D4NIEL

A fast-paced, 4-week game project that placed me in the role of both UX/UI designer and Scrum Master for a 13-member team. The goal was to develop a retro-style roguelite experience set in the cyberspace.

My contributions included the complete UI implementation, from in-game menus and the HUD to intuitive player onboarding, all while effectively leading the team to meet the tight deadline.

Product Page

Roles

UX/UI Designer

UI Programmer

Scrum Master

Team

4 Designers

4 Programmers

5 Artists

Tools

Figma

Unity

Visual Studio

Perforce

Time

4 Weeks

Jan - Feb 2025

Full-Time

Designing Skill Allocation

A core challenge was creating a skill allocation menu that fit the game's theme, while still being intuitive and easy to use. A core gameplay constraint was "limited RAM", encouraging the player to allocate skills strategically. The menu needed to effectively communicate this.

Wireframe

The first step was wireframing. I used boxes to establish clear visual separation between "Equipped Mods" (right) and "Backup" skills (left). At this point, focus lay on understandability of the different parts of the menu, not on the looks.

In the first version of the menu, the skills were represented as "physical" RAM. However, the setting of the game was still more inspired by software- and cyberspace aesthetics. This made this menu (although functional)not fit thematically. To meet the goal I had to reiterate.

First Iteration

In the second iteration, I shifted to a BIOS terminal style better fitting the theme. This also made the UI feel cleaner to artists. However, when playtesting, players struggled to distinguish between "Equipped" and "Backup" skill lists. The menu needed to become more intuitive, making it easy to see which menu was which.

Second Iteration

Final Iteration

For the final design, I switched the size of each section to focus player attention on the equipped skills. Further improvements were made by switching to a more eye-catching colour palette and elaborating on overloading effects. The menu now felt more thematically fitting.

In the next play test, we also saw a distinct improvement in player understanding of the menu.

Designing and Implementing Upgrades

I was also responsible for the upgrades menu, another core system. This menu appears when the player has successfully completed a level, and gets to choose an upgrade as a reward.

Inspired by the Windows 95 UI aesthetic, I designed the upgrade buttons to have a colourful and retro feeling. It was important that the menu itself gave a rewarding impression by being visually pleasing. The simplicity of the buttons helped reach this goal.

I wanted the menu background to move to reinforce that feeling of progression. For that, I created a scene in Unity and made a landscape consisting of a square texture with neon lighting. I wrote a script to make the camera move slowly over time.

The menu was a success visually, but there was a lack of responsiveness to when a player is choosing a new upgrade. I added a highlight border to show that an upgrade is being hovered over.

Managing The Team

Leading a team of 13 people proved to be a fun and stimulating challenge!

I was natural at facilitating the tasks for each sprint and leading the daily standup meetings.

During pre-production, I took the lead during the conceptualisation and ideation meetings. Using Miro, I ensured that all team members felt a part of the product and that their voices were heard.

What I Learned

Developed my UI knowledge, in areas such as clarity and usability, visual hierarchy, and blending function with form.

Gained experience in effective play testing and utilising user feedback to identify usability flaws and improve the design.

How to use visual cues to encourage desired gameplay behaviors. The RAM overload indicator gently promotes risk/reward exploration.

Improved in my leadership skills in the role as scrum master, and effectively organising and delegating tasks within a team using Jira.