Kingmaker - The Art of UI

The latest update for Pathfinder: Kingmaker takes us through Owlcats UI design process.

The art of UI design

Dear Pathfinders,

In today's update, we would like to share with you our approach to User Interface (UI) development.

Interfaces are a huge part of any CRPG game. There are a lot of entities like characters, skills, abilities and spells, all of which are striving to attract the player's attention. An important factor here is that everything needs to be represented with a high level of detail and our task is to make all these sheets, formulas and endless columns of text easier to read and understand. We constantly balance between informativeness, aesthetics, and user-friendliness. Therefore, while designing every single UI element we are focused on two main principles: convenience and immersion. It should be stressed that from the very beginning, we decided to give preference to immersion.

With our focus on immersion in mind, we always start designing a new UI element by searching for real historical items, which fit the setting of Pathfinder: Kingmaker for visual reference. These can be old books, scrolls, chests, cabinets, writing utensils and chairs, maps and travel notebooks. Their visual appearance, materials and decor elements are a good starting point to inspire a UI designer's creativity.

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