Here's a Character Upgrade Menu I've been working on for my Early Access game Steampunk Lincoln. Might tinker with it some more, but this will be pretty close to what I'm planning to implement in game. I wanted to create something that had a nice composition, and conveyed the minimum amount of information the player needs without being overly cluttered. Thought I might briefly touch upon my thought process, and  breakdown the Character Menu UI of two other games that influenced some of the choices I made.




The Witcher III - Amazing Game with a Clean and Functional UI

I'll admit that I was inspired somewhat by the UI design in the Witcher III, and in particular I was impressed by how clean and intuitive the character menu in that game is. Since Steampunk Lincoln isn't nearly as complex as far as its upgrades and skill tree as that game, I thought it might be possible to simplify it down into something that can fit on a single screen. I particularly like the use of Icons to display information, rather than an over reliance on text. The use of brackets is also well considered, as it breaks up the visual elements enough to keep the screen from feeling cluttered.

Dark Souls - Another Amazing Game, With a Not So Amazing Character Menu

For another example, one I wanted to avoid in this case, was the Character Menu design of Dark Souls. Now I'm a huge fan of this series, but I'll be the first to admit the Character Menu UI is implemented in a less than ideal way. For one, upon opening this up for the first time, you're bombarded by a wall of Text. It's not immediately apparent what many of these Stats are, and having to hit another button and potentially scrolling down five or ten times to find out what a stat like Resistance does is.

What are some other examples of well designed Character Menus in games you've played?