Great video! Reviewed few narrative heavy indies with lots of texts. Felt something is off, but were not really able to pinpoint the cause. Now feel more educated! Cheers!
This was a great video! As a games educator myself, I'm glad to have found such a valuable resource. Would've been nice to see a dive into the Atlas Games (Persona Series, Metaphor Re:Phantazio, etc.), as their UI is interesting as it often breaks or bends rules and guidelines to deliver absolute style.
alas I have never gotten round to playing Persona, but I also don't think their use of typography is a good target for most indies. It's so hard to pull off and even if you do do it well people will make negative comparisons.
In India there's a really strong culture and history of hand painted signs, I think the owner of Raj's was probably trying to evoke that, but missed the western associations with the circus or Victorian/old west
Found your channel through this video. It's a great video. As a little critique I don't agree that serifs slow you down (21:13). Serifs aren't "just" designed for printing, they also help with flowing text. In short this means they align you horizontally in terms of visuals and for anything which has more than ~7 words, a font with serifs is faster to read. The best example here are newspaper. The articles contain a lot of text. But when you are reading there is very little jumping between lines going on, you rather search out a block. And the block of text you should read fast Also the magic card blocks of text, which have on average ~6 words use, a font with serifs. For anything with numbers a serif less font is better and as a rule of thumb you shouldn't mix serifless and serif fonts together, since it's a similar visual friction, like with different text sizes. Also the video really could do away with the animated background during showing the examples. It just pulls the attention away from them.
the stuff about serifs is widely accepted in dyslexia research. Obviously there are serif fonts which are more or less legible, but as a general rule of thumb it's better to avoid them in cases where you really care about accessibility (e.g. making something specifically for kids or for the widest possible audience). I will break this rule myself, all the time, for stylistic reasons. If we followed the British Dyslexia Foundation guidelines everyone would be using Comic Sans. www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide
@@IndieGameClinic Well I agree about the dyslexia research. But just by numbers, dyslexia is a minority issue. According to most research, dyslexia also is a problem about only 8-20% of people deal with. Age, country and education levels play part in those demographics. For a game therefore It also really depends on your targe taudience, if you aim your game at a young "E" audience or if you aim your game at a "14+" audience it will affect font choice heavily. For "E" game you generally shouldn't have huge bodies of text in your game anyways. For your traditional RPG the audience will be older. This needs to be factored in. But back to the science it's at most a 20% audience problem and studies like always have confirmation bias, but let's run with this. So for 4/5 people serif less font in huge sways of flowing text is harder to read, for 1 person it is easier. If as a gamedev you truly care about accessibility for everyone, what you offer is a dyslexia friendly option, with which you can switch your main flowing bodies of texts (e.g. in textboxes) to a dyslexia friendly font.
Yes x1000 about providing an outline around text. There is some sort of weird design war on using a stroke on letters in designs but a 1-10 pixel stroke (depending on context) is so infinitely useful for designing around accessibility. As a designer who has mild protanopia (red color blindness), its extremely apparent when a stroke would be helpful so I throw at least a 1 pixel stroke on everything I do.
Great video! Having grown on planet Thanet (but long ago left) I'm curious if you think that Raj may have picked up that style of lettering from the old-timey carnival look of Dreamland and the seafront arcades? Maybe a stretch, and it probably has changed so much since I was there in the 80s/early 90s...
I think another commenter suggested there is a specific association with that kind of decorative letters which someone from a southeast Asian background might have, which has nothing to do with the carnival/circus, which makes a lot of sense!
I thought the hard part of making my game was supporting 600+ physics objects at once, interacting simulated physics systems of wind, gas, glue, fire, oil, gravity, ice ... but it turned out the most brutal thing was the UI. Making a menu was harder than making a fully destructible world. I redid it 4x, still sucks, and its the thing everyone judges my game by in the end -.-
@@KANJICODER_IRL I used to have students make a very simple tamagochi style virtual pet as their first game - a game which is all UI - just to get them to start to understand the dev cost of the things they want to do (menus, inventories, pop up dialogues etc) before they get carried away
Hm. Well now I'll have to make time to go over everything and see how many fonts I'm using in my game. Don't think I overuse capitalization anywhere, and I'm sure I have font color issues with things like my skill trees. Luckily I'm still building and there's time to fix stuff. Thanks for the tips!
