I've only played the game offline before, then I came across Puerto Rico on BGA, and was immediately shocked by the utter nonsense UI layout.
Here are a list of things to improve, split by category. These are VERY easy to implement, and would drastically improve the game experience.
1. Improve visibility
- The tutorial even says the game is designed for full-screen. So why is everything so tiny? There's so much empty room, especially vertically. Please 2x the size of all plantation tiles and buildings. 1.5x the size of ships, trade house, and player boards.
- The actions list is also difficult to read, not to mention the horrible coloring, with text hardly distinguishable from background color, and difficulty clicking. The easy solution is to simply match physical board design. See the next section.
2. Better match the physical board game
- Buildings section should be 7 rows (or 4 main rows, with top 3 split) instead of the current 2x2 BGA non-sense. The physical board game designed this extremely well. And user familiarity is a huge bonus.
- For the plantation tiles, currently hidden tiles are too close to queries. Queries should be closer to the face-up tiles. If the hidden tiles were to split into 5, matching the physical board game, that would be even better.
- The physical board game has 7 cards for the actions, with very clear text and icons. So just replicate those 7 cards, and put them below the ships and trading house.
3. Group things together logically
- Currently player boards form an "L" shape on the left while player info panels are vertically stacked on the right. This makes no sense. Just move the player boards to the right, left of the player info panels. Either align with player info panels, or not align, would both work. Each player'
s info panel can even go above each player's board. (which also mimics the physical board game experience)
- The UI layout is currently extremely horizontal, which makes is hard to scan for information. The actions should go beneath ships and trading house, and ships and trading house can split into 2 rows (captain ships one row, colonist ship and trading house another). By following the 7-row buildings section design of the physical board game, "horizontalness" would also be reduced.
WIth these changes, the UI would be super intuitive, information is easily accessible at a glance, all at the expected places, and game play would be much more smooth.
Here are a list of things to improve, split by category. These are VERY easy to implement, and would drastically improve the game experience.
1. Improve visibility
- The tutorial even says the game is designed for full-screen. So why is everything so tiny? There's so much empty room, especially vertically. Please 2x the size of all plantation tiles and buildings. 1.5x the size of ships, trade house, and player boards.
- The actions list is also difficult to read, not to mention the horrible coloring, with text hardly distinguishable from background color, and difficulty clicking. The easy solution is to simply match physical board design. See the next section.
2. Better match the physical board game
- Buildings section should be 7 rows (or 4 main rows, with top 3 split) instead of the current 2x2 BGA non-sense. The physical board game designed this extremely well. And user familiarity is a huge bonus.
- For the plantation tiles, currently hidden tiles are too close to queries. Queries should be closer to the face-up tiles. If the hidden tiles were to split into 5, matching the physical board game, that would be even better.
- The physical board game has 7 cards for the actions, with very clear text and icons. So just replicate those 7 cards, and put them below the ships and trading house.
3. Group things together logically
- Currently player boards form an "L" shape on the left while player info panels are vertically stacked on the right. This makes no sense. Just move the player boards to the right, left of the player info panels. Either align with player info panels, or not align, would both work. Each player'
s info panel can even go above each player's board. (which also mimics the physical board game experience)
- The UI layout is currently extremely horizontal, which makes is hard to scan for information. The actions should go beneath ships and trading house, and ships and trading house can split into 2 rows (captain ships one row, colonist ship and trading house another). By following the 7-row buildings section design of the physical board game, "horizontalness" would also be reduced.
WIth these changes, the UI would be super intuitive, information is easily accessible at a glance, all at the expected places, and game play would be much more smooth.