I'm happy to announce that The Funnel is now in private beta testing. Over the next month we will be refining things like minigame balancing and adding in the last tracks of our original soundtrack.
This week I thought I'd tell you about our user interface design in The Funnel.
DIEGETIC UI
I really like diegetic user interfaces as they always makes me feel that the game is more of a cohesive whole as opposed to a product that has elements nailed on to the side. It also adds a lot to immersion which I think is generally important for a story based game. Ideally all the tutorials/UI would have been diegetic in the game but I think this is impossible unless the game also involves a computer interface, as at some point you have to tell the player they can quit the game or press 'E' to interact. Regardless though, I've tried to make all the UI at least look like it fit in the world as you'll see below.
THE PLAYER DESK
One of the hardest UI elements to design in The Funnel was the player desk. I wanted to have a central point where the player could both receive mail and stamp/send off letters to request items. There was originally a version of this UI where the letters were presented in a vertical list and then you could swipe them aside to switch to item request mode. However, this crucially didn't have the ability to store or destroy letters. Either the list would keep growing as the player received letters or the letters would disappear once read, but if they disappeared, there was nothing to look back on when the player forgot information. That issue along with the fact that the letters were floating led me to look back at the desk as a base for all the possible actions, and eventually came to the design you see above.
THOUGHT BUBBLES
As I mentioned at the start, I couldn't figure out a way to make all the UI completely diegetic. The main culprit here was having to tell the player which keys to press. I tried having none of this information at first and saw that most people had no trouble figuring out WASD to move, but players would either take a long time to figure out the interact key, or wouldn't figure it out at all. So in the same manner that our dialogue choices are presented as the player's thoughts, I've added a little thought bubble at certain points to communicate tutorial information. Hopefully it's not too intrusive of an experience. There will be an option to simply disable all tutorials if you prefer.
Thanks for reading as we move ever closer to release. We're looking forward to getting the game in your hands.
May the gears keep turning.
-Gabe