Week 20 - Game over!

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another Juicy Developer Blog. This week I've had much to do in terms of the completion of the game. I'm finally up to the stages of finalizing the game-play. I've started brainstorming some ideas for how I want the game over screen to look.
Essentially I want a drop down banner to appear (similar to Slidey Feet) which will show how you died, what your score is, high score, the medal you will receive, and the 'play/exit/leader-boards' buttons. I've been playing around with the style and colors as well to try and find a color palette I'm happy with. Below is what I had recently worked on and the bottom button design being the final result...

It was hard to come up with a style to one that fit the the game. I ended up browsing a number of  UI websites and found a few styles I didn't really mind.
The first 'gem' button style (top button) I liked initially, but the more I looked at it, the more I dislike it. It didn't really fit the 'comical orc arena' theme too much. If the game was similar to clash of clans, with like kings and royals, then maybe. But  I needed to think more.. 'primitive' and less 'jewelry-ish' so I scrapped the gem button idea and moved on to something more simple.
I then thought about  using simple rounded rectangle shapes. Again, something didn't feel right. It still felt that it was missing the 'humor' factor. So I decided to add a bit of shape to the primitive button design, and I started to see something... something that worked! I ended up with a design which was quite quirky, yet fit within the style of the game. Once the initial shape of the button was down, I then needed to think about the colors -which, on the record, I suck at-.
I initial thought maybe having distinct color might help distinguish each button, but it felt too colorful. I then tried a monochromatic color palette, which then felt too bland. After a while of tearing my hair out, I stumble upon a few more designs online which I really liked, and noticed that the buttons they used where split up into two parts; the frames, and the center of the button. I  started to experiment a little more with these designs. I tried a wooden backdrop with a golden frame, but the wood felt that it was apart of the banner more than a button, which I didn't really like, so I tried something else.
I finally ended up with a design which I'm happy with (golden trim, with a tan color backing). The text basically came to me very quickly afterwards and I ended up with what I have now (bottom). Here is the final result of what I have done so far...
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And here is what it 'would' look like in the game. I still need to implement these elements into the game engine.​

Now, I still need to add the medal you would receive, and your personal high score to this as well, but basically everything is there. I may need to re-arrange a few elements within the banner a bit for them to all fit together, but I'm pretty much done.

Now, again I don't have any game play this week since I haven't really touched it. I know I still need to add the power-ups and tweak the difficulty of the traps, but I don't think I would be really touching the game play much from this point onward, well, not until Beta testing.

Next week I hope to actually have all this in game and show you some footage. I also hope to add in the power ups and tweak the difficulty of the traps.

That about sums it up for this week. Until next week!

Thanks for reading!