Disco Elysium: Working on UI Design

Robert Kurvitz is the lead designer and writer of Disco Elysium, who also leads ZA/UM, the game development company. This time, he talked about the team's approach to game production and the game's UI design.  He also shared the main references they relied on and some tips on creating the user interface.

Disco Elysium is an open-world RPG where you will take the role of a detective with the set of unique skills that you can use to become a hero or a disaster, it's all up to you. The game provides you with a huge number of tools for role-playing and an enhanced dialogue system. 

When working on the game, the team decided to get as innovative as possible. Talking about UI design, they have used Twitter as a reference to manage the in-game's chat. As Robert explained, the key point here is that people don't actually read the text of the tweet, they go through and simply get the main idea of it. Twitter's approach to organizing the feed allows users to write fast and snappy. When working on the chat, they were inspired by Twitter's approach, so the text tumbles up and is managed as a column text. 

Robert also talked about tactics on how to keep the players interested in the game, and how can the right text help achieve it. 

You can get the game on Steam.