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UI and menus

Principle

The gameplay interface stays minimal. The world and the Mind Palace carry explanation, so the HUD does not duplicate tutorial text, objective markers, or lore. Player-facing meaning lives in the environment, in rune feedback, and in the Mind Palace pedestals and plaques. This is the low-UI rule for the whole game.

Mind Drawing interface

The Mind Drawing board is Content/Rephrased/UI/WBP_RuneDrawing. It is not freehand drawing. The player navigates an exact-pattern stroke graph authored in URuneDrawingDataAsset, with the stroke table and neighbour rules described in Making runes.

Stroke states are the design contract for the board:

  • Inactive: grey.
  • Selected: white.
  • Active: yellow.
  • Exact match: blue when the active strokes form a valid rune.

A valid pattern activates automatically and the active strokes turn blue. Breaking the pattern deactivates it and the remaining active strokes return to yellow. An activated rune stays active after the interface closes. Effects from a drawn rune have a limited range centred on the player.

The matched word being formed appears parked beside the board, separate from the stroke graph.

The drawing input context is added when the board opens and removed when it closes. While the board is open, character control is disabled. E opens the board; Escape or E closes it. Closing restores character control.

Mind Palace settings room

The Mind Palace settings room is the in-world settings surface described in Memory Palace. It sits to the left of the Scholar's Shrine and is always open. It contains interactable displays for settings such as volume, fullscreen, and vsync. Interacting with a display zooms the camera into it; the player then uses directional input to adjust the value. This is the settings menu replacement while the player is inside the Mind Palace.

The GDD user interface section defines four screens: main, pause, settings, and credits.

  • Main menu: entry point and start of a run.
  • Pause menu: resume, settings, debug, and return to main.
  • Settings menu: volume, fullscreen, vsync, and the accessibility options listed below.
  • Credits menu: team roll.

The settings controls match the Mind Palace settings room. The exact layout of main, pause, and credits is owned by the GDD user interface section; see GDD.

Debug panel

The pause menu's DEBUG button opens Content/Rephrased/UI/WBP_DebugMenu, page 4 of the HUD's WS_MenuPages switcher. It uses the same layout, LoveDays font, and focus tint as the settings menu, and it is present in every build configuration, Shipping included. BACK or Escape returns to the pause menu. UDebugMenuWidget fills it; the state lives in URephrasedDebugSubsystem, so a level change turns everything off.

  • Debug View: rune words and definitions, puzzle noun labels, and a frame rate and player location panel in the top left corner.
  • God Mode: every rune reads as discovered with its pattern drawn, and drawing and the Mind Palace read as unlocked, for this session only; the save keeps the real progress. The player flies at three times walking speed: Space or the gamepad right shoulder to rise, Left Ctrl or the left trigger to descend. Turning God Mode off lands the player; drawing stays unlocked until the level reloads.
  • Orbital: switches the rune orbital between Orbital A and Orbital B (UOrbitSatelliteComponent::SetSelectionVariant), for keyboard and controller alike. Switching closes the orbital and releases the held runes; stored runes stay.
  • Drawing Controls and Controller Drawing: switch Mind Drawing's keyboard scheme (Rephrased.Drawing.SocketControls) and controller scheme (Rephrased.Drawing.ControllerSocketControls) between A and B. Each row appears only when its console variable is registered.
  • Teleport: opens a list of the level's areas, then the waypoints of one area: one button per AShowcaseWaypoint, ordered by Sort Order and then name. Choosing one places the player standing on the waypoint, facing its arrow, and closes the menu. Drag a Showcase Waypoint into any level and set its Display Name; an empty name shows the actor label.

The rows are 640 wide, and the list under God Mode shows four rows before it scrolls.

HUD

During play the HUD shows only:

  • The interaction prompt for the nearest interactable, supplied through IInteractableInterface.
  • The Mind Drawing board when the player summons it.
  • The autosave indicator while a checkpoint write runs, a USaveIndicatorWidget driven by the save subsystem; see Save / Load.
  • The text tutorial when the player uses an unlock item, a UTextTutorialWidget. It shows a title and a body at the bottom of the screen. ARephraseCharacter::ShowTextTutorial shows it, and it stays up until the player does what it asks: opening the drawing tablet or opening the Mind Palace. A Blueprint subclass owns the layout by naming its text blocks TitleText and BodyText; see Rune actors and placement.

The HUD deliberately omits health, stamina, a minimap, objective text, a quest log, and an item inventory. Explanation lives in the world and the Mind Palace, not in the HUD.

Accessibility

  • Rebindable actions: input actions live under Content/Rephrased/Input/ as Enhanced Input assets, so they support player-level remapping.
  • Readable focus and selection states: the Mind Drawing stroke graph uses four distinct states. The contract requires these states to be readable by colour, shape, and sound together, not colour alone.
  • Reduced flashing: the Mind Palace thought bubble and force field shatter use eased transitions. A reduced flashing option caps their intensity.
  • Volume controls: available in the Mind Palace settings room and in the settings menu.
  • Adjustable text size: where text appears, such as interaction prompts and Mind Palace plaques, text size is adjustable from settings.

Gamepad

Menu navigation and Mind Drawing navigation are both part of the UI contract.

  • Menus and settings displays support gamepad focus movement.
  • Mind Drawing uses a fixed direction-based neighbour table. Gamepad D-pad or left stick directions select the same assigned neighbour stroke that W, A, S, and D select on keyboard.

Open questions

  • The exact contents and layout of the main, pause, and credits screens are defined in the GDD but are not verified in the current compiled module. UI implementation should confirm the GDD list before building those screens.
  • The ARephraseCharacter HUD widget class is set by Blueprint. Its full contents are not catalogued in this page; only the interaction prompt and the Mind Drawing board are documented here.
  • The fullscreen and vsync controls in the Mind Palace settings room are specified in the Mind Palace Doc but are not yet verified in the live module.
  • Shape and sound redundancy for rune feedback is part of the accessibility contract, but not every redundancy signal is verified in the compiled code.

Sources

  • Rephrased GDD - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ksIvJIs53S8vcQlLPUqRQjPNPiQxGvQ0/edit - covers the user interface section and the main, pause, settings, and credits screens.
  • Mind Palace Doc (Sept 10) - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SJmAOAfufwu9qbgOUCZI1GF3yFlYUOLtF2s-FMq7W0w/edit - covers the in-world settings room and the thought bubble transition.
  • GDD Top Line Presentation - https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qHaK5zLjebK_MuxQT5i40ZbIQ0XHLZ5iSKxSYbAWmuc/edit - covers the low-UI presentation direction.

Change history

  • 2026-10-19 — Gabriel Li — Debug panel: Orbital, Drawing Controls, and Controller Drawing switches; wider rows so their labels fit (TA-001).
  • 2026-10-14 — Gabriel Li — Added the pause menu's Debug panel: Debug View, God Mode, and Showcase Waypoint teleports (PROT-003).
  • 2026-10-11 — Gabriel Li — Added the text tutorial popup to the HUD list (CORE-013).
  • 2026-10-02 — Gabriel Li — Added the autosave indicator to the HUD list (CORE-011).
  • 2026-09-17 — Gabriel Li — Created the UI and menus page: the Mind Drawing board contract, the Mind Palace settings room, the menu set, the HUD, accessibility, and gamepad navigation.