Oh boy, Electronauts—quite the gem, right? So, they’re celebrating this whole double-whammy anniversary thing, which is apparently a big deal. I guess the game popped up seven years ago, and now they’re dusting off an old piece about it. It’s strange how time flies and yet, some things just stick around because they’re, well, pretty dang cool.
Electronauts, if you haven’t played it, is this VR game where you kind of pretend you’re a DJ. Not saying it’s gonna turn you into Tiesto overnight, but even if your musical chops are… let’s say “rusty,” it’s still a blast to mess around with. It’s like the designers wanted everyone to feel like a DJ without needing the actual skills—maybe a little bit like handing a paint-by-numbers to an aspiring Picasso.
And here’s where I went off on a tangent—it’s not just about music. The interface, oh man, it’s like a masterclass in design. It organizes itself around three big ideas: ease-of-use, hierarchy, and flexibility. And trust me, it’s more than just music and beats; it’s got lessons for all of us—no need for rhythm, just an interest in smart design.
Let’s just dive deep into this whole “ease-of-use” thing. You know how drumsticks are, well, for drums? Yeah, but here they’re also your trusty tools for navigating. Might sound weird, but it actually makes sense. Using drumsticks gives you this extended reach and makes the interface large enough to avoid those annoying little mistakes we all make when trying to poke at something too small. It’s like your hands suddenly grew a foot longer—not literally, though.
And they didn’t just stop there. The way you use buttons in Electronauts is ingenious. Instead of just tapping, you poke your drumstick into the button and pull a trigger. Feels kinda weird, but it’s strangely satisfying and precise. It’s almost as though they figured out that real-life buttons have this physical thing going on, and they had to compensate because, well, no one wants to miss a virtual button, right?
Hierarchy! Now that’s some fancy word for organizing stuff. Imagine—you’ve got all these tools shoved into cubes. Yeah, cubes. Stick a cube on a pedestal, and voilà, you’ve got access to its goodies. It’s like having a tiny app on your phone, each with specific uses, minus the overwhelming mess of functions piled up at once. With only three of those cubes active at a time, you avoid diving headfirst into a rabbit hole of folders within folders. It’s a little genius, if you ask me.
So yeah, Electronauts is more than just bleeps and bloops. It teaches you design tricks that could apply to literally anything you’d want to slap an interface onto. But anyway—where was I? Oh, right, maybe go check it out if you’re curious. You might just learn something cool, even if you’re not gonna be the next DJ superstar.
