My User Interface

The UI in games is very important ,as I covered on a previous post in more detail I said there's many ways to do it and it often depends on genres, it can make or break some games.

So I gave it a shot for the 2D game prototype I have been working over the last couple weeks.


Firstly health.
For health I just made a bar filled with red to indicate full health, simple but effective. Creating an unnecessarily elaborate health bar could mean the player needs to think about what they're looking at, the best UI is one where the player doesn't have to think about it but knows right away what it means and the current data being displayed.
Next to the bar is a heart, this is the classic symbol for lives, instead of putting up a heart per-live, I decided it would be better to put a number within the heart as it takes up less screen space and is easy to read and understand quickly.

Next is stars, this meant to be a pick-up throughout the game, an optional extra which isn't required to finish the level, but can unlock things. There are certain players who love to be a completionist and collect all the times, so having a the star icon with the two different numbers next to it I deem effective.
The first number is how many of the pick up the player currently has, the second number is the total amount of pick-ups that are currently within the level the player is playing.

Finally is time, I had considered maybe an overall score, but for the game I am thinking of the score wouldn't be some extra number but instead just the time with the rest being covered up pick-ups.
The top number (Time), is the players current time, this is constantly being updated per millisecond.
It goes Minute. Second. Millisecond, I haven't considered what if the player goes over an hour, it could be that the level ends with a a time-out.
The second number is Par, which is considered the best time to finish the level, either an average or something I decided. This will allow the player to compare themselves to the average.
The third and final number (Best) is connected to an online leader-board where it displays the fastest time it look someone to beat the level.
It's possible that an option could be changed in a menu where this could either be the best of your friends, best in world, best local or the best of the players own time.

I have put these elements into the example game which I have been working on, this is what it could look like within the game.