Of levels and better menus

Hey, thanks for being here!

This week, I want to talk about the Menus in the game. Over the past few days, I’ve been working on improving them.

First things first: my menus are basically just different Rooms, and the game is deactivated while you're in these Rooms. I know it’s not the best way to handle it, but back when I made the original menus, it was the best I could do. I had the "Main Menu," the Pause Menu, and a "Death Menu" — this one shows up when you die, and (for now) it just sends you back to the main menu.

That said, I’ve made some improvements to the Pause Menu (image 1) and the Death Menu (image 2)!

Pause Menu

I’m still not sure about the visuals for this one, but the functional idea is to have:

• A "Continue" button,
• A "Main Menu" button that takes you back to the beginning, and
• A "Help" button that shows info about how to play, depending on whether or not a controller is connected.

In the bottom-left corner, there are two counters:

• One shows how many party members you’ve recruited,
• And the other shows how many inspirations you’ve collected (these inspirations are tools that will help us in the future ;D).

There’s an idea to add different commentary from AK based on the Health and Mana Bars, since he is a fourth-wall breaking enjoyer. 

Death Menu

This one is pretty simple: it’s a "You Died!" screen. For now, the only option is to go back to the main menu and restart the game. However, I want to implement a "Retry" system so you can restart the level instead.

The All-New Menu

Since the beginning, I’ve wanted the game to have a hub base, kind of like the Normandy in Mass Effect. That’s how the Tavern came to be. The original idea was for AK to recruit the heroes for the party, and they’d appear in the Tavern, eating and drinking. Part of this is still in the game, but instead of going to different tables and interacting with them, you now select levels using The Poster (image 3).

A bit of lore for context: AK wants to build a team to save the world so he can compose the ultimate song about the great heroes BEFORE any other bard can. To do this, he’s following the "five-man band" trope to assemble the party.

With The Poster, you can select the next level and, if everything works as planned, see information and extra lore about the heroes. The Poster will also update to include the heroes as you recruit them.

The last update is that you don’t have to use ONLY the mouse to navigate the menus anymore—now you can use the keyboard and controller too!

These feature are not in the current Demo just yet, but I’m hoping to release a new version soon. However, it’ll still have only the first 3 levels, since I’m keeping the last 2 levels for the full launch.

Hey thanks for reading this ASSay, have a good one!