Sin & Siege is a rogue-lite strategy game about rebuilding the circles of Hell. Capture and process sinful souls, harvest sins to spawn demons, and repopulate the abyss while defending your domain against "holy" monsters.
The monochrome pixel art presents a major technical hurdle. Maintaining visual depth and object readability in strict greyscale is exceptionally difficult without letting the world turn into an indistinct grey blur.
Optimize the main game screen’s interface and visual hierarchy to eliminate cognitive load within the monochrome palette. The primary goal is to ensure instant readability of the game state and streamline access to key resource and unit management mechanics.
UX Design Lead. Managed the full UX lifecycle from research to interaction logic. Provided art direction and conceptual oversight for the visual design, ensuring technical feasibility and brand alignment.
To improve visual clarity, we first overhauled the saturation and contrast of layers to better distinguish game objects from the background, adding a subtle glow to units for instant identification. The pixelated font was replaced with a cleaner, more readable typeface to reduce eye strain.
The updated HUD now features a central element displaying the current round, stage, and Circle of Hell. In the top bar, the Sin counter is prioritized as the key resource, while other icons have been made brighter and reorganized into an accordion menu to reduce clutter.
Management has been streamlined by removing intermediate buttons for buildings and magic, bringing these functions to the forefront and adding a dedicated hotkey to select idle demons. Building panels now sit on dedicated backdrops with thin "hairline" dividers between rows, and a new unit panel allows for expanding, grouping, and switching between active combat demons. Additionally, we introduced subtle decorative elements to give the UI a polished, distinct style that remains true to the project's grim aesthetic.
Interface:
Before
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After