Hey, Zaxonauts! Sebastian here, Studio AD at M80 Games bringing more beard than anyone asked for. 🧔🏻
This week we’ve been tinkering with the Achievements screen and icons for that UI. We wanted these to stand apart from the Upgrades (which look like old-school NES cartridges in an SD card form-factor). Achievements felt like they should be more trophy-like, a nice visual reward you get to hold onto. So we settled on a design that feels like pulling a 3D relic out of a sci-fi crate, each one framed for consistency but with plenty of room for personality inside.
The Kill Streak series really sold us on this direction: a bare skull at 50, colder at 100, sickly green at 200… and by 500, it’s a flaming nightmare grinning back at you. That’s when the achievement system started to feel like it had its own personality, not just a checklist. We’ve got plenty more of these little relics for Achievements to cook up. What do you want to see?
--Sebastian
