Something I have been putting off for a while was a settings menu. I kept putting it off because “How hard can it be?” I figured it would be easy to slap together. And I was half right. The buttons and mechanics of the menu are/will be fairly easy to make. But… the ever looming questions of how to design the thing and what to include are a bit harder to answer.

Lets start with one of the simple ones: Volume Controls. Once I actually started thinking about it I was struck by a seemingly obvious question. The primary target platform for this game is mobile devices, and people tend to just use a phone’s inbuilt volume control when playing games. So… Do I really need a volume control? Or would a simple mute/unmute toggle suffice? Another question: Do I have enough distinct sound effects to warrant individual volume controls? And all these questions for one of the simpler parts of the settings menu.

One of the other problems I am having with the settings menu is another simple question: Where should you be able to access it? Seems simple and straightforward right? Que hysterical laughter of a man losing his mind. At first I was just going to put it on the main menu and be done with it. But some of these options feel like they should be accessible from the play experience (mostly the volume setting). The problem with that is this: The play scenes are already using 80-90% of the relevant screen real-estate and the remaining parts are so desperate that is might as well be 100% use already.

So where would I even put the settings? The two options I can think of are to have the play area temporarily vacate the screen to make room. And alternatively for the settings to just sit on top of everything else with a semi-transparent backdrop to make the settings stand out from the play area. And I don’t really like either option. So that brings up the question: Do I really need the settings to be accessible from the play scenes?