![\"comp07-lost_dimension\"](\"http:\/\/www.wurb.com\/stack\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/10\/comp07-lost_dimension-1.png\")
<\/a>A first look at the interface shows that it was designed according to coloring-book principles: pink action buttons, white-on-blue inventory, a brilliant cyan command prompt, a purple-and-white diagonal gradient background, etc. There’s a place in well-designed interfaces for varying the color scheme, but not like this. Color is best used to make elements stand out. There’s a good example of this on the left-hand side, where the character stats are in a different color from their names, allowing the user to easily isolate the important information at a glance. But just above that, we see the opposite effect: the player’s equipment is allowed to blend into the background while the names<\/em> of the equipment slots are highlighted. It’s all rather haphazard.<\/p>\nThe developer has tried to make some accomodation for people who prefer a command-line interface. Now, I have nothing against GUIs — I frequently play graphic adventures, which are GUI by their very nature. But when you’re dealing with text, I find that CLI are usually easier to use. GUIs are usually easier to learn<\/em> — all of your options are there in front of you, and thus easily discoverable without reading docs. So even in dealing with textual data, a GUI can be preferable for things you do infrequently. The main strength of a CLI that it doesn’t require constant visual feedback. Typing commands means that any back-and-forthing between user and machine happens at the highest possible level: you say what you want, the computer generates a response. So I was initially pleased that the game supported a command prompt. Then I tried it, and realized that it makes the sort of interaction I just described impossible. Instead of letting the user enter a complete command, it only accepts the verb: if you want to get an object, you type “get” and a dialog box with a list of items immediately pops up. You can then select an item from the menu by typing a number. Even worse, if you want to examine something, the box pops up after you type “exam” — the common adventure-game abbreviation “x” is not recognized — leaving you typing “ine” into the number prompt out of momentum. But that’s tangential to my point here, which is that if you want to use the keyboard, you’re expected to awkwardly consult the user interface for more information in the middle of a command. Well, if I’m going to be selecting things from menus all the time, I might as well just use the GUI. But even the GUI is affected adversely by the presence of the CLI: all keyboard events go to the command prompt (not even clicking outside the prompt shifts the focus), so there’s no possibility of keyboard shortcuts for UI elements. 1<\/sup><\/a> The screenshot provided here actually underlines characters in the action buttons as if to indicate shortcut keys, but that seems to be an artifact of the way Windows does screenshots. In actual play, the underlining isn’t even visible, let alone functional. <\/span><\/span>