I’m starting to find that HUDs in games clutter the screen and take away from being fully immersed in the game. I like games that force you to pay attention to what’s going on in the game and not numbers/markers on the edges of the display. What are some of your favorite games to play with no HUD? Here are a few of mine:
Astroneer - this game has tool tips on screen but that’s about it. There isn’t even an inventory, all objects are interactive and you can physically place them on your backpack.
Battlefield 1 - super gritty and immersive, but playing without a HUD really puts you at a disadvantage online.
Red Dead Redemption 2 - I liked that you could hide the HUD, but the mini-map was a tap on the d-pad away if you get lost. It was a super immersive experience!
Grand Theft Auto 5 - maybe not designed to be played without the HUD, once you get used to the layout of the city this becomes a lot easier, and you focus more on landmarks to navigate and again this really increased immersion. Sometimes finding things in missions wasn’t obvious and required consulting the map but otherwise this was enjoyable.
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The Metro series is incredible for this. You have to press a button to check how many bullets are left, or how much oxygen is in your current canister. All kinds of awesome stuff in a bleak, rich world.
I think deadspace 1 and 2 were really immersive and world building. The UI didn’t feel like one. Your HP? It’s on your spine. Literally! It made sense too if you work with others, as it let’s them know if you feel like poo underneath the suit without needing to do anything risky.
Ammo? Literally on the side of the gun.
I second this. Ranger mode is also my gold standard for how FPS gameplay should feel. Anybody is going down after a couple rifle rounds to the chest, plates or no, and that includes you.
I third this. It is an excellent no hud game because of all the diegetic elements, like the physical map or the filter time remaining being shown by your watch. Lots of games will have ui menus you have to go through. Metro doesn’t.
That sounds amazing and part of why I loved fallout 4’s survival mode! Does every game in the series have ranger mode?
Dead Space. Ammunition is displayed on your weapon, health and stasis on your suit.
Prey 2016 also displayed your ammo on your gun, but had traditional health bars (it was an fpp game after all).
But I like a good HUD if it’s implemented in the story, like Cyberpunk where it’s a part of your augmented eyes, like an advanced Google lens. Doom did the same with the helmet.
Regarding GTA V, I never got to know the city well enough to play without a map. That fucking town was just to big for me. But I remember Vice City, I knew the map in and out, and playing without a map was fun!
Oooo I forgot about dead space, that’s a good one! Cyberpunk and prey are on my list!
Elden Ring and other fromsofts have the Hud disappear unless something actively happens with it sometimes. You don’t see your health or mana unless you get hit or cast a spell.
Dead Space, my favorite game of all time. All HUD elements are holographic projections from your suit and weapons, integrated into the game world and moving with the camera. Your health meter is a series of light segments going up your spine, and the meter for one of your abilities is a pie-chart style light on the back of your right shoulder. Even the objective markers are a trail of light projected from your hand when you press down on the control stick.
I played that aaaages ago and I remember that really stuck out to me at the time!
I’m pretty sure Hellblade didn’t have HUD and that game was incredible.
OMG! That game is so amazing and I was confused by the HUD missing.
I played Tears of the Kingdom HUDless and it was really immersive! I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything either, it honestly felt like how it was meant to be played.
Oooh when I pick it up again I’ll have to try it. Did you go hudless from the start or after playing for a while?
I did it immediately. I played BOTW years ago and just wanted to try it for something different.
An oldie but goldie: Grim Fandango
You drive your character like a tank, up moves him forward from his perspective, though there might be a setting to change that, it’s been years.
When you walk around the environment, Manny will turn his head to look at interactive objects, then you have “interact”, “examine”, or “pickup”.
The inventory screen is a close up of his jacket, where he reaches in a pulls something out. Hit the “next item” keyboard shortcut and he puts that object back into his jacket, and pulls out the next item.
Example of inventory screen: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/grim-fandango/images/a/a3/MarkedCard.jpg
The remaster of Grim Fandango does make the control scheme more modern (movement direction is camera relative), though you can switch to tank controls if you want.
Ghost of Tsushima has a very minimal hud
There are plenty of amazing games with no HUD whatsoever. First thing that comes to mind is Journey it literally has no HUD element, most games from thatgamecompany are minimal like that.
Also games by Josef Fares have almost no HUD, Brothers and the Hazelight Studios games similarly don’t rely on the HUD much.
I loved playing Assassin’s Creed games hudless. Especially 3, Odyssey, and Ragnarok.
As someone who last time did Altair and Ezio saga hudless, I can agree. While the game may be dated it can bring immersion and less simulation-y
Holy crap I’ve played so much AC and never thought to try those without the HUD! I feel like unity and syndicate in particular would be great to wander around with no screen clutter!
Well, you mentioned Battlefield 1 already, but yes.
No HUD, good sound system, only standard issue rifles… Honestly an experience like no other.
I mention good sound because no HUD means you get a lot more focused on what you’re hearing, and the sound in this game is fantastic. So many great audio clues to work with.
Battlefield 1 just drips with atmosphere, it’s amazing!
I completely understand how overcluttered and distracting some HUDs can become. I have found however that fully HUDless experiences tend to be more of a novelty than an increase in immersion.
If I’m playing a shooter and don’t have information on, say how many magazines I have, I find that more distracting than immersive. In real life I could quickly pat my vest to know. A HUD can be a replacement for information that seems intuitive to have because in a real situation we’d have kinesthetic feedback.
Basic information like health while injured is simply too useful. Realistically my health isn’t defined by a single variable bar nor is it restored instantly from a grievous wound by a using a syringe, so I find that seeing the bar is useful for succeeding in the game even if it is equally as unrealistic.
