108
Video Game Design Composition
CASE STUDY
HUD Design
The game Absolute Zero by
OceanBreezeGames is free to play online
and can be found on many different gaming
websites. Notice the HUD in the screen shot
shown here.
The table below summarizes an evaluation of
the HUD used with this game. The importance
of each feature to gameplay is ranked on a scale
from 1 to 10, with 10 being very important.
The dominance of each feature is ranked
to represent the size and space given to the
feature, with 10 being a large space.
Notice that the navigation map is very small
(dominance = 2), but is very important to
playing the game and finding the objectives
(importance = 9). The score takes up a lot of
space, but is not very important to the gameplay.
Feature
Importance
to
Gameplay
Dominance
on the
Display
Navigation
map
9 2
Health 5 8
Ammo 5 8
Score 1 8
New mission
button
0 5
High scores
button
2 5
Options
button
0 5
Copyright info 0 8
Goodheart-Willcox Publisher
Player character
Health
Ammo
HUD
Score Copyright
info
Navigation
map
Obstacle
Objective
Buttons
Goodheart-Willcox Publisher; screen: OceanBreezeGames