Part of my research on what UX practices work best for virtual reality includes trying a lot of VR games. Throughout the year, games have developed techniques and best practices for creating immersive user experiences. So, looking at games and specifically how virtual reality games resolve VR-specific problems such as locomotion, progressive enhancement for different input devices, screen size and positioning, is inspiring and helpful. Thus, I decided to start a new series of blog posts reviewing VR games’ UI, UX, and basically any observations I find useful for designing great VR experiences.

Chronos VR

Behold! The game, I am starting the series with is an RPG game I explored recently. Chronos was released in 2016 by Gunfire Games but alas I managed to get my hands on it just a few weeks ago. In a nutshell – it is an adventure RPG where you have to save the humanity by going to another universe and slaying a number of monsters including a dragon. The design of the game reminds me a lot of some old school titles I used to play as a kid. Check out the trailer to get a feeling of the game.

Game controllers

The first challenge every VR creator faces is how to educate the users about the new type of controllers. In Chronos, the team designed a scheme that resembled as close as possible a gamepad. I guess their assumption was that if the players bought a VR game, they most probably were hardcore gamers experienced with using a gamepad.

Unfortunately, I have a predominantly PC game experience. Thus, I got stuck quite fast. I did not get how to move from one in-game menu to another. It seemed natural to me that I should use the thumbstick to move in between menus but in reality, browsing was done with the right and left grip buttons (RT and LT). Now, I compare a PS4 gamepad and an Oculus touch – the buttons usually used for browsing the in-game menus on a gamepad are L1/R1 (triggers) and yes, it seems logical that they should translate to either the trigger buttons or to the grip buttons in VR. I noticed that people who have played more console games than me got the mechanic pretty fast. Still, a key design rule is to make the interactions intuitive so the users do not need to think or in my case – guess. That is why at the beginning of a VR experience there should be as many clues enhancing the user learning as possible. For example, one of the most successful learning techniques I’ve seen in VR was showing virtual controllers and highlighting the buttons the user needs to use. Still, such “tutorial mode” is not suitable for every experience as it breaks the immersion.

Diegetic UI

Now, let’s talk more about the Chronos user interface and more specifically about the diegetic UI elements. Diegetic UI (an interface that is included in the game world — i.e., it can be seen and heard by the game characters) is the most immersive form of UI, thus, it is perfect for virtual reality experiences. Keep in mind though that it often requires more effort from the users. For example, in Chronos, the team decided to skip showing a minimap that indicates the location of the character (the way PC/Console game have a minimap). Thus, the player has to make an effort to remember the location of each room. At the beginning, it was a bit annoying but when I got focused being able to get around without a minimap felt rewarding.

Another well-thought thing was the character health. Instead of a health bar, I could hear an increasing heartbeat when the character got low on health points. Sound clues are an immersive way to communicate important information to the users or help them navigate through a VR experience. I’ve tried several VR experiences where the getting started tutorial was executed through voice commands and highlighting the buttons on the controllers. Still, using sound clues could be tricky as an experience should be accessible to everyone including people with hearing impairment for example. In the case of the Chronos game, the developers could have combined the heartbeat with, for example, controller vibrations to indicate low health.

A popular diegetic UI element used in video games is placing books/ scrolls/computer screens ( depending on the game style ) that communicate key information to both player and character. For example, in Chronos, by using such elements the designers managed to depict a better picture of the world my character and I were entering.

A key element of an RPG game is the character’s special skills. The menus with the character starts and abilities in Chronos were quite standard 2D screens, but the action bar was designed to be part of my character body. At some point in the game, we went through a room with a giant tree that turned out to be some kind of an ancient spirit. It gave my character a special ability that looked like a tattoo on the hand. During the game, I could gather several of these, each in a different color, representing a different skill. To use them I had to load them into the tattoo. When the skill/ spell was fully charged and ready to use the tattoo was glowing.

A UI element that made me gasp with surprise and pleasure was the fast inventory menu. All the items I gathered were 3D elements that I could fast scroll and use to solve the puzzles. It was a nice simulation of looking into a shelf. I can’t really remember to have seen such an implementation before.

Last but not least, the fast travel system in Chronos was also diegetic. Whenever I reached a new level, a large magic crystal appeared at the beginning of the level. My character was able to grab the crystal, the camera changed to a first-person point of view and I was able to see and teleport through it to any other level with a crystal. I’ve seen a similar idea in one WebVR experience showing websites as portals through which I could enter a new experience.

Locomotion

Another big challenge for VR creators is how to design locomotion without losing immersion or making the user sick. In Chronos, the developers decided to go with a third-person viewpoint and teleport the player from one spot to another. It’s true that this decision breaks the immersion a bit but also makes the game suitable for more people. A cool detail in the game was how the developers took advantage of the third person perspective by placing the camera at adrenaline-intensive places such as the edge of a cliff, right next to a giant, etc. I loved it! Every time I appeared to be on a high place I was gasping for a moment. Here’s a clue for those who, just like me, do not enjoy heights – just focus on the gameplay in front of you and do not look down!

All the other UI elements were quite standard, so I am not going to go into details about them. I’ve done a short video showing the inventory/ player stats/crafting menus that caused all the confusion with the thumbstick and the grip buttons.

In conclusion, Chronos gives several great examples of how designers can take advantage of the 3-dimensional space to create a fun and immersive experience. Let me know if you played the game and have some thoughts on the UI and UX. Also, if you want me to review the UI and UX of particular VR game, get in touch on twitter or in the comments section.