Valkyria Chronicles is a tactical role-playing game in which the player uses a unique turn-based battle system called BLiTZ (Battle of Live Tactical Zones). During their turn the player views an overhead map in Command Mode, but zooms in to control each individual unit on the battlefield in Action Mode. By using their troops the player must fulfill various conditions depending on the mission in order to achieve victory, most often the capture of a major enemy encampment.
Upon completing missions, the player is awarded money and experience with which to upgrade their materiel and character classes, respectively, and the game’s story is advanced. There is an option named ‘Book Mode’, it’s like the main menu in general. Except the battle game play, all other features you can play start from this Book Mode. To be honest, the gameplay of this game is not balanced. Characters are suppose to corporate with each other, but using the strongest character to finish all the moves seems to be the easiest way to win. However, their Book Mode Interface is fantastic.
The chapter page looks like news paper. Description near each episode is both information and decoration. Most of episodes are distributed horizontally which indicates the timeline. Some episodes are bigger, some are smaller. It gives player a common sense about each episode. Such as what is their importance/length/difficulty. Some games also show these informations by adding importance icon (star), length icon (progress bar) or difficulty icon (skull head), etc. What Valkyrie Chronicles did make the information a little less clear, but also a perfect match to the story itself: It’s not a menu, it about your story. It’s vivid. For those of you who want to make a rpg with a great story line, and you want your episode/chapter menu also shows the taste of your story. This Book Mode UI is the perfect reference.
There are capital letters on each tab indicates different functions. Red color tab means you already unlock that function; blue color on the other hand means you cannot use that function yet. When you select a tab, the book will flip to that page. Besides the animation of page flipping, the tab changing is also a very vivid detail. This is a good example of the ‘juicy’ and polish thing of UI design.
Let’s stop here
There is too many sub functions and details in this Book UI. It’s a perfect example of how to make a good narrative diegetic interface for RPG (I would love to see a version with mouse control though). It’s stylish, but also clear and easy to use. It’s vivid, both the visual and interactions meet the narrative of the game. If you are interested in it or you need a good reference for the main menu/chapter selecting UI of your own RPG, go check the game! If you need a bad reference, go check my post ‘General Visual Problems of Sunset Overdrive UI’.
