Malice In Wonderland
I was inspired to re-create the Deadlock UI menu for two reasons. Its deep systems would allow a great technical challenge for me and I was deeply inspired by its style and wanted to reinforce its feel with animations and more lively signifiers and feedback.
Client
Slyglass Games
Role
Lead UX Designer
Team Size
24-28 People
Project Overview
Modular UI
This project served as a technical challenge, I knew that without some intelligent coding architecture this project would be out of scope.
Dynamic UI
UI had to support future hero additions to the roster and dynamically adapt to the needs of the character (Things such as abilities, descriptions, damage, cooldown, etc.)
Extra Flair
Using the framework I had built to re-create the menu from the live version of the game, I could then add extra layers of signifiers and feedback to turn the hero select menu into more of an experience for the player.
Modular UI
Scriptable Objects allowed me to store data for each new character and dynamically spawn and update elements of UI based on the Scriptable Object
Dynamic UI
Using Vertical Layout Groups as well as auto-sizing text, I was able to let Unity auto-adjust what my tooltip manager looked like based on the content required.
Extra Flair
Ghostly Feel
Deadlock has a strong occult theme, adding a little floatiness to the hero select menu and a cascade around the hero selected reinforces that theme.
Impact
Fast animations can create the feeling of action in a player, reinforcing what it feels like to play the game.
Animate when necessary
Some things should only animate once on entrance as actions with high repeatability can create friction in the usability of the interface. This tooltip animation only happens once the first time you hover something.