Warhammer: Odyssey
Virtual Realms • iOS, Android
Note: The Warhammer: Odyssey Logo, Character Concepts & Models are created by colleagues at Virtual Realms
Intro
Warhammer is one of those franchises that every gamer interacts with at some point in their life. Be it through the detailed miniature filled table-top games or through the enormous gallery of genre defining video games. The former played a huge role in developing the UI for Warhammer: Odyssey, an old-school MMORPG for mobile produced by Virtual Realms.
UX — Wireframing & Documentation
The game was built over a previous owned title by the company which meant most of the game's flows were already established. However, this didn't mean that we shouldn't update the User Experience wherever we could.
In order to properly do this and to communicate with other roles in the team, detailed wireframes and documentation was created.
Creative Exploration 1
To define a visual language for the UI, a lot of freeform concepts were created. These are just a fraction of them.
While some proved to be enticing, we couldn't shake the feeling that something was "missing". Which lead us to a different approach:
Creative Exploration 2
For a better overview, we decided to take a step back from the usual UI concepts and develop a vision that would spill over to other areas of the game like cinematics or marketing assets.
In the end we were left with 2 distinct concepts - one inspired by the dark and painterly illustration style of the franchise while the other was taking hints from inside Warhammer's myriad of books and its miniatures.
Style Guide
Having a concept approved by both Virtual Realms' and Game Workshop's (Warhammer's IP holders) teams, we set out to design every little nitty-gritty detail and assemble everything into a Style Guide.
UI Design
Having all of this setup made designing the actual screens a breeze.
Final Touches
To make everything stand out as an amazing experience to players, after implementation into Unity, UI animations were sprinkled throughout. From the smoky battlefield-like background to the blood-flow of the HP bar.
Extra
The visual language set up for the UI was used for marketing and other parts of the game as well:
Marketing Assets
Cinematic Trailer
Previs shots
VFX Concept