If I have a different font for something some space aliens say which isn’t meant to be readable for the player (like, the characters in the font don’t have an obvious correspondence to the Latin alphabet characters they are replacing), is that a bad idea? It isn’t a major part of the game, just the dialogue before one boss fight. I imagine it wouldn’t be a problem as it should be obvious it isn’t meant to be read?
After 90s, I quit because I don’t even want to know if the terrible choices I see in the typography and layout of the first two slides are ironical or honest. Good luck.
I regretfully had to stop watching this about a third of the way through because of the animated background. If you *really* need it for "branding" or whatever, please consider making it a static background, without all the bright moving elements. I couldn't concentrate on what you were saying, which was otherwise interesting. It's strange that you obviously know this is an issue, but chose to have that background anyway.
@@daschepers I understand. I saw the issue ahead of time and was hoping to change it but really didn’t have time this time around. Noted and will tone it down in future!
@@ultimaxkom8728 Yeah; the background was really set up for games streams etc. and I didn't have one to hand for doing lecture slides like this. I'll be making a mellower one for when it needs to be read from.
@@IndieGameClinic I appreciate your responsiveness. The algorithm just suggested your new video, "3 Game Marketing Tricks", and I was pleased to see a simple gradient background. I'll try to finish this video, too, because I like the topic and they way you're presenting it. Thanks for making your content.
I appreciate the irony of posting this with such horrible kerning in the thumbnail.
Typography is not USUALLY in the titles I click but here we are. I like your stuff.
Yeah, it's not an exciting topic but it's one people need to know about.
Great video!
Reviewed few narrative heavy indies with lots of texts. Felt something is off, but were not really able to pinpoint the cause. Now feel more educated!
Cheers!
As a graphic designer who judges the typography and design on vans whenever I'm stuck in traffic, I approve of this video.
Great video! This is rapdly becoming one of my favourite channels and communities :)
This was a great video! As a games educator myself, I'm glad to have found such a valuable resource. Would've been nice to see a dive into the Atlas Games (Persona Series, Metaphor Re:Phantazio, etc.), as their UI is interesting as it often breaks or bends rules and guidelines to deliver absolute style.
alas I have never gotten round to playing Persona, but I also don't think their use of typography is a good target for most indies. It's so hard to pull off and even if you do do it well people will make negative comparisons.
In India there's a really strong culture and history of hand painted signs, I think the owner of Raj's was probably trying to evoke that, but missed the western associations with the circus or Victorian/old west
@@discussion210 yeah that makes a lot of sense!
This is extremely helpful!!
Great minds think alike
This is a great video!!!
Found your channel through this video. It's a great video.
As a little critique I don't agree that serifs slow you down (21:13).
Serifs aren't "just" designed for printing, they also help with flowing text. In short this means they align you horizontally in terms of visuals and for anything which has more than ~7 words, a font with serifs is faster to read.
The best example here are newspaper. The articles contain a lot of text. But when you are reading there is very little jumping between lines going on, you rather search out a block. And the block of text you should read fast
Also the magic card blocks of text, which have on average ~6 words use, a font with serifs.
For anything with numbers a serif less font is better and as a rule of thumb you shouldn't mix serifless and serif fonts together, since it's a similar visual friction, like with different text sizes.
Also the video really could do away with the animated background during showing the examples. It just pulls the attention away from them.
the stuff about serifs is widely accepted in dyslexia research. Obviously there are serif fonts which are more or less legible, but as a general rule of thumb it's better to avoid them in cases where you really care about accessibility (e.g. making something specifically for kids or for the widest possible audience). I will break this rule myself, all the time, for stylistic reasons. If we followed the British Dyslexia Foundation guidelines everyone would be using Comic Sans. www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide
@@IndieGameClinic Well I agree about the dyslexia research. But just by numbers, dyslexia is a minority issue. According to most research, dyslexia also is a problem about only 8-20% of people deal with. Age, country and education levels play part in those demographics.
For a game therefore It also really depends on your targe taudience, if you aim your game at a young "E" audience or if you aim your game at a "14+" audience it will affect font choice heavily. For "E" game you generally shouldn't have huge bodies of text in your game anyways. For your traditional RPG the audience will be older. This needs to be factored in.
But back to the science it's at most a 20% audience problem and studies like always have confirmation bias, but let's run with this. So for 4/5 people serif less font in huge sways of flowing text is harder to read, for 1 person it is easier.
