very strongly that any sort of GUI would distance players from the game-world. As a
result, Abe’s health is communicated to players through the way he animates. Since the
game grants players infinite lives, there was no need for a lives remaining display that
so many console platformer games of the time included as their only HUD element.
Certainly, as technology has allowed it, the trend has been to get away from on-screen
HUDs as much as possible, allowing the game-world view to take over the screen. The
advantages of the immersion gained by a minimized GUI are obvious, and if the
game-world can effectively communicate all of the information the players need to play,
there is sometimes no reason to use a GUI at all.
On the other hand, it is important to not go too far in the quest to eliminate a GUI.
In general, a small, unobtrusive HUD is a game convention that players have grown
accustomed to and thus are very unlikely to be bothered by. Though having no HUD
worked pretty well in theOddworldgames,The Getawayis an otherwise fun game that
suffered because of the developer’s decision to avoid a HUD. Driving around London
was needlessly difficult because, instead of having a map HUD, players were forced to
navigate to their destination by making turns based on hints from the blinking turn sig-
nals on their car. This was a particularly imperfect and infuriating system when
navigating the labyrinthine streets of London. Similarly, the game has no health meter,
and players are required to use a considerably less precise and quite subtle player tex-
ture change to figure out their character’s health status. Given the game’s shooting and
driving mechanics, leaving out the HUD hurt the gameplay far beyond the immersion
that was gained.
The most important part of designing a GUI is to try to keep it as visual as possible.
In fast-paced action games in particular, the GUI is designed to communicate informa-
tion to the players very quickly, whether this is the players’ current health, ammo
available, or nearby monsters (through some sort of radar). If anything, the ascendancy
of the graphical user interface as the dominant mode of controlling a computer, first
through the Macintosh and subsequently through Windows, shows that most people
think visually instead of in numbers or words. As a result, a well-designed graphical
HUD in your game will be easier for players to glance at and understand than one that
138 Chapter 7: The Elements of Gameplay
Oddworld: Abe’s
Oddyseedid away with
an in-game GUI
entirely, giving the
player an unobstructed
view of the game-
world.