Your game is good. Your interface is getting in the way.
UXHaven is a UX/UI lab that works on one thing: game interfaces. We study how players read your HUD, menus and inventory, then hand you a clear plan to make them understood at a glance.
1 Health & ammo readable in 0.3s2 Menu depth cut to two taps3 Inventory grid re-grouped
What we do
Four surfaces where players quietly get lost.
Most games don't lose players at the fight — they lose them at the screen before it. We focus where confusion hides.
01
HUD & combat readout
Health, resources, cooldowns, objectives — everything the player checks mid-action. We measure how fast the eye finds each value and cut the noise that costs a reaction.
HierarchyGlance timeContrast
02
Menus & settings
Pause screens, options, key rebinding, save flows. We flatten deep trees, name things the way players think, and make the "where is that toggle" question disappear.
NavigationLabellingDepth
03
Inventory & systems
Grids, crafting, loadouts, skill trees. When a game has a lot of stuff, the interface is the game. We group, sort and label so managing gear feels like play, not paperwork.
GroupingDensityFeedback
04
Onboarding & first hour
The opening minutes decide who stays. We map where new players stall, replace wall-of-text tutorials with in-context teaching, and get people to their first real decision faster.
TeachingPacingRetention
The method
Research, prototype, test, deliver.
No taste debates, no "we'd move this here." Every recommendation is traced back to something we watched a player struggle with. That's the whole discipline.
Research
Prototype
Test
Deliver
Step one
Research
We play the build the way your players do and record it. Then we run a heuristic pass against how people actually read screens — scan order, grouping, contrast, load. We watch, we don't guess.
Session recordingsHeuristic pass
Step two
Prototype
For the parts that need more than a nudge, we build clickable alternatives — often two or three directions, not one precious mock. Cheap to make, cheap to reject, so the good idea can win.
Clickable flowsA / B directions
Step three
Test
We put the prototypes in front of people who match your audience and give them real tasks: find the map, equip the better weapon, change the controls. Where they hesitate is where the design still fails.
Task testingTime-on-task
Step four
Deliver
You get a written report, annotated screens and a ranked backlog your team can pull straight into a sprint. No 80-slide deck nobody opens — the shortest thing that gets it fixed.
ReportRanked backlog
Case studies
Before and after, on real screens.
Two anonymised examples from studios we've worked with. Same game, same content — the interface just stopped fighting the player.
Survival crafting game · inventory rework
−41% time to equip
Before
One flat grid of everything
Weapons, food and crafting parts shared a single 60-slot grid. Players scrolled to find gear mid-raid and died holding the wrong item.
After
Grouped, sorted, tabbed
We split the grid into tabbed categories with a fixed quick-bar. Equipping the right tool dropped from a scroll-hunt to a single, predictable move.
Strategy game · onboarding & menus
+27% reached turn 5
Before
Tutorial wall, buried options
Nine tooltip pop-ups fired in the first minute, and the difficulty toggle sat four screens deep. New players bounced before their first real turn.
After
Teach in context, options up front
We replaced the pop-up wall with hints tied to the action, and lifted the key settings to the first screen. More players stayed long enough to get hooked.
What you get
Everything your team needs to act — nothing they have to decode.
Report
A written audit, plain and short
Ten to fifteen pages, not a hundred. Each finding says what's wrong, why it costs the player, and what to do — in the order that matters.
Severity and effort rating on every issue
Screenshots tied to each point, so nobody argues about which screen
A one-page summary your producer can read in five minutes
Annotated screens
Your interface, marked up
We take your actual screens and pin every problem to the exact element — the way we mark up the mock at the top of this page. No abstraction, no translation needed.
Numbered callouts linked to the report
Before/after overlays where we propose a change
Exported as images your team drops into the tracker
Redesign plan
Directions, ranked
For the parts that need real work, two or three redesign directions with the trade-offs spelled out — so you're choosing between clear options, not staring at a blank page.
Prioritized backlog you can paste into a sprint
Quick wins separated from bigger rebuilds
Optional follow-up sprint if you want us to build it
In their words
What studio leads say after the audit.
Two producers who commissioned a Game UI Audit — on what actually changed once the interface stopped getting in the way.
We shipped three updates trying to fix our quest log ourselves and players still missed it. The audit found the real problem in an afternoon — it wasn't the log, it was where the eye landed first. After the regroup, players stopped missing the quest log entirely, and our "where do I go" support tickets dropped by a third.
1Marta KowalczykExecutive Producer · Nightfold Studio
What sold me was that nothing was a matter of taste — every note traced back to a clip of a real player hesitating. The ranked backlog dropped straight into our sprint board, no translation needed. Two of the quick wins took an afternoon each and cut time-to-equip on the crafting screen almost in half.
2Julien BrandtStudio Lead · Ember & Oak Games
3"The one-page summary is what got the whole team to actually read it." — Priya Anand, Design Director · Copperlight Interactive
Pricing
One fixed-price audit. One optional sprint.
No hourly meter, no surprise scope. You know the number before we start.
Start here
Game UI Audit
1 200 zł fixed, per game
A full heuristic review of your interface, delivered in about ten working days.
Playthrough + heuristic pass across HUD, menus, inventory and onboarding
Written report with severity and effort ratings
Annotated screens, tied point-by-point to the report
Prices are in Polish złoty (zł), excluding VAT. Larger titles are quoted after a short scoping call — no obligation.
FAQ
The questions studios ask first.
01
What exactly do I get from a Game UI Audit?
A written report, a set of annotated screens marking every issue, a prioritized list of fixes ranked by impact and effort, and two or three redesign directions for the parts that need more than a patch. Plus a call to walk your team through all of it.
02
Do you need our source code or engine access?
No. We work from a build or a screen recording plus your interface screens. If you can play it, we can audit it. Engine or repo access only comes up if you take the follow-up redesign sprint and want us to help with handoff.
03
How long does it take?
Roughly ten working days from the moment we have a playable build in hand. If you add the redesign sprint, that runs another two to three weeks depending on how many screens are in scope.
04
Which genres and platforms do you cover?
Anything with a screen the player has to read — RPGs, strategy, survival, roguelikes, sims — on PC, console or mobile. Inventory-heavy and systems-heavy games are exactly where an interface lab earns its keep.
05
We're pre-launch and nervous about NDAs.
That's the normal case. We sign your NDA before we see a single screen, keep builds off shared drives, and never show work in public without written sign-off. The case studies on this page are anonymised for that reason.
Book a UI audit
Tell us about your game.
Send the basics and we'll reply within one working day with next steps and a slot. No payment on this form — we invoice once scope is agreed.
AFixed price, fixed timeline — you approve both before we begin.
BWe start from a build or recording; no code needed.
Marta Kowalczyk
Executive Producer · Nightfold Studio
Julien Brandt
Studio Lead · Ember & Oak Games
