HELLO! Been a while, today I want to talk about something that before Moon Jumpers I really didn't have a lot of experience in and am learning while developing this game and that is menus.

Menus are what games are built upon, they are the road that leads us to the experiences that we all enjoy so much! Often times menus can be forgotten about and only put in as a simple necessity to allow a game to be played, However I believe that menus honestly can have a massive impact on how a game is enjoyed and how much more someone wants to play your game. before we talk about what I have planned for Moon Jumpers lets talk about some really good menu systems.

CELESTE: First of all this game is God like from the music, the platforming, levels, characters, story, and for our purposes today its menus.   

This is the Main Menu for Celeste, its very simple, it is followed by a slower version of the games main theme and the sounds of cold wind and snow falling around you. It sets the game up nicely by immediately telling the player what they will be doing, from the moment you turn on the game you see a mountain, a calming soundtrack, and you are given a simple goal, Climb. This is a very smart menu and it is I would say one of the better simple menus out there, its straight to the point and it doesn't waste any time but there is very important part to this menu and that is the sound design. Sound Design comes up in Menus a lot more than you would think  because this is practically one of the only ways that you can make menus actually fun. Celeste's sound design is already so good and so with the menus every time you hover over something or choose a option it is followed by these super fun and really nice sounds that make you just want to hit every button. but sound design is only good if followed by a movement, if I were to lets say punch someone if you were watching that in a movie and I simple threw my hand at a person with no strength and then there was this super nice sounding punching sound in general the scene would feel empty and lacking that movement that emphasizes that sound! Celeste's map is always visible from the main menu, the game uses a fully rendered 3D model of Celeste mountain to give players a way to really see what they are about to climb and make the journey feel more rewarding. It would be a shame if they had this pretty detailed fully modeled mountain if they didn't show off every angle of it so the developers decided to make every time you hit a menu option the camera quickly pans over to points on the map and DANG, it feels so good! not only does it move and is fun to explore and look at its also a way to show size. The camera pans at a very fast speed and puts a small amount of motion blur on the screen to emphasize this speed and this shows off how absolutely massive this mountain is supposed to be and it doesn't ever even have to tell you that, your brain does it for you it recognizes the fact that the main menu is shows the mountain at a 45 degree angle showing us looking at it making the player feel small, your brain recognizes the speed of the movement telling you how large this place is and its also just really fun to go through man. Celeste is a really good game and you should play it basically.

So what does all of this have to do with Moon Jumpers well honestly not a lot and a lot at the same time. I am learning menu design at the moment looking at all types of party games and seeing how they crack down on getting rid of little annoyances and allowing the players to get to the fun part of the game while also giving the player as much ability to change every little thing about it to there liking. While also attempting to make the menus sound and look as good as possible. How I am attempting to do this is by first focusing on the gameplay sides of things and making it so that players can hop into a game choose there characters and then hop into a new menu that lets them choose there mode and settings instead of all these options be something that is hidden away while you are focusing on choosing characters this is now a much more in your face thing and also something that we can send the player directly to when a game ends, instead of making it so you have to go back and choose your characters to try and change one small setting. I am happy with the designs that I am working on so far and while there's a lot of work still left to do in the area of menus I will get them done and I am very excited to see what you all think!

BYE!