The Way We Play: Theory of Game Design

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to APress Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022

M. KillickThe Way We Playhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-8789-7_9

9. HUD and UI. What Does It Mean?

Michael Killick¹  

(1)

Cambridge, UK

 

We’ve all seen it and it works like muscle memory. When playing games, our eyes dart around the screen to look for the health or stamina bar to show us how our character is coping with combat or exploring. But as simple as it might be, the heads-up display, or known as the HUD, is the most effective way to communicate this information to the player. The key when it comes to designing elements of the HUD is to ensure that it is not cluttered, and everything is legible. But before we can investigate this, let’s look at some ...