Guilty Gear Strive: UI Fan Redesign
Ever since the gameplay of Guilty Gear Strive was revealed, one of the biggest complaints is the UI(User-Interface) design. The major say “it isn’t Guilty Gear” and “It looks like Fisher-Price”, lol. I agree with this, and although Daisuke Ishiwatari stated in interviews it’s a placeholder, he also wants to keep the general concept. I decided to create my own UI design for GG Strive using Photoshop and created many elements from scratch(only part is the gear icons, but did color and edit them). Here’s a picture of it below!
Note: Here’s a link to see it bigger. https://i.imgur.com/FI3DBa1.jpg
I read how Daisuke said in an interview that there was a study about players constantly shifting their eyes alot during gameplay because of how there’s so much information placed on screen. He wanted to reduce the amount of times a player has to shift his/her gaze and went with a simplistic look. Keeping this in mind, I thought what would be the best way to rearrange the information on screen. 1. The Burst meter: Since Burst is one of the main mechanics in GG, I think it should be placed closer underneath the player’s HP bar. How I designed it now is with Burst already full by glowing brightly. If it isn’t full, there won’t be a glow effect and its color will a pale shade. 2. The RISC gauge: RISC will play an important role in GG Strive, so it didn’t make sense to make it so hard to see. I placed it under the player’s HP bar and next to the Burst gauge. I think this will be convenient for players to see both mechanics next to each other whenever he/she needs to check them. I’ve kept the colors between low RISC(blue) and high RISC(reddish color). 3. Character Portrait & Name: I wanted the character’s portrait to be under the player’s HP bar, so he/she only has to glance at one area like I did with the game mechanics. The name placement was the trickiest cause I didn’t want to put it next to Burst cause a character’s name isn’t a game mechanic, XD. Placing it under the character’s portrait would end up being hard to see, especially if a stage has bright colors. I decided to leave it within the HP bar, but change the font style. 4. Round Indicators: Having hearts as round indicators for GG Strive is very weird cause it makes me think of a romance mechanic or lives from older platform games. It also doesn’t convey a player win; it’s only a broken heart is a player loses and a normal heart showing the amount of rounds left. I changed this to gears since it’s one of the stable designs GG is known for; it can even be seen in GG Strive like in the character reveal trailers. Gray gears simply shows the amount of rounds not won yet, red broken gears means lost round(s), and yellow full gears means won round(s). 5. Tension Gauge: Designing the Tension gauge was another difficult part. But I decided to mix having a metal border mixed with a colorful, fiery glow and kept the word “Tension” within the bar. There’s double pointers within the gauge to convey from left to right 25%, 50%, and 75%. It be fully will obviously be 100%. I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts about my design of whether you like and if all the information is easy to see, etc.!^_^ I may redesign other parts of GG Strive’s UI if people like how I did with this one.
