For this project, I designed and prototyped a game menu and launch sequence.

To focus on the game’s menu and create a prototype in Unity using its UI toolkit and free 3D materials from the Unity Asset store.

In the first phase of this project, I created low-fidelity wireframes in Adobe Illustrator. After narrowing down the design, I began working in Unity to create the prototype.

I knew I wanted my design to use a 3D animated background, so I explored games that took this approach. These games included Harvest Moon, Dead by Daylight, Half-Life 2, Animal Crossing, and Wilderness. I started with a Low-Fidelity design in Adobe Illustrator. I explored menu layout options and different background complexities. I also created a logo and shovel icon using Adobe Illustrator.

After completing my High-Fidelity design, I began developing my prototype in Unity. I added a launch sequence using the Unity package Cinemachine and created my menu UI with UI toolkit.

To launch new scenes when the spacebar is tapped or a menu item is clicked, I created some basic C# scripts.

The following script launches the main menu when the spacebar is pressed.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UIElements;
using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;

public class LaunchUIPresenter : MonoBehaviour
{

    void Start()
    {
        VisualElement root = GetComponent<UIDocument>().rootVisualElement;
        root.Q<GroupBox>("LoadMenu").style.display = DisplayStyle.None;
        root.Q<GroupBox>("MainMenu").style.display = DisplayStyle.None;
        root.Q<GroupBox>("Launch").style.display = DisplayStyle.Flex;
    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space))
        {
            SceneManager.LoadScene("game_main_menu");
        }
        
    }
}

I used 3D models and other free assets from the Unity Asset Store to build my game.

To showcase my demo, I created a presentation video with Adobe Premiere Pro. You can view this here.