--- title: Video Game UI Basics: How Menus, HUDs, and Feedback Help... description: This beginner's guide explains the basics of video game UI and UX design. It breaks interface elements into HUD, menus, prompts, and feedback, and covers four... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/video-game-ui-basics-how-menus-huds-and-feedback-help-players-80nfx1slf twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Video Game UI Basics: How Menus, HUDs, and Feedback Help Players | daily.dev og:description: This beginner's guide explains the basics of video game UI and UX design. It breaks interface elements into HUD, menus, prompts, and feedback, and covers four... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/video-game-ui-basics-how-menus-huds-and-feedback-help-players-80nfx1slf og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/80Nfx1slF.png og:image:alt: Video Game UI Basics: How Menus, HUDs, and Feedback Help Players og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Video Game UI Basics: How Menus, HUDs, and Feedback Help Players **[Unity](https://daily.dev/sources/unity)** · 7 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary This beginner's guide explains the basics of video game UI and UX design. It breaks interface elements into HUD, menus, prompts, and feedback, and covers four types of UI: non-diegetic, diegetic, spatial, and meta. A seven-step design process is outlined: list inputs and outputs, prioritize, use affordances, give instant feedback, reduce, prototype, and playtest. It also lists accessibility basics like remappable controls, subtitles, and color-independent cues. The post ends by promoting Unity Spark, Unity's AI game creation platform. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What are the four types of video game UI, like diegetic vs non-diegetic? Video game interface is commonly split into four types: non-diegetic UI, which sits outside the game world and is visible only to the player, such as a health bar in the corner; diegetic UI, which exists inside the game world so characters could see it too, like a map a character holds; spatial UI, which appears in 3D space but isn't part of the world, like icons over characters' heads; and meta UI, which communicates through the screen itself, like a red damage flash. _Developers planning a game's interface compare UI approaches and design patterns on daily.dev._ ### What accessibility features should every video game interface include? Basic, widely applicable accessibility recommendations include letting players remap controls, using a readable default font size and simple language, providing high contrast between interface and background, not conveying essential information by color or sound alone, providing subtitles with separate volume controls for speech, effects, and music, and offering difficulty choices with saved settings. _Game developers building accessible interfaces keep checklists like this close at hand via daily.dev._ ### What steps should I follow to design a video game's UI from scratch? A seven-step process covers it: list all player inputs and required outputs, prioritize them by importance and frequency of change, use affordances so controls suggest their function, give instant visible and audible feedback for every input, reduce unnecessary elements, prototype with quick sketches or mockups, and playtest by watching real people use it. _First-time game creators planning a UI workflow track practical design processes like this on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Essential GUI design principles for creating intuitive interfaces](https://daily.dev/posts/essential-gui-design-principles-for-creating-intuitive-interfaces-alrqp02bo) · LogRocket · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Press start: How controllers shaped video game design—and where interfaces may go next](https://daily.dev/posts/press-start-how-controllers-shaped-video-game-design-and-where-interfaces-may-go-next-1qjijq7c6) · Figma · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#ux](https://daily.dev/tags/ux), [#ui-design](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-design), [#accessibility](https://daily.dev/tags/accessibility), [#unity](https://daily.dev/tags/unity) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/video-game-ui-basics-how-menus-huds-and-feedback-help-players-80nfx1slf) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Video Game UI Basics: How Menus, HUDs, and Feedback Help Players","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/video-game-ui-basics-how-menus-huds-and-feedback-help-players-80nfx1slf","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/video-game-ui-basics-how-menus-huds-and-feedback-help-players-80nfx1slf"},"datePublished":"2026-10-27T19:05:33.634Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T19:24:31.690Z","description":"This beginner's guide explains the basics of video game UI and UX design. 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