A game with no heads up display elements ?

Getting rid of HUD elements is a reasonable goal, but maybe you take it too literal. Implementing HUD elements on in game objects surely is more work and eventually more an obstacle to the player than justified by the extra immersion.

I would divide the topic a bit, so you can decide individually, and adding my personal opinion to the points.

HP, ammo and armour should not need a hud. Though, moving the HP number to the characters back or a digital watch does not really achieve that. Instead - if we were truly serious - we would show wounds and injuries affecting gait and speed, partially fallen off armour pieces, and maybe ammo packs poking through the cloth simulated backpack.
That's some work and it depends on the game if worth or not, and it affects the overall game design as well.

Some FP games allow to hold a map and compass up so they keep visible on the lower half of the screen. Likely i remember Metro, but i saw it elsewhere too. That's not bad, but also not as practical as a constant minimap e.g. in GTA.
However, it's important if the map rotates with the player orientation or not. Navigating the latter is much harder for a player like me.

Regarding Multiple Choice dialogue and game menu, i see no reason or way to get rid of these.
I mean, you could display dialogue options on some bip boy device, but this does not increase immersion at all, and may be just harder to read.

You mentioned to have some problems with designing a good looking HUD. But imo this should not be the primary reason to consider such alternatives. The bip boy device needs UI design too, so you don't spare any work but just increase it.
If your goal is more immersion, then yes it's maybe a good idea. But make sure it does nto conflict with some other maybe more important goals you already have for the game.

liminiminal wrote:

As for the interactions, I was thinking maybe the object itself gets a subtle outline when the player character is in range to interact.

I wanna mention i absolutely hate any form of highlighting objects in the viewport.
I hate it in every game i every saw it, and i hate every kind of visual style that has been tried. Outlines, blinking, whatever. It looks terrible.
So personally i will not use such visual hints, but rather adapt the design as needed so i can avoid this.

But i never have a problem with hud elements. I see it's somehow 'wrong' if immersion is the primary goal, but our primary goal always is something different, e.g. making a fun game. And if we need a hud for mechanics, then that's just that.

That's just feedback of only one potential player ofc.

JoeJ wrote:

Getting rid of HUD elements is a reasonable goal, but maybe you take it too literal. Implementing HUD elements on in game objects surely is more work and eventually more an obstacle to the player than justified by the extra immersion.

I would divide the topic a bit, so you can decide individually, and adding my personal opinion to the points.

HP, ammo and armour should not need a hud. Though, moving the HP number to the characters back or a digital watch does not really achieve that. Instead -...

thank you very much for responding. I did not think about a visual damage approach, that would be better indeed, maybe some cuts on the ha ds that turn inyo larger wounds as the player loses HP. That would be better indeed.

After what you wrote, I think I.ll keep the dialogue system the classic way.

The highlighting might be annoying indeed. But how about this: I have a crosshair that i want to change color to red when the point overlaps an enemy. what of i make the point turn green when it overlaps an interacting object ?

For some reason, reading your post reminded me of Red Orchestra.

I believe that the idea is doable, but you'll be targeting a smaller niche of gamers that want that extra challenge.

The friend of mine who showed me red orchestra was also into games like Pirates Vikings Knights and some other civil war game.

The games were much tougher, had no HUDs, or very minimal, and might be worth looking into.

liminiminal wrote:

The highlighting might be annoying indeed. But how about this: I have a crosshair that i want to change color to red when the point overlaps an enemy. what of i make the point turn green when it overlaps an interacting object ?

Yeah, that's a good idea. I would not bother about crosshair changing shape or colors.
It's good because it keeps searching for objects a mechanic, like point and click adventures did.
Adds variety by alternating fast, skill based combat with relaxed exploration and resource gathering. I would like that.

Although, if we want to remove hud for immersion, then this would include the corsshair as well, in principle.
But beside Doom this was rarely done. We could at least remove it if the gun is holstered, but then we would also loose the option to use it as an indicator for interactive objects. It could pop up when hovering over them, though.

Btw, i would not say highlighting is annoying to me. It's not that bad. It just breaks immersion. Flashing highlights is like saying: 'Hey, you idiot! Can't you see me? I'm an object, pick me up! And yes, this is just a game. It's not real but fake, in case you forgot for a moment.'
So i really wonder why everybody adds those highlights. : )

Well, user interface is a difficult topic. But i don't think we need to make it totally perfect. I remember two games where the interface was so impressive to me, i forgot all other games. The first was Zak McCracken on C64. A point and click adventure, controlling a mouse pointer with a joystick, combining verbs and items or objects to form a sentenced command for the main character. This was clumsy, but it gave the illusion could do everything in the game. Later the interface was streamlined, replacing a dozen of verbs with just three icons. Less clumsy, but the cool illusion was gone too.
The other example game was Frictional Games Penumbra, the lesser known predecessor to Amnesia. This was a first person adventure horror game, and every object in the world had physics simulation and could be interacted with in a very intuitive way. E.g. to open some drawer, you grab it and pull it open with the mouse. This interface again gave me the illusion i could do anything, and again it was fun to try out ideas even if they did not work. But it was no perfect. Obviously the devs felt uncertain about intuitive controls, so they kept multiple options e.g. keeping the grabbing mouse pointer in the screen center vs. keeping the camera fixed and moving the pointer while pulling. And in later games the focus became story telling, and the physical immersion felt toned down, and the interface was cleaned up.

Idk, but maybe we often loose a lot of stuff if we try to perfectionise something.