UI and UX: An Explanation

UI refers to User Interface and UX stands for User Experience. The user interface communicates visual information to the viewer and in most cases has an interactive element to it. Taking a hit from a monster affects the Life Bar by shrinking it down, for instance. This tells the player to avoid hostile entities. User experience refers to how the user (or player in the case of games) handles the interface. If they have a frustrating time reading information or finding menus, they have a bad experience. If screen flow is good and data is clearly communicated, the experience is great. Both play important roles in games.

UI is used to convey information in a visual, yet non-intrusive way. Examples of UI elements include Health, Lives, MiniMaps, Power Meters, Time (or time left), Collectibles, Level Names and Locations, among other things. UI elements can be emphasized with visual effects such as bright colors, glowing auras, color change, and even sound effects. You should avoid using flashing effects or anything obnoxious. The notification should be brief enough to get the player’s attention, but not stop game flow. UI isn’t limited to just being on the screen. It can appear in the game world as well. Floating text over NPCs who are speaking, dialogue boxes, Health bars on players and enemy units, damage numbers, icons for status ailments, and more. These UI elements are more context sensitive as they appear only on related objects. You don’t need to see the damage you can do to a monster at all times; it makes sense to show it when you’re attacking and hitting the creature.

The point of a UI is to show information to the player without getting in the way of the game itself. Notice that some games like Journey have no UI elements because the game goes for a more immersive feel. Seeing HUD elements brings a player out of the experience, especially if the focus needs to be on the game world. Other games such as Night in the Woods have minimal UI elements. Most of the time the game world shows no HUD of any kind. When approaching something that can be looked at, an eye icon appears on the object for as long as the player remains in range of that object. Once they move out of range, the icon disappears. A paw icon shows up for objects that can be picked up. These UI elements are distinct enough that players immediately know what the symbols mean and what will happen when they choose to interact. The game only shows those icons when necessary.

UX is more about how the player navigates through UI and Menu. For example, a Pause Menu is included in most games whenever players need to stop the action for any reason. Inventory Screens are a way for players to see what they have on them that can be used in the game world. Navigating through Menus should be direct and require as few clicks as possible. There shouldn’t be layers upon layers of menus and sub-menus to sift through to reach a particular option. It’s best to keep most elements of a menu consolidated to a single screen so there isn’t a need to scroll through options. Placing similar options in the same menus makes them easy to find. 

Ultimately, UX is affected by UI. Menus are a form of user interface that display information, typically in list form. The user experience comes from how easily the user can locate certain options in these menus. Listing objects alphabetically makes things easier to find as opposed to ordering items by some arbitrary rule (though including additional sorting options isn’t a bad idea). Broken UI can ruin the experience of the player navigating through it. An example may be a game with lots of lore entries that are found in a journal. Players can read these entries at any time, but for some reason the word “NEW!” always sticks by the lore entries even after the player has clicked on them. It tells the player that they haven’t read this entry yet even though in reality they just got through reading it! Make sure your elements work properly (or if they don’t work at all, consider throwing that element out).

UI and UX are suitably classified as forms of game design. With games you create some rules for players to abide by, then notice issues with gameplay during playtesting. Designers remove rules or add new ones to fix these issues and try again. UI and UX have similar workflows: this UI element is meant to convey player location, but players have no idea where they actually are in the world. The UI element is changed by adding a couple of features and now players have an easier time navigating the world. 

Design requires iteration in order to perfect and user experience does, too. Rules must be communicable and understandable; UI must be comprehensible and readable right away. Both must be engaging or fun to interact with (ideally both). A good game has a good UI and user experience. UI/UX design can potentially make or break a game.

March Analysis: The Swapper

          The Swapper is a puzzle game dealing with platforms, lights, and the eponymous device used to navigate the space station. This game stands out from puzzle platformers mainly due to its unique art style and mechanics. It quickly turns from being an interesting game with an eerie atmosphere into a horror story where you feel isolated from everything else alive in the station. 

          The game works like this: you control a device called The Swapper. It allows the user to create a clone of himself that acts dependently. Whenever you move, the clone moves in the same direction at the same pace. If you jump, the clone jumps. You can have up to four clones of yourself at one time, though some puzzles will force you to work with less. The Swapper can also fire a beam that lets you swap places with your clone, hence the name. Two simple mechanics that lead into one of the most complicated puzzle games I’ve played to date.

The art style astounds me. At first glance it appears to be 3D assets. But upon reading more about this game, it turns out the environment is made from clay! Every wall, floor, panel, plant, portal, and block is pure clay. Some parts are 3D modeled such as the player character, but it gives the world this alien appearance. It makes sense as the station you’re inhabiting is on an alien planet. Everything appears shaped by hand and warped into an unnatural precision. Lots of work went into making this game look as great as it does.

