Visual Design of Games: Cheese or Font
1. Game Elements
Core Elements:
- Timer
- Names of Cheeses/Fonts
- Controls (“c” and “f”)
- Feedback — was your guess correct?
Supportive Elements:
- Cheese/Font List
- Score out of 50
- Color representation of correct or incorrect guess
- “How to Play”
- “Give Up”
Extraneous Elements:
- Average Score/Quiz Stats
- “Cheese or Font?” table header
- Number of plays
- Quiz rating
- “Follow”
2. Thumbnail Sketches
3. Other Game Design
I’ve already mentioned Flow Free on Medium before, but I have to bring it up again when discussing Visual Design. Flow Free is so simple and yet so effective. You see an empty board, and within seconds you can figure out that the colors need to be connected to each other to fill the board, like so:
There are very few buttons, but players can figure out pretty quickly what they all do. The information given at the top of the board is sometimes unnecessary, but it’s not in your face, so if you choose to ignore it, you can. The elements on the back of the screen also add a fun element to the game without distracting the player. When the player wins, they get another, simple, popup message:
The UI is so straightforward and easy to understand, so the player can really focus on the gameplay. Finally, I happen to think that the menu is so colorful and fun, and really representative of the game:
