Rock On!

Project Description

This is a game menu of a musical game centered around guitars. I inspired myself in menus from titles such as God of War 5, Persona 5, and Solace to create a heavily themed, immersive menu that also tries to simulate a similar feeling and usability to the real-life object.

Project INFO

Level-Ups

Design Decisions

The Guitar Layout

When building this menu, I wanted every single button to make sense in the guitar so that the player could feel like they were not just interacting with the menu alone but also with the guitar itself. For those reasons, I chose to have the buttons of the menu in the volume buttons from the guitar. With that in mind, when making the intro and exiting transitions, I decided to use the amp cord for three main reasons. The first one is because I wanted to follow a component that comes “in and out” of the guitar, which would better simulate the feeling of entering/leaving the menu. The second reason is that the act of plugging in a guitar to an electric guitar player is very meaningful and impacting while creating a feeling of “Now it’s on, let’s do this!” as it completely transforms the instrument from a simple guitar sound into something that is enhanced by their tech (pedals and amplifiers). The third reason is that the cable’s tip could easily become the “Quit” button, rounding up the whole experience even more, but even more than that, it is close to the volume buttons, allowing me to have all the buttons sectioning into a single quarter of the screen and so create better eye guidance to the player whenever they decide to look for any specific button.

The Menu Experience

For the experience of the menu, I definitely wanted the string to be playable but I also wanted it to feel good. It’s for that reason that I decided to use the mouse instead of controllers so that the user could strum or pick the strings they want as fast as they want to so that it feels like they’re actually playing the guitar, especially when having a pick follow the mouse cursor making it even more immersive. The one thing I lost with that was the possibility of having rumble feedback which is an essential tactical feedback when playing the guitar (the cord’s vibrations); however, I tried my best to compensate for that with vibration-like visual effects.

Transitions

I wanted this menu to feel part of the world, not just be a realistic guitar, so with all of my designer art power, I tried to do the following:

Start/Exit

I wanted a cool start sequence that would play to the guitar theme. For that, I decided to go with the idea of “Plugging in the guitar” and have the camera following the plug as the transition.

First Play

One of the most immersive experiences I had in a video game menu is the first time you start God of War (2018) when they ask you to strike the tree multiple times increasing the intensity of the feedback each time.

I tried to replicate this by having the player string all guitar cords 3 time, with different intensities each time, before starting the game for the first time.

Start of Game

As previously mentioned, I wanted the Menu to “Be part of the world” and so, I figures there was no better way than having the camera circle the player character holding the guitar into the third person camera position, creating a “seamless” transition from Main Menu into Gameplay.