UI Art & Design
Main Menu
PS, Illustrator, & Unity
Goo Grinder's UI theme was based on 60s technology. To stay on theme and to practice texturing, I created a vintage children's science kit. I incorporated an instructions section on the inner roof that could be zoomed into for better visibility. I was extremely proud of the interior because I made the keycaps with PS shapes and effects and felt they truly resembled typewriter keys.
Pause Menu
PS, Illustrator, & Unity
To maintain the 60s vibe, much of our 2D overlays kept the theme of general 60s technology. The pause menu was inspired by old-fashioned TVs. This was a super neat task to take on because I was able to work on building shapes and adding different effects to create the illusion of different materials that would be used on these TVs! I exported the asset as a sprite sheet so that each element can be manipulated separately in-engine via one PNG.
Score HUD
Photoshop & Unity
I took inspiration from the nixie tube display seen on vintage clocks. It was hard finding a transparent nixie bulb PNG which made this asset a time-intensive one, but so worth it. The assets were all exported on a singular sprite sheet for ease of use in engine.
The charge meter would not always need to be visible, so we hid the sprite until it's use, also improving visibility when it did show up.
When a score is updated, the score blinks to draw attention to the change, and I also added the item collection number popup for added visibility and understanding of mechanics.
Tutorial
TMPro 3D in engine
I did not want to make the naive assumption that players would have read the box lid instructions, leading to confusion and a bad UX, so I added text that would be unmissable.
I worked in engine for this and had a lot of fun with a placement that would emphasize the 3D nature of the rails. I also strategically added this text when players would not only need to learn a new mechanic, but also when they would be able to stop to read the text, away from any large slopes or points of forced momentum.
Death Popup
Photoshop & Unity
When players die, they are allowed to use their points to respawn at the most recent checkpoint. Because our writing team had mainly been creating lore, I wanted to create a fun task that would be super useful in-game. I had them create a bunch of phrases that were on theme with the satirical nature of Goo Grinder to randomly display each time a player died. This kept the game fresh and exciting, and encouraged players to want to play again. The screen also communicated what players need to know to respawn.
I exported the death popup and the progress bar as sprite sheets for ease of use in engine.