Red Harvest
🔴 CANCELED
Overview
Role
Tools & Tech
Studio
At Xaviant, I led UI/UX visual development for a planned sequel to Lichdom: Battlemage. Our team aimed to simplify spell creation and create a cohesive visual style. I created prototypes, flowcharts, wireframes, and collaborated on style mocks and motion language.
InDesign, XD, Photoshop, Illustrator, Animate, Proprietary engine and tools.
PC
Focus
Research, Art, Design
UI/UX Designer
Platforms
Xaviant
Samples \ Alpha UI
Project Goals
Maintain a Lofi State:
Our goal was to maintain a lofi aesthetic to avoid fixating on visuals, allowing us to focus on refining systems until they were in a good place and friction was reduced. By strategically designing components and systems for easy updating, we hoped to streamline development and make future updates more efficient.
Iterate Quickly:
We aimed to iterate quickly by staying in a lofi state while developing visuals and fleshing out designs. This approach was intended to enable us to rapidly develop the front-end and HUD for the alpha build, achieving faster results compared to previous methods.
Background
In a planned sequel to Lichdom Battlemage, we aimed to simplify the overall player experience, primarily in spell creation, while developing a unique, cohesive visual style. I drove the UI visual development and UX design for this scrapped game developed in Unreal.
Focus on a Minimal UI Aesthetic:
We aimed to start with a minimal aesthetic to gradually flesh out proper feedback over time. By utilizing color, texture, and language, we hoped to communicate function and enhance the atmosphere of the scenes, evoking visual energy through environmental layers and textures.
Overhaul and completely re-design crafting
Our goal was to create new systems and ways to craft spells that felt cinematically grounded, intuitive to use, and easy to understand. We hoped this approach would lead to a more engaging and satisfying player experience.
Samples \ Early Wires
Design
Process
Early Exploration:
Created numerous sketches and a few paper prototypes exploring diegetic interfaces for updated systems.
Wireframing:
Developed flowcharts and rapidly iterated on greyboxes and lofi wireframes for the alpha’s front-end UI, HUD, and other systems and features.
Maintained a lofi aesthetic throughout for faster testing and iteration, with plans to further iterate on visuals after finalizing interactions and flow.
Vis Dev
Rapidly generated various style mocks primarily using collected art references and concept art from the previous game.
Started working on an early style guide once the UI direction was determined.
Collaborated with our motion designer to establish an early vision of our motion language.
Samples \ Icons + Enemy HP Bars + Design Explorations
Outcome
Reflections
Takeaways
A few key insights gained while at Xaviant:
Lofi Success
Maintaining a lofi aesthetic allowed us to focus on refining core systems without getting bogged down by visual details. This approach streamlined development and reduced friction, leading to more efficient updates and a smoother workflow.
Small Team +
Working within a small, cohesive team proved to be highly effective. The close collaboration and streamlined communication allowed us to quickly address challenges and deliver high-quality results.
Future Focus
Takeaways to apply moving forward:
Lofi Aesthetic
The success of maintaining a lofi aesthetic in this project demonstrated its value in reducing development friction, eliminating unnecessary complexities, and enhancing efficiency. I aimed to continue employing and advocating for a lofi approach to facilitate quicker iterations in future projects.
Thanks for viewing my work!
More samples available upon request.