RIVEN UI
UX/UI design, design system, + UI development in Unreal Engine 5.
Riven is a game which was originally made in 1997, and was remade and expanded in 2024 by the team at Cyan Worlds.
The team has no UI folks on staff, so I took on the entirety of the project.
The Process
I started with looking at the company’s previous games, created wireframes integrating improvements to them. I then established a look and feel with the Creative Director, and translated that look and feel into a design system.
I then applied the design system to the structure I had determined with wireframes.
Next, I learned how to create Widgets in Unreal Engine’s UMG for each of the components I had designed, nesting them the same way I had done in Figma.
Result:
The game has been extremely well-received by both critics and players alike:
- It will be featured in the “Best of” section at the prestigious Venice International Film Festival
- Polygon’s editors have given it their enviable “Polygon Recommends” designation
- A whopping 93% of Steam users rate it positively and it has 4.9 stars on the Mac App Store
Challenges:
- Designing a menu that can be navigated via a mouse, keyboard, and controller.
- Ensuring the menu could be readable on top of any view in the game.
- Learning UMG, Unreal’s UI development suite.