          Mechanics are introduced steadily to the player. First, you learn about how to create clones with The Swapper. When making a clone, time slows down and a red outline of yourself appears as your cursor. Letting go of the button spawns the clone into existence. Touching the clone with your own body absorbs it back into you. Walking under white spotlights also eliminates clones and serves as a quick way to reset a puzzle and try again. Next the player is taught the idea of swapping with their clones. Simply clicking the other button fires a white beam at the target and the player trades places with their clone. The process is instant, but there are some cases in which you may need to slow down time by preparing to generate a clone before you attempt a swap. One ill-timed shot can cost you your life, especially if you’re falling from hundreds of feet up. 

Once players do enough puzzles to get used to the idea of cloning and swapping, the lights make an appearance. Lights affect The Swapper by limiting its functions. Players cannot create clones in blue light, but they can still swap places with any existing clones. In red light, players can create clones, but not swap places. When the lights combine, they create a violet light which renders The Swapper useless. The puzzles involving light will require the player to either turn off certain lights with switches or by finding workarounds to the lights that stay on permanently.

          Gravity adds even more complexity to an already tricky game. When standing on a white glowing surface, players will swap gravity depending on which direction the surface is facing. If it’s facing up, gravity becomes directed from the ceiling. If the surface is pointing down, gravity is reversed back to the floor. Careful when falling as hitting the ground after leaping from a high place will kill you. In instances like these, you’ll need to create a clone of yourself, then swap to it and let your old self plummet to death.

          Four is a peculiar choice for how many clones are allowed to be used. In every puzzle, you will be using all of them to reach the solution. In some puzzles, the number of clones you can utilize is limited to two or three due to needing to have someone stand on switches to open doors to the puzzles themselves. The developers likely had a lot of ideas for puzzles that worked with just two clones or three, but ultimately went with four. It may have been the best choice for the biggest variety of puzzles, plus they knew they could place limitations on the player if they felt a solution could be reached too easily with all four clones available. Adding more clones to the player’s arsenal might have resulted in a much easier game, but the puzzles could end up being enormous and elaborate in order to warrant the use of all those extra clones. Four feels like the perfect number to work with.

          Throughout the game are terminals that have info on what happened to the space station. Scientists found some sentient rocks, studied them, then inadvertently got themselves killed. You and one other person are the only survivors. As you find more terminals, the game makes you question identity. What does it mean to be yourself? If you make a clone, are you still you? Or is the clone you? What are the implications of destroying your own clones after swapping? The game wants you to ask yourself this, but you can’t afford to get too attached to the idea of self-preservation. Many of the puzzles require that you sacrifice your clones in order to succeed. In the end, there can only be one you.

          This is a game that should be on a bucket list. It’s a prime example of using simple mechanics to design difficult puzzles, it never gets boring or repetitive, the atmosphere is truly unsettling, and the gameplay invokes thought. It doesn’t necessarily convey narrative through the puzzles themselves, but it’s story is told through interacting with the other survivor and the terminals as well as the Watchers. Good forms of art make you think about their message. The Swapper makes you think not only about problems and solutions, but about identity and what it means to be you.

For When I Miss A Week Or Two

          On occasion, I don’t upload an article for the week. The explanation varies between being sick or losing the original document. But in reality, sometimes you just have no idea what to write. Readers may have noticed some weeks have no articles posted. Most often, it’s because I didn’t write anything. 

          This isn’t a case of me being lazy. It’s merely a condition in which I find a topic to discuss that I don’t think about often enough nor research enough to write something worth reading (also known as “procrastination”). It happens to the best of us, really. Every so often you need a break. Missing a scheduled task harms your consistency, but recovers your thoughts.

Think of an artist who draws every single day for a year. They keep up a daily routine in which they draw a sketch that takes between thirty minutes to an hour to do, then post it online or share it through other means. Then one day, there’s nothing. No sketch of the day today. What gives? Maybe something came up that took precedence over the daily sketch. A week later, still no drawings. Did they give up? Are they done drawing? On the eighth day, you see a post. The author explains their situation and why they haven’t been drawing lately. At least they were able to communicate to their audience. But in some cases, there’s no communication. Only silence.

          I’m not stopping my writing or anything; I don’t have an article up because I had too many other tasks to do and couldn’t get around to it. Either that or despite the list of topics to discuss I couldn’t come up with anything to say about them. That’s one of the reasons I’m trying a monthly analysis where I look at a game, analyze it, then talk about it. What makes the game work, where it falls short, and why readers should play it or at least learn from it. It gives me time to really look at the game in my free time and see if there’s anything worth looking at. If there is, expect a long read at the end of the month. If there isn’t, that article may be brief.

          I do apologize if you look forward to these on a weekly basis and I unexpectedly have nothing. I can’t exactly prepare for weeks where I have no ideas. They show up out of nowhere! Still, I try to be consistent like the artist who can draw a picture a day for a year. Reality is, some days you can’t make yourself work. It’s fine to take a break and relax. During that time, more ideas come flowing in and now we’ve got something to work with.

Thank you all for reading my stuff thus far. I doubt I’ll be quitting anytime soon. Still, if anything happens you’ll be the first to know.