Figma for Game Design: Tips for Designing Game Interfaces

Game designing is an integral part of designing on Figma. It involves creating multiple creative & interactive user interfaces which help in building of popular games such as Chess, Ludo, fighting games etc. In this article, we will learn a few tips to design gaming interfaces, in particular, Chess.

1. Designing a wireframe

• To design a wireframe, select the type of game you want first & create it’s basic layout with black colored strokes only. Use complete black & white layout for the wireframe only.
• In the layout given below, we have first created a section for the navigation bar in which we have added important links along with the player’s name in same font style.

• Under that, the two side bars hold several other important information related to the players. In the right side bar, firstly the time remaining for the player will be shown & the boxes show the pegs of both the players that have been eliminated from the game. And a button to go Back is situated at the bottom of the right side bar.

• The left side bar has different options with a space for their icons at their side, such as Home, Resume, Pause and an option to mute the game’s volume. And a language option at the bottom.

• The final wireframe should look like this, with slight grayish background for images, all fonts & images aligned properly so that conversion into final design could take place only through a few clicks & it would not require any major changes.

2. Final Design

• For the final design, that is, converting the wireframe into a design would involve selecting a few options. First the color. A uniform color composition is important for the game as it decides the User interaction in the website.
• Here we have chosen green color and have tried to match up the remaining set of layouts with green color.

• At the place of icons, we have placed green color icons to maintain a uniformity of the website & added pegs for both the players on the chessboard, one black & the other one white.

• The eliminated pegs are placed in the side bar section in the right side where both the player’s names are specified along with their images.

• All over, the color composition is what the design should match up with each other.

1. Uniform Color Composition

A uniform color composition is required for any game. It helps in achieving a subtle & minimal look for the design which in turn makes it look even more interactive & increases the visual effects. It helps in communicating a strong impression of the design & the game. For eg. Here we have chosen a particular color – green, and have tried to replicate the remaining design elements in the same color or the contrasting colors of green.

2. Idea of Game

Before designing the game, we must have an idea of what the game is going to be all about since multiple games have different design interfaces as they have different functions to perform. For eg. A fighting game interface, say Shadow Fight would require a uniform strong color representation and several designing elements. Whereas a game like Ludo may require multiple color representation, but a game like chess would require only a single color & subtle design.

3. Important Links

The different links & tags need to be known before designing the game as they need to be added in the wireframes. Here, all the link in the side bar are the important ones and they need to be added for the ease of the users.

4. Relatable Icons

Infographic elements are essential in any gaming design and without the icons & images, the design would look like no lesser than a black & white chessboard. Adding 3D pictures, animations, visual effects etc would help scale the design better & that’s why icons are added in the design. They increase the overall user experience of the user.

5. User Interface & User Experience (UI/UX)

A game design is all about a great user interface design & a great user experience. All of these things are achieved by using designing elements & designing tactics on Figma plus the prototyping part is also needed to make the game interactive. One should know the ideal functionalities required for every game. For eg. How chess requires a functionality for every peg’s respective move is a part of prototyping.

Game designing is a fun & learning process & Figma allows us different ways ad sets of creativity that can be unleashed to design an interactive game. Using the above screenshots & tips, one can design a great gaming interface.