A translucent blue box that means a decision
Console role-playing menus solved a hard problem: show a lot of numbers on a television, from a sofa, without hiding the world behind them. The answer was a window you could see through.
Two rounded windows with a soft blue fill you can almost see through. The upper one lists four names with small meters beside each. The lower one is a column of commands, with a small pointing hand beside the second.
ATTUNE. DISPATCH. CONFIGURE. MANEUVER. ABSCOND.
Why does this interface look the way it does?
Because it had to work on a television, from three metres away.
Everything follows from that. Type large enough to read from a sofa. High contrast against any background. Rounded corners because early displays softened hard ones anyway. And translucency, so the world behind the menu stayed visible instead of being replaced by a black screen.
It's a set of constraints almost nobody designs for now, which is part of why the result looks so distinctive.
Why translucent rather than solid?
To keep you in the place.
A solid panel says you have left the game and entered a settings screen. A window you can see through says time has paused, but you're still standing where you were. That distinction sounds small and it's the difference between an interface that breaks immersion and one that extends it.
It was also cheap: a simple blend of a flat colour over the frame buffer, no extra art required.
What makes the command list feel right?
Verbs, and a cursor with personality.
Menu commands are almost always single words in the imperative, and the choice of verb sets the
entire tone of a game — plain ones read as functional, unusual ones read as a world with its own
vocabulary. ABSCOND tells you more about a game than a paragraph of description would.
The cursor is the other half. A small pointing hand, an arrow, a jewel — it's the only element that moves, so it's the one people remember.
Can I use a real game's menu?
Those window designs and typefaces are that game's artwork.
The famous menu systems are strongly identified with their series, and the publishers merchandise them. That's licensable in the ordinary way — this catalogue gets licensed constantly — but it has to be licensed before anything is printed or sold.
The convention itself is public: translucent panel, bordered, listed verbs, a cursor. And an invented party with invented commands is far more interesting to wear, because nobody can name it.
What should the names and commands be?
Real people, and real things they do.
Four names with meters beside them is a household, a band, a team or a family, quantified. The command list underneath is where the joke lives — the verbs somebody in your life actually performs, set in the imperative like combat options.
It's the same structure as a credit roll where one line is larger: a rigid format, personal contents.
What are the meters doing?
Making the abstract measurable, which is the whole appeal.
A small bar next to a name is a claim that a person has a quantity of something and that it can run out. That's a slightly absurd thing to state about a human being and an extremely relatable one, which is why status bars keep escaping games into everything else.
Does it print well?
Yes, provided the translucency is faked rather than reproduced.
A real blend is a gradient, and wide soft gradients go grey on cotton. The version that works uses a flat mid-tone fill with a fine double border and lets the border do the work of suggesting glass. Bitmap type wants to be crisp and generously sized.
Deep navy, midnight blue and black grounds. Two inks — bone white for the type and rules, gold for the cursor and meter fills.
How do I get one made?
Describe the menu at JustOG — who's in the party, what their meters measure, and what the commands are. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.
Designs other people have published are in the shop.
Five verbs, and one of them is the one you always pick.