Challenges and Solutions

• Responsive layouts: Built a flexible UI system that adapts to multiple aspect ratios and screen sizes, including support for modern notches and camera cutouts.

• Readability: Iterated on text sizing, button scaling, and iconography to maintain clarity across small screens.

• Performance-conscious design: Kept UI lightweight by limiting use of gradients and transparency, ensuring smooth performance on mobile even without heavy optimisation.

• UI animations: Implemented lightweight tweens and transitions to create a snappy, playful feel without sacrificing performance.

• Asset integration: Worked with designer-created icons and sprites, ensuring they were correctly imported, scaled, and compressed for mobile performance.

Additional Features

• Automated save/load and resource tracking systems tied directly into the UI.

• Custom Shader Graph solution (“X-ray view”) allowing players to see animals even when hidden behind foliage.

Reflection

This project gave me hands-on experience in translating design concepts into functional UI systems, and taught me how to balance aesthetic goals with technical constraints like scaling, performance, and readability on mobile devices.