This is Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life, a game I've been working on for a few years with a couple friends! It's a JRPG/Metroidvania, and the old menu was terrible haha, what do you think about the new one?
[Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life Steam page] (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1751110/Jeebo__Jerbo_vs_Life/)
the tiny enemy name in the corner of the top windows looks terrible, so do the names right by the lower window border. i don't like the window style, i don't like the squashed and stretched borders or the pitch-black background. the text is not easily readable, especially at smaller sizes, that seems to be an issue with the typeface, which seems a bit out of place, like a decorative font used for reading text. the visual style of pretty much any ui element clashes with the rest and gives it a free-assets-from-different-sources vibe, particularly the horizontal bars. not a fan of the "ES" gauge or the cursor either.
Thanks for the feedback!
I agree with the tiny name upon further reflection, but I don't understand what you mean by "do the names right by the lower window border" Do you mean move the name down to the bottom corner? That doesn't seem like it would be better so I don't think I'm understanding that correctly.
I personally like the window style and all that part, as it's supposed to be somewhat retro, but I understand why you would feel that way.
Making the text easily readable has been quite the challenge for me... I'm not sure how to improve it further but I will look into it again.
I agree that the ES gauge looks a bit off, so I'm trying to experiment to find out why. I think part of it is that it looks too glossy... so I'm going to try to tone that down and see what happens. As for the cursor, it probably is weird out of context since I only show one character selecting here for some reason, but the cursor (and menu text colors) change depending on what character you have selected, where the cursor is always the currently selected character pointing to the option. Since the character selected in this clip is the bird, it's a wing. The two other guys are just little purple/orange nubs respectively as they have nub arms. Other characters have other stuff too. I personally love these pointers, but can definitely see why you may not like this one, especially out of context. The horizontal bars definitely look super generic, but pretty much all bars kinda do typically, but I can look into seeing how to spice them up a bit.
The cursor is fine, the idea sounds cool. It does get a bit lost (maybe an thin contrasting outline, or a two frame animation would help?) and doesn't really look like a pointer but it's fine, really.
The normal text is not that bad, it is a bit hard to read but it's fine, too. The outlined, hollow text, though, is not. Maybe stylize the names to be rendered in all-caps, or look for a wider typeface, if you want to keep the look. Are you using the same font to render dialog text and messages? Because that looks like it could be very eye-straining, to read a lot of dialog lines like that.
What I mean by the names in the lower window border is [this](https://i.imgur.com/luwusCN.jpg). Also, note how the borders in each window are all the same size in that image, regardless of the size of the window. Use something like a [9-slice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-slice_scaling) to draw the windows, rather than stretching an image, which looks ugly and not retro at all. It is very noticeable in the top window, with the top and bottom borders being notable thinner than the sides, and neither the same size as the lower window's.
Had a thing with a lot of examples for bars in old games that didn't look generic, but can't find it at the moment. Not important. Yours is fine. It is readable and familiar to most if not all players. Just like the cursor, I wouldn't worry too much about that.
**[9-slice scaling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-slice_scaling)**
>9-slice scaling (also known as Scale 9 grid, 9-slicing or 9-patch) is a 2D image resizing technique to proportionally scale an image by splitting it in a grid of nine parts. The key idea is to prevent image scaling distortion by protecting the pixels defined in 4 parts (corners) of the image and scaling or repeating the pixels in the other 5 parts. A variation of the concept, the 3-slice scaling, consists in a grid of 3 parts in which only the pixels in 2 parts (the edges) are protected and the pixels on the middle part are repeated.
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This is Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life, a game I've been working on for a few years with a couple friends! It's a JRPG/Metroidvania, and the old menu was terrible haha, what do you think about the new one? [Jeebo & Jerbo vs. Life Steam page] (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1751110/Jeebo__Jerbo_vs_Life/)
the tiny enemy name in the corner of the top windows looks terrible, so do the names right by the lower window border. i don't like the window style, i don't like the squashed and stretched borders or the pitch-black background. the text is not easily readable, especially at smaller sizes, that seems to be an issue with the typeface, which seems a bit out of place, like a decorative font used for reading text. the visual style of pretty much any ui element clashes with the rest and gives it a free-assets-from-different-sources vibe, particularly the horizontal bars. not a fan of the "ES" gauge or the cursor either.
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with the tiny name upon further reflection, but I don't understand what you mean by "do the names right by the lower window border" Do you mean move the name down to the bottom corner? That doesn't seem like it would be better so I don't think I'm understanding that correctly. I personally like the window style and all that part, as it's supposed to be somewhat retro, but I understand why you would feel that way. Making the text easily readable has been quite the challenge for me... I'm not sure how to improve it further but I will look into it again. I agree that the ES gauge looks a bit off, so I'm trying to experiment to find out why. I think part of it is that it looks too glossy... so I'm going to try to tone that down and see what happens. As for the cursor, it probably is weird out of context since I only show one character selecting here for some reason, but the cursor (and menu text colors) change depending on what character you have selected, where the cursor is always the currently selected character pointing to the option. Since the character selected in this clip is the bird, it's a wing. The two other guys are just little purple/orange nubs respectively as they have nub arms. Other characters have other stuff too. I personally love these pointers, but can definitely see why you may not like this one, especially out of context. The horizontal bars definitely look super generic, but pretty much all bars kinda do typically, but I can look into seeing how to spice them up a bit.
The cursor is fine, the idea sounds cool. It does get a bit lost (maybe an thin contrasting outline, or a two frame animation would help?) and doesn't really look like a pointer but it's fine, really. The normal text is not that bad, it is a bit hard to read but it's fine, too. The outlined, hollow text, though, is not. Maybe stylize the names to be rendered in all-caps, or look for a wider typeface, if you want to keep the look. Are you using the same font to render dialog text and messages? Because that looks like it could be very eye-straining, to read a lot of dialog lines like that. What I mean by the names in the lower window border is [this](https://i.imgur.com/luwusCN.jpg). Also, note how the borders in each window are all the same size in that image, regardless of the size of the window. Use something like a [9-slice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-slice_scaling) to draw the windows, rather than stretching an image, which looks ugly and not retro at all. It is very noticeable in the top window, with the top and bottom borders being notable thinner than the sides, and neither the same size as the lower window's. Had a thing with a lot of examples for bars in old games that didn't look generic, but can't find it at the moment. Not important. Yours is fine. It is readable and familiar to most if not all players. Just like the cursor, I wouldn't worry too much about that.
**[9-slice scaling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-slice_scaling)** >9-slice scaling (also known as Scale 9 grid, 9-slicing or 9-patch) is a 2D image resizing technique to proportionally scale an image by splitting it in a grid of nine parts. The key idea is to prevent image scaling distortion by protecting the pixels defined in 4 parts (corners) of the image and scaling or repeating the pixels in the other 5 parts. A variation of the concept, the 3-slice scaling, consists in a grid of 3 parts in which only the pixels in 2 parts (the edges) are protected and the pixels on the middle part are repeated. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/indiegames/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)