The Game UI Bible

Our favourite games speak to us in a secret language that makes their rules legible. They instruct us, guide our decision-making, and clarify how we interact with them. But how? The answer is found in the fields of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design. In The Game UI Bible, creator of the Game UI Database Edd Coates explores the past, present, and exciting future of these rapidly evolving disciplines. 

In the first half of The Game UI Bible, Coates discusses the foundations of UI and UX design. This section begins in the earliest days of PC, console, and arcade gaming and travels through to the modern day to track continuity and change in the fields’ key tenets as luminary designers elaborated on – and sometimes challenged – them.

In The Game UI Bible’s second half, Coates speaks directly to those luminaries. Across a series of case studies, Coates is in conversation with the key UI and UX designers who brought benchmark games to life, from God of War and Half-Life: Alyx to Inscryption and Monument Valley. These interviews are surrounded by essays on topics ranging from Nintendo’s Switch branding to the relationship between game UI and meme culture, all of which illustrate just how significant and far-reaching these fields are.

Featuring countless visual examples – and select spreads printed across see-through acetate layers allowing you to peel back a game’s UI element by element – The Game UI Bible is overflowing with UI principles in action. Whether you’re a gaming enthusiast looking to deepen your appreciation for the craft or a game designer looking to sharpen yours, there is plenty of wisdom for everyone in The Game UI Bible.