scenes and vice versa, showing you helping her even indirectly be able to have more of a balance in her normal thinking. And for good measure, using Clairvoyance to see how the Phantom sees you lets you find out early who they truly are, if you thought to see what the other theatre residents see you as.
On the other hand, some games run into issues with the story going against the mechanics in some way. For example, Bioshock is a game where narratively, near the end you learn the villain was directing you about the whole time, and Portal sees you escaping the test to explore behind the scenes to escape. However, mechanically, both games are just as linear after those turning points as before, and I think a writer for the former is the one who coined the term Ludonarrative Dissonance specifically in reference to issues like that. And that's not to mention the obvious problem, one not exclusive to games mind you, of characters who lament killing someone but who have no issues with killing that person's underlings, or who turn on their old side only to start killing them enthusiastically when moments before they were allies, with no real explanation of why they have this double standard. People generally don't like hypocrites when they see them, and someone who can't seem to decide their stance on killing easily can fall into that.
nice
I enjoyed your little aside about DS games with good design- I imagine the small, dual screens would create their own limitations and necessities to work around. I’d love to see you go more in depth with one next time- maybe for a game like Twewy, or Ghost Trick?
Ghost Trick is awesome. If I could get high quality footage of the IOS version or a remaster happens there MIGHT be something with that in the future. I do need to replay it and see if there's anything interesting to say about it.
I truly love Twewy's general presentation but, I'm not 100% on board with its actual interface. The combat can be a mess although that might have more to do with the actual game design. Right now, I don't think I would do a segment on it but, I wouldn't consider it great design. Stylistically it's on point, functionality is a bit messy sadly.
Design Doc Haha, yeah, that’s fair, Twewy’s combat can be... chaotic. Although, at least with the original version that was somewhat baked in, as expecting the player to be able to be able to handle two screens of combat at once was... ambitious, to say the least. I do still appreciate Twewy exploring things that only the DS as a system could do, even if some of those things were... iffier then others. It’s certainly interestingly experimental, at least.
That’s nice to hear regarding Ghost Trick- from what I remember (although it’s been a bit) the iOS versions are pretty solid ports, although while they did increase the resolution of the art/animations some of the assets do end up looking a little stretched on the iPad version. It’s fun to imagine we might get a full remaster eventually though...
This is everything I could have wanted! A channel about Game UI Design! , as soon as I can I am donating to this patreon !!
One game that I feel has a gorgeous yet simple presentation is Blue Reflection from Gust. While not a great game, the menu's are well worth a look for future episodes.
An idea I had for how to use the idea of the Fable 3 menu is to put it in a sort of heist game. Whenever you press the select button, it's a flashback to the planning stages of the heist. You can talk with your co-conspiritors for hints, look at the blueprint of the place as the overhead map, choose to bring one thing or another to set-up inventory. Even then, it couldn't work as the actual main menu.
I love those final lectures in your videos, you say so much in just a few words
"Without spoiling anything" immediately spoils ending [f]
Isn't that ending [T] tho?
Great video on a topic that doesn't get enough attention and doesn't get cared enough about, keep it up!
A good example of Cohesive UI is Crash Bandicoot's UI's the first one uses wood to connect with the island motif and warped uses metal plates landing in as a UI to signal it's time warping device the game is centered around.
i love Nier Automata so damn much, hearing music from it makes me slightly emotional
Even trying to explain the game to someone is difficult. It is truly a game that must be experienced.
The talk of Fable 3, reminded me of a game called Ether One. It is an adventure game (first person) and has the standard, 'you need to pick up items around the world to progress' nature to the puzzles. However, instead of the typical 'bar of valuable items' it made most items able to pick up in the game, and you stored them on a shelf in a pause state/hub area. You could put/take anything from the shelf at anytime and made for an interesting solution to the glowing item indicator problem.
oh boy, I gotta thanks youtube for recommending this video, now I found another great channel
Since I am going to choose game design as an elective soon, I find this video quite useful for me.
You got a new subscriber and I hope to see great contents like this in the future.
Nice video, and I 100% agree with the choices listed here. Indeed, Fable 3 kind of gives me Microsoft Bob flashbacks to be honest, in that it tried to have an 'in universe' menu system but ended up making something that was clunky and awkward to use as a result, since 'exploring' your menu is always going to be slower and less fun than just using it like a traditional menu.
That said, if you're doing another one of these in future, maybe Super Mario Odyssey may be a choice for it? It's weird because on a purely aesthetic level, the menus in that game aren't bad. They're minimalistic and easy to read, and in that sense they work well enough. But on a usability/UX level? The way the options are set up there is just bizarre, to the point most people don't realise the game even has multiple save files due to how its crammed about three levels deep into the options menu. It also has a bunch of options (namely alternate control schemes for motion controlled actions) that the game never tells you about at all, and aren't written down/explained in any way.
But hey, those are arguably more on the usability side than the design one.
Wait, Odyssey has multiple saves!?!?
*goes to check*
Oh my god! You're right! WTH...that might get a foot note in the future at least. Doubt that there's a whole segment worth of stuff but we'll see. Thanks for telling me!
I'm enjoying this series WAY too much... I liked the video before I watched it because I was certain it would deserve it and I (naturally) was not disappointed. :'D
This is so awesome! And really helpful for both graphic and UI designers!
For Fable 3, if having a pocket dimension is weird, then what do you make of the Velvet Room in Persona series?
