The Dark Arrival: Shadows of the Past UI/UX Case Study

A UI/UX case study for The Dark Arrival: Shadows of the Past a first-person survival-horror investigation built in Unreal Engine 5 at Vault Productions.
Role: UI / UX Designer (sole)

Engine: Unreal Engine 5 UMG · C++ · Blueprints

Tools: Figma · Photoshop · Illustrator · After Effects

Platform: PC / Console

Status: Demo complete · Steam Short Games 2026 Showcase

The design challenge was to hold two opposites at once: total immersion and total legibility. Horror UI fails in two directions too much chrome kills the dread; too little leaves the player frustrated and pulled out of the fiction. Every screen in this study was designed, styled, and implemented to ship.
Four design pillars guided every decision:
I Diegetic First. Where a screen can be a prop a newspaper, a lantern, a doorway it is. Game-y chrome is the exception, never the default.
II Period Truth. Interface artifacts are honestly dated. An 1850 broadsheet and a 1978 tabloid carry different mastheads, type, and texture era reads at a glance.
III Legible Dread. Mood sets the stage but never blocks the read. Contrast, hit-targets, and wayfinding survive the fog. The player is scared, not confused.
IV Quiet HUD. No permanent overlay. Information surfaces on intent on look, on reach, on pause then recedes, leaving the frame to the world.

What's covered in this study:
Front-End / Main Menu The verbs sit quietly inside a snow-bound cemetery at the town gate. No modal panel, no blur slab. The scene is the background. One warm amber highlight is the entire interaction vocabulary, echoing the lantern light in-scene.
Pause / In-Game Flow "Continue" becomes Continue Investigation. The player is not resuming a save — they are a detective returning to the case. The same amber hover carries through; one consistent interaction grammar across the whole front-end and pause flow.
The Old Town Gazette (Narrative UI) A collectible newspaper system that carries the entire mystery across two timelines — 1850 and 1978 — without a single line of expository dialogue. Each issue is a fully designed prop readable both in-world and inside an inventory reader. Masthead typography shifts by era so the player dates each clue at a glance.
In-World / HUD Philosophy Almost no HUD in the play space. The flashlight cone is the only cursor. A far cross lit in red pulls the player forward without a waypoint marker. The chapel anchors navigation without a minimap.
Implementation Built and wired in-engine. UI lives in UMG with a deliberate split: C++ owns the systems and data layer; Blueprints handle widget logic, bindings, and interaction polish. One parent button widget defines the amber hover state changing it once updates the whole front-end. Each Gazette issue is a data entry fed to a single reader widget, so new lore drops as content, not new UI.

Stack: Unreal Engine 5 · UMG · C++ · Blueprints · Figma · Photoshop · Illustrator · After Effects
Portfolio: jaikarpothula.com

Contact: jaikardevgame@gmail.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jaikar-pothula-489b681a5
Rookies 2025 Rookie of the Year · Academy of Art University, M.A. Game Development