If as a gamedev you truly care about accessibility for everyone, what you offer is a dyslexia friendly option, with which you can switch your main flowing bodies of texts (e.g. in textboxes) to a dyslexia friendly font.
great video man!
Yes x1000 about providing an outline around text. There is some sort of weird design war on using a stroke on letters in designs but a 1-10 pixel stroke (depending on context) is so infinitely useful for designing around accessibility. As a designer who has mild protanopia (red color blindness), its extremely apparent when a stroke would be helpful so I throw at least a 1 pixel stroke on everything I do.
Great video, thanks.
useful information, thanks :D
Great video! Having grown on planet Thanet (but long ago left) I'm curious if you think that Raj may have picked up that style of lettering from the old-timey carnival look of Dreamland and the seafront arcades? Maybe a stretch, and it probably has changed so much since I was there in the 80s/early 90s...
I think another commenter suggested there is a specific association with that kind of decorative letters which someone from a southeast Asian background might have, which has nothing to do with the carnival/circus, which makes a lot of sense!
Great video! Thank you
I thought the hard part of making my game was supporting 600+ physics objects at once, interacting simulated physics systems of wind, gas, glue, fire, oil, gravity, ice ... but it turned out the most brutal thing was the UI. Making a menu was harder than making a fully destructible world. I redid it 4x, still sucks, and its the thing everyone judges my game by in the end -.-
UI gets me all the time . I no longer under estimate its difficulty . Thats half the battle .
@@KANJICODER_IRL Yeah, finding someone who is good at it, or designing a game that requires almost no UI is needed to keep pursuing this dream for me.
@@KANJICODER_IRL I used to have students make a very simple tamagochi style virtual pet as their first game - a game which is all UI - just to get them to start to understand the dev cost of the things they want to do (menus, inventories, pop up dialogues etc) before they get carried away
Great content. Thank you!
also at 30:20 - the Greek example: I adore their consistency io the style in the hand written text on the tripods there.
@@dariuszpys9307 yeah it’s a great place 🇬🇷
reminding me I need to add accessibility fonts to my pixel art game.
Nice video!
26:23 Very demure, very mindful
If Comics Sans is good enough for Silent Hill, it's good enough for my game 😤😤 (Really liked the both real life and game examples!)
Hm. Well now I'll have to make time to go over everything and see how many fonts I'm using in my game. Don't think I overuse capitalization anywhere, and I'm sure I have font color issues with things like my skill trees. Luckily I'm still building and there's time to fix stuff. Thanks for the tips!
1 font = 1 steam wishlist = 1 thoughts and prayers.
1:27 I will definitely do as you say and not as you do! 😅
If I have a different font for something some space aliens say which isn’t meant to be readable for the player (like, the characters in the font don’t have an obvious correspondence to the Latin alphabet characters they are replacing), is that a bad idea?
It isn’t a major part of the game, just the dialogue before one boss fight.
I imagine it wouldn’t be a problem as it should be obvious it isn’t meant to be read?
Yep, it’s meant to be blah blah language so it’s fine
@ Thanks!
Now I want to make a violent game with stardew valley font.
Stardew Chainsaw Massacre
After 90s, I quit because I don’t even want to know if the terrible choices I see in the typography and layout of the first two slides are ironical or honest. Good luck.
I regretfully had to stop watching this about a third of the way through because of the animated background. If you *really* need it for "branding" or whatever, please consider making it a static background, without all the bright moving elements. I couldn't concentrate on what you were saying, which was otherwise interesting. It's strange that you obviously know this is an issue, but chose to have that background anyway.
I didn't find it distracting
@@daschepers I understand. I saw the issue ahead of time and was hoping to change it but really didn’t have time this time around. Noted and will tone it down in future!
*Best alternative:* lower its opacity. The text (content) is more important than the background (cosmetic).
@@ultimaxkom8728 Yeah; the background was really set up for games streams etc. and I didn't have one to hand for doing lecture slides like this. I'll be making a mellower one for when it needs to be read from.
@@IndieGameClinic I appreciate your responsiveness. The algorithm just suggested your new video, "3 Game Marketing Tricks", and I was pleased to see a simple gradient background. I'll try to finish this video, too, because I like the topic and they way you're presenting it. Thanks for making your content.
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