Visual Design of Games
My redesigns for “Cheese or font?” are shown in the image above. For these redesigns, I focused on typography, color and contrast, and alignment and proximity. Starting from the top left, I wrote the word down in large letters so that it would stick out more. I left the text box from the original game but added a hint text so it is evident what to type in the text box. On the top right, I focused on color and contrast by making everything black and white except for the clock. Making the clock red really makes it stand out as it is a core element. The middle left design focused on typography by removing the text box all together and adding buttons to click. Having two buttons for a game that has two options is a bit easier to learn than a text box that has infinite inputs. The middle right design is the same as the middle-left design, but the buttons are even larger. Moving a mouse over to click a button seems like it would take longer than just pushing two keys on a keyboard. As a result, the larger buttons allow the user to have a quicker response with a larger area to click on. In addition to the larger buttons, I added a percentage to show the score rather than a fraction because a percentage is easier to interpret than a fraction. The bottom left design further explored the idea of larger buttons by making the buttons take up the entire half of the screens. For the last design in the bottom right, I focused on alignment and proximity by making the buttons the same, reasonable size. These buttons are blue to draw the user’s attention to them. The font is large enough to see clearly, and the timer is red and right above the word so that it is not out of sight. Instead of having a score, there is a box that should be grayed out and lights up green if the guess is correct.
A game I think is beautiful
A game that I think is beautiful is Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Nintendo Switch because of the choice of vibrant, fun colors and the alignment and proximity. First off, the colors are used to tell the player where they are at in the menu options. For example, the selected menu option is highlighted yellow which has a lot of contrast with the background. This makes it simple for the user to know where they are at in the menu options. In addition to the color of the menu options, the black font on the buttons is very easy to read. Finally, the menu options are all grouped together which makes it easy to navigate and see that they are related.
