Not A Drill
'Not a Drill' is a remake of 'Game and Watch: Fire' from Nintendo's Game and Watch Silver Series. Released in 1980, the game requires you to rescue a series of cats from a burning building using a bouncing board.
I was the game's UI designer and artist but I did supply 2D background assets as well.
Click here to play
01
UI assets
The main style direction for the UI was leaning in to the 'Fireman' background of the game. As such all the UI were either made to mimic warning signs or boards.
02
Panels
The panels were initially designed to mimic the emergency fire bricks in walls, but realised that using green for the pause screen might blend in too much with the pale blue background. As such, I swapped to using a magenta red.
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The Game Over screen was originally orange to fit better with the red pause screen. Ironically, when put in the game, the opposite problem with the pause menu occured. That is to say, the orange blended in too much with the fire, so it was swapped for a pale indigo as seen on the left.
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Due to time constraints, I couldn't make a font for the project, so I sourced one instead. Following the same principles used in signage design, the font chosen was a rounded sans-serif font that I sourced called 'Rounded Vale'.
03
The Backgrounds
Originally, I went with a darker purple for the cityscape in the background to make the fires in the building easier to see. Unfortunately, the contrast ended up being too sharp. The longer we play tested the more the contrast caused the team eye strain, so we went back and went for a more natural colour, a pale blue so the city would fade into the sky as one would see in the real world.
04
The Clouds
Initially, the clouds were a pale lilac to fit with the original background colour a bit more. When we changed the cityscape to a pale blue, the clouds also had to be updated.
