This small article is mainly targeted at hobby game developer. I think that the title menu of your game should receive proper attention, since it is the first screen of your game the user will ever see. And we don’t want our user to start with a strange feeling, don’t we?

In this article I will show you 5 really simple ways to improve your title menu without any design skill at all.

Assumptions

Let us assume that our title menu should feature the following 4 functionalities:

• Let the user start a game – now that’s obvious.
• Let the user resume an already started game
• Let the user view and change some options.
• Let the user quit the game

That are not much possibilities to choose from. How does a common game menu look like?

For demonstration purpose I chose a really minimalistic one. Probably yours looks pretty much the same. Maybe some different colours, and probably some different background graphics.

Many Kudos to Shangyne at deviantart, who made the background image (actually it’s a wallpaper).

There is nothing really wrong about this kind of menu. But certainly there are ways to greatly improve the user experience with some really simple tricks.

5 Simple Tips

1. Choose the right amount of contrast

Contrast is important for readability. Especially when you are using a background the exact opposite to this one may look like this:

Not a pleasure to read, isn’t it? Watch the contrast between the text and its background!

If you have a background image in your title menu: Put a box behind your text to increase contrast! Maybe add some transparency to create a more elegant look. How about this one?

 

2. Choose the right font

The font of your buttons has a huge impact on your menus look. And you don’t have to design them on yourself, there are tons of free fonts available at websites like dafont, fonts.com or myfonts.com.

Let us change the font of the example menu to Carefree:

Now we have a whole new look within a few minutes of work!

3. Layout by importance

By now all items the user can choose from are of equal height. But some of them are used more often than others. How often do you check the options? Do you start the game to directly quit it?

Maybe you do. Sometimes. But most of the time you use the Start and Load Game buttons.

Now let them treat with the importance they have. Let us make the Options and Quit button smaller and place them at the bottom of the screen.

With this small change it is much easier to navigate in your menu. The user does not have to get an overview of the menu to find the Start Game button, it’s right under his nose.

4. Make it intelligent

You can even improve the above solution: Ever wanted to load a game at your first start? Probably not!

How often do you start the game and want to load that specific savegame of yours? Probably you just want the latest one - resume your game.

Whether there are savegames available or not you can present a slightly different menu. Each of these menus presents a big button with the item the user is likely to choose.

5. Immediate response

Users have expectations on user interfaces. And one expectation that every user has is the following:

If I move the mouse over something that I can click – something happens.

Just look through your computers applications. Everything reacts to the mouse. They may change the mouse cursor to a hand, they may change its colour and contrast, or maybe its background.

My suggestion to you is: Implement mouse-over effects. Change your buttons look when the mouse hovers them.

As most users are surfing the web today the most familiar mouse-over effect is just highlighting the item by changing its colour.

Just like this:

 

Conclusion

That’s all for now. I hope you can use these tips to improve you title menu! Always remember: The first look matters! And with these little tips the first look of your game can greatly improve.

Remark: I used the term button in this article for everything that can be clicked on. Actually buttons here don’t look like buttons, but they serve the same purpose.

I would be glad to hear if these tips were useful for your game!

Up to You

Do you have any further tips that can easily improve game menus? Or maybe you disagree with me in some points?

Please let me know using the comments below.

Have a nice day!

Dennis