07/25/2024: Main Menu Concept Art

Castle Fractal: Combat Prototype 02 » Devlog

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This week in Castle Fractal development was UI concept art, and getting those visuals into Unity. And I'm just going to get right to it: emotionally, seeing this in game makes the game feel... real.

I've been working on this game since October 2021. In the time since I've started this game, I've graduated high school and have made it halfway through my undergraduate career. And throughout it all, Castle Fractal has been growing. I've been growing as a designer. I was looking back at my Unity Learning Log, and saw that I had written in my Unit 5 notes of the Create With Code - Unity Learn section:

Elements like title screens, menu buttons, text, score displays, etc. all fall into the category of User Interface (UI)–the user interacts with the UI during the game experience to get information about the game.
A UI makes a game look much more professional and playable–something the player can experience from beginning to end without game-breaking bugs.

I had honestly forgotten I written that until today, but it's very much been influencing my feelings during development--things like Health Bars and the Inventory screen were some of the most exciting things to get working, not only because UI work is a brand new skill that I've had to learn (which is fun in its own way), but because it's when I spend the most time directly thinking about the player will interact with my game. And thinking about other people experiencing this game is downright thrilling!

I spent a lot of time thinking about menus from games that I've played, from Super Smash Bros. to Henry Stickmin to New Super Mario Bros. While I'm happy with how these turned out, I'm curious as to your thoughts on these menus; I'll be sharing around the concept art for these menus with people I know for more feedback to make sure that they're intuitive to use and pleasant to look at.

Title Screen (Concept). The background will have the clouds slowly scrolling by, with the titular Castle in view. The High Scores box will appear when hovering over PLAY.

Control Presets (Concept). The player will be able to choose from one of four default presets that I talked about back in June, or choose from 5 custom presets.

Inventory Index (Concept). One piece of feedback I got was to have some kind of guide for the different Weapon Abilities. This is actually something I thought about even before releasing Combat Prototype 02, but dumping everything the player would need to know on them all at once would be too overwhelming, so I left it for v0.9b.

The Weapon Description listing the enemies that drop it got me thinking about a Bestiary to learn about the enemies as well... but no! I will not let myself succumb to feature-creep! Maybe I'll add it AFTER v1.0 is out...