• Make games that present themselves clearly and teach anyone watching how to play for themselves
  • Aka making a game “subway-legible”
• Subway legibility allows for:
  • Easier tutorialisation
    • The game is already presenting information in a naturally accessible way
  • Improves organic discovery
    • Being clear and able to teach onlookers how to play means more viewers that can quickly comprehend the rules and get excited about the game
  • Easier marketing
    • Screenshots and gifs will need little to no context
• Players should be able to imagine what the whole game is like based off of a screenshot or two
• The Three Reads
  1. What pulls you in → the core of the game
     • Make the key information the first read, as everyone needs to see this, and make it visually stand out more. Eg big text or more vibrant colours
  2. The key details → important unintuitive rules
     • The second read should provide more that the player will likely refer to frequently, but it does not need to be the centre of their attention. It should stand out more than the third but less than the first
  3. Contextual information → contextual rules
     • The third read gives extra details that support those in the first and second. Also include other information that is necessary for play, but not key all of the time Use small text or subtle UI for these
     • Only matters when the player is dealing with a specific thing, eg in Into the Breach each bug has a UI component explaining where they will attack but these are only important to the player when they are in the context of dealing with a specific bug
• Animation and movement can be used to swap something between reads when that information is most needed
• The fourth read is where hidden information, that can be toggled in and out, is
  • This allows for other information, in higher reads, to not become cluttered
  • Also allows for the information to only appear when the player needs to look at it

Gage, Z. (2018). Building games that can be understood at a glance . [online] Available at: http://stfj.net/DesigningForSubwayLegibility/