Tag Archives: ruse

Thoughts: RUSE.

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I was a little puzzled by Ruse (or R.U.S.E, as most people never call it) to begin with. Specifically, I was puzzled by its UI. Whoever designed the visual elements deserves a medal; the menus all use bright, vibrant primary colours and abstract geometric symbols to produce a wonderfully warm, stylish interface. It’s the style Civilization V wishes it had, basically. On the other hand there was something slightly off about data presentation and unit selection. The game is controlled almost entirely via left-clicking, box-selecting units is a little over-generous and ends up selecting units which are just outside the box, and the text is bloody enormous. Which seemed like somewhat baffling design decisions until I realised that Ruse was developed for consoles. The text is designed to be read on a TV screen from across the room and the game is supposed to be played with an imprecise controller, hence the overcompensation from the UI.

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