ooooh boy this shit is always so lovely. It can make any game, whatever it may be, look so professional and cold and un-fun, love it to bits.
these are probably not even the best examples, i want more, please show me more
undoubtedly I am a more-than-typically spreadsheet-brained individual, but I find that rather than looking cold and un-fun this intersection of game and OS UI bespeaks a thrilling mode of interaction. The applications for which this UI was intended are tools to complete tasks and so the design language they speak seeks to lay their functions bare at the user's fingertips. To use this language in play suggests a game toothsome enough to remain joyous even when (ideally because) its interactions are utilitarian in the extreme.
Although this particular cross-pollination is now visible only in the fossil record, I've returned recently to Death Stranding, a game which revels in the tangible interfaciness of every moment. Last week I played Armored Core, a love letter to menus and stats and overwhelming persnickety detail. These games extend play beyond simply moments of action or puzzles to solve into the texture of interactions with a system. Our lives force us to touch so many systems that treat us as raw and inhuman fuel. It's nice to remember that computers can contain joy as well.
The absolute pinnacle of this style has to be Metal Marines, for PC.
It seems to be incredibly obscure even now, such that I literally could find only two gameplay videos of the PC version, which is a shame because it is absolutely fucking brilliant.
Gameplay takes place across multiple windows. But unlike, say, the Maxis games, where one is your main play area and the rest are palettes or info windows, you have a separate play area for both players.
The conceit is that you each occupy island bases, on which you construct missile silos, mecha launch pads, various base facilities and defensive emplacements, etc. Each base is in its own map window, because there's only water between them, and no boats, so how do you attack?
Drag and drop.
Click on one of your missile bases or mecha launch pads, and drag it to the other window.
It's so incredibly simple when you just explain it like that, but when I first played the game it blew my mind, and I didn't see another game come along that did anything like it until Kingsway.
There's also an SNES version, which is the one everyone seems to have seen, and even got a re-release on Virtual Console, but I can't fathom why because it's so monstrously inferior to this piece of UI brilliance that I was honestly surprised to see the claim that the PC version was the port in this case, and not the original. Talk about going above and beyond.
