this may be more of a philosophical perspective, but I'm not sure how audio cues or haptic feedback do not qualify as UI but text does. all are simply methods of communicating with the player. since the above detailed guidelines were not included on the main game page and not everyone reads forum comments to fully understand the goal of the jam, I think a lot of us were confused about the theme, especially because we all have different understandings of the term UI. I see it as simply "the way the game communicates with the user". audio cues and other non-graphical cues are definitely UI elements if my definition is used. it may have been helpful to specify (on the main page) that only diagetic cues (elements that the character encounters, rather than elements presented to the player) were to be user or, more simply, that GUI was not to be used, which would allow for the audio cues that you mentioned. I don't mean to complain about the theme - in fact, it encourages a really interesting mental exploration / verbal conversation about the essence of what a user interface IS. thank you for instigating that conversation. I just wish the details of your guidelines had been posted within the body of the main jam page. the only stipulation on there was "creating games without the traditional user interface elements"; that's pretty vague (traditional UI elements will mean something different to each of us), whereas the explanation for the light/dark theme was very thorough. it never occurred to me that i needed more information from a forum post in order to comply with the hosts' vision of zero UI.
Viewing post in ZERO UI
P.S. I think the word ZERO is the main issue. it's interesting to attempt to use zero UI, but in reality, not many games other than the ones that rely on pure experimentation can meet that standard. maybe a 'NO TRADITIONAL UI elements' theme would have been an equally interesting and challenging constraint - without leaving us all in the dark (so to speak 🕯). we might have still been unsure about the term 'traditional', but it wouldn't have seemed like a virtually impossible challenge.
Good tip/feedback to add it to the front page indeed!! Was our first special edition so we have to learn along the way also how to make it a smoother experience for the participants. And also with this special mechanic it was for us finding out how to manage it. We thought the forum is well read and it was also on Discord but not everyone joins there of course. We will do that better next time!
Indeed ZERO UI can be different for a lot of people. Some find audio cues also UI and some not and some think diegetic UI is ok and others not. There is not a definite definition. Not even the post in the forum is for everyone the definition of zero ui. So the discussion would be stil there and that is not a bad thing.
I am glad it sparked discussion and you liked that. And please discuss it also further with the other participants here or on Discord about what is UI and what we think UI is.
Creating games without any UI is also not normally what any game will do, but that is why we thought it would be a nice challenge to see how we can guide a player through a game without UI.
Hope you still enjoyed the jam and even with a bit of UI and great scores in the other categories you can still get a good rank also. I do not think there will be perfect ZERO UI games at all. You will have good ones that did go far or some that did a bit of UI and some that just did a lot of UI and just want to make fun game for the theme.
thank you so much for the thoughtful reply! and yes, I still really enjoyed participating in this jam; in fact, it was one of the best experiences I've had here on itch.io! next time i will definitely try to get more involved in the community discussions here - and on discord. i've always had a tendency to make games in isolation, but I think it would be far more rewarding to give and accept feedback, encouragement and collaboration from other developers.
We had this for the category description:
- ZERO UI: How effectively the game conveys information and mechanics without the traditional user interface elements.
It is still open en vague, but that is also why we have 7 days of discussion on Discord about what is UI :-).
At the end you are still right we also could have added the whole forum post to the front page. We noted it down for our next special edition. Will it be the same ZERO UI or another constraint/challenge.