So glad you used Layer Cake for the Persona 5 section. That's my jam forever
I love your channel! Keep up the good work :D
_System Shock 2_ did the "menu as physical space" thing too, in its prelude. First you walk through part of a city to get to the tutorial rooms, and then you go through a series of rooms that each have three doorways at the end to choose aspects of your character build, each of which is followed by a generic pre-rendered (but just as cheap-looking) cutscene of a generic spaceship taking off.
None of it was in any way necessary, and because they weren't going to bother modeling and animating NPCs just to populate a space that wasn't part of the game proper, it gave the impression that we were the last living human on earth or something. Other than the tutorial rooms themselves, the whole thing could have been folded into a traditional character creation menu. My best guess is that they were trying to give you some sense of having a life before the plot kicks off, like _Fallout 3_ did with Vault 101, but without any budget.
surprising how most of my favorite games are listed on the good design category :D but yes its great how you cover game design! i always get worked up about it and my friends make fun of me about it, haha.
small question: will you be talking about detroit: become human's UI anytime soon? would love to see your thoughts on the ui
4:39 Did Sonic actually just flip me the bird
Oh god, I can't not see it now!
3:33 I remember first seeing this game back when it only had a JP release on the stream of a guy I used to watch. I knew nothing about the persona series, had never heard it and didn’t know what this game was.
I didn’t even see fights. I just saw the characters *moving around* and *interacting with the world* and I was fascinated. I was so glad I could find out the games name.
And here I am now, having played Persona 3-5 and Persona 5‘s sequels, never again the same :)
Man I love these videos! Keep up the amazing work!
theres a small free indie game called "zineth" and i loved how they did menus in that game. the menu is your phone that opens on the side of the screen and you can use it with the right control stick alone while playing. great experimental ost too
These eyes... Are cryin...
These eyes have seen a lot of loves
But they're never gonna see another one like I had with you
I love that you included Ben Prunty music in this!!!
I love this video series!! Please do more of them!
Working on it!
you should talk about ASCII games, like Dwarf Fortress or Candy Box (1 and 2)
Yeah! My favorite show on youtube :D
Keep it up👍👍
Throwing on the FTL main menu theme is a sure-fire way to get me to stop paying attention to what you're saying and start just listening to the background music. It's a really good song, and for some reason always makes me feel sad.
On another note, one of the best things about P5's menu is that it puts the "inspect" option a single button-press away, so in combat if you can't remember what something is weak to, you can real quickly check and then get back to attacking. It's a small convenience but over a 100-hour game it's something you really grow to appreciate.
Why is the music in the part for Mini Metro from FTL tho?
I found Mini Metro's sound design to be a bit distracting when it's out of sync in the background.
if Design Docs is still active and makes another video, I'd like him to make a bad design section on Smash 4, if he hasn't done so already. If he has, he's a very agreeable man. Unless he put it in the Good Design section. Then he would be crazy.
Good Design, Bad Design Vol 1
I love watching these videos for new ideas of what to play.
Great video, good graphic design in games doesn't really get enough attention. Nier Automata's UI reminded me a little of MGS4's when I played it, even some of the sound effects sounded similar.
That train station game's menu transitions were so beautiful I literally cried tears of joy
Love these! Keep up the good work!
I am so glad someone else took these gripes with MK's ui. it always bothered me but i couldn't precisely put my finger on why, i just knew there was something wrong with it.
I haven't played Fable 3 before, but that "pause room" idea might be from the expansion of Black and White 2 (the title is probably War of Gods but I've never played the English version), in which there's basically no UI besides the pause menu and some popup window that you can't click on, not even for selecting runeward? You do most stuffs in the world directly (I remembered that it's quite painful to stack or split scaffolds), and if a "UI" doesn't fit into the world it would be put inside a hall that branches out into multiple rooms.
What do you think of counterstrikes new UI?
It just occurred to me what the Persona 5 font reminds me of: notes of cut-and-paste letters. You know in cartoons when someone makes a threatening notes and uses letters cut out from magazines to hide their handwriting? It's like that.
5:10, wow that FTL audio really caught me off guard. Such a great, tranquil soundtrack.
I would love to see a video about Journey, or Flower, those games are beautiful, but I can't explain why, when I want to, and yo really have a talent to explain these kind of subtle things
Can you do SMITE’s design for the next episode? You don’t have to review the Main menu, but the from what you showed so far, the in-game design you showed in pt.2 of this series was talked over w/ the chaotic tone from your script. This really intrigues me, so can you do that next?
you better make a segment all about Hotel Dusk/Last Window for the volume 4.
Did anyone notice the FTL Menu/Opening Theme in about 5:15?
How you do a critique on Digimon World?
(11:40) A thing that does annoy me is the usage of "5,000G". I have my computer set to the Sweden locale which uses the ISO 80000-1 standard, which states that digit groupings should be a space and that there should be a space between the numbers and units.. This means it should be written as "5 000 G", and personally, I find this more readable than how it is currently. This is why it would be very optimal if PC games would read the system format, so the player can get the format they're used to. _That_ is good design.
It seems hard to pull off what Persona 5 pulled off ("breaking conventional UI design rules without looking ugly"). Do you think you could give some kind of tutorial on how to do what they did?
Song starting at 5:12? I hear it all the time and it's very familiar.
Main theme from FTL
What is the song he plays while explaining what this video is about?
I'm years late but that edit at 16:00 is brilliant.
So glad to see Mini Metro getting recognition for, well, every single thing you talk about here. It is a masterclass is excellent design.
Monster Hunter GenU Has this neat feature where it highlights important text during conversations in a different colour so you dont have to read the boring comversations.
Unfortunately That colour is dark red on a dark grey and transparent background so it is nearly impossible to read if you dont sit 2 meters away from the screen like me.