Something like the iHUD mod for modern Fallout games is my ideal HUD. It is modular and I can define what information I see, what information I don’t, and for how long the information I do get stays on the screen. Health can be set to only show at certain thresholds, the compass directions or map markers can be disabled unless I ask to see them briefly. Other elements similarly made optional.
I’ve played fully HUDless in both Metro games and in modded STALKER games, and each time I do I find myself going back to having at least a minimal informative HUD.
I don’t hate HUDs and I think most people who try HUDless don’t actually hate them either. What is hated are obnoxious tool tips, flashy HUD animations, and floating intrusive quest markers. If UX designers do their jobs right, people don’t know they did anything at all.
I think you hit the nail on the head, give me what I need to know when I need it, and make it more environmental when possible. Halo for example had the assault rifle show the ammo count on the gun itself and other games have as well, there are countless other ways to give information organically to the player.
There are diegetic elements like that, but also how the non-diegetic HUD delivers information.
When is it giving information? Is it giving me information I don’t actually need at the moment. For example a first person game that always has a compass or minimap. Maybe I want those sometimes, but do I want them always?
What are the visuals of the HUD like? Are they easy to read? Are they distracting? HUDs that have stretched and difficult at a glance fonts are a bad idea to me. Simple fonts that can be read against a variety of background colors are seemingly underdesigned to many UX designers, but it’s all I want sometimes.
Do HUDs have needlessly animated elements? Sometimes just putting a plain and simple number or bar on a screen is enough, but many games add so many artistic flourishes that it gets in the way of the game visuals.
HALO CE had its shield bar with the little health dots underneath. Technically diegetic, but obviously a gameplay element. It wasn’t distracting, it was clean and easy to read, it gave information that was constantly relevant.
I much prefer a compass to a mini-map, for me the mini-map is the worst offender in terms of pulling my attention constantly into one corner of the screen. Halo’s motion sensor was good in that sense too, I’d check it but not constantly.
Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Turning off the HUD makes you look up at the environment to help you plan where to go. You start to remember landscape shapes and areas that way. Plus it’s just nice.
Your hearts and stuff will show up if they need to, but otherwise it’s totally blank. And since pulling up the map is quick it’s really not that jarring to not have it in the corner.
Limbo is amazing. You want engrossing atmosphere? No HUD, no music, no color. Just you and the terrifying, soul-crushing, body-crushing environment.
I tried that game once, got stuck at one point and put it down. I really need to give it a fair chance!
Gotta be honest here.
Immersion has no meaning to me and I don’t understand the obsession.
I never forgot the woman who asked me to look for her husband, I found him, dead, killed by bandits. She was in tears, saying life would never be the same.
Five minutes later I sold her stuff, and she was like “Nice weather today, isn’t it?”.
That killed every immersion at that moment.
It was Skyrim. It has fantastic moments, but there are lots of moments that kill every immersion it built up on a grand scale.
See stuff like that just makes me laugh though.
Like I kinda get what you mean but stuff like physics glitches and weird moments like your described just make me laugh.
Even in a serious situation like a grand epic battle the sight of a deceased character model slowly vibrating before launching into the cosmos is hilarious to me.
Or in your case a widow who’s heartbroken and sobbing then the cutscene ends and she’s just “hi how can I help you today?” in a cheerful tone and I just burst out laughing
Immersion is one aspect, but I also find that artists put so much work into creating great visuals, it almost feels like I’m ignoring the great things to look at by chasing dots on a map. I really just want experiences that help me focus more on the world in front of me.
Immersion is a bit overused and misunderstood.
It maybe works better as “suspension of disbelief”, like in other fiction. You sustain it and you can go very abstract. You break it and things get weird.
This makes more sense to me than the “I believe I’m actually in the game world” definition I’ve been given before
I’m on your side a bit, I mean, I hate getting lost, for me that ain’t immersion, having a HUD or being able to look beyond your usual sight scope is awesome and one of the best features of the videogames which are an escape of our mostly boring life.
With that being said, the other day I was playing BOTW (with HUD) in handheld mode in pitch dark (late night) with my headphones put on and I felt totally immersed more than when I play on my 50 inch TV, IDK, it just helps you to isolate in Hyrule that way I think.
I don’t think it’d be possible to trick me into thinking I’m not playing a video game. You can have 0 UI, and I’ll still know I’m looking at a screen and pushing buttons. Maybe way off in the future when VR has gotten a lot better, sure, probably.
I think it’s less about being “tricked” into believing you aren’t actually playing a game, and more along the lines of having the mindset that you are actually playing as your character. It’s more like the difference between performing tasks, going from A to B, and checking boxes on a list, versus actually feeling like you’re going on an adventure.
That sounds like the same thing. If I actually believe I am actually the character, I have been tricked.
I didn’t say anything about actually believing you are the character. Immersion doesn’t have anything to do with deception and is more about being engrossed or deeply involved with something. You can be immersed in other things too, like a tv show, book, or tabletop game.
Sorry, when you said “have the mindset that you are the character”, that came across to me as believing you are the character. Also, I have been told in the past by people who care about immersion that that is what immersion is, so I’m still trying to grasp what it actually is.
I’m also struggling to see having a UI hurts immersion, especially since, as you say, reading a book is immersion, and a book is all text. I’m wondering, also, if maybe different people mean different things when they talk about immersion.
What is or isn’t immersive is subjective, for sure. As far as a UI goes, some people may think that having a UI with too many elements or taking up too much space can detract from actually experiencing the game and its environments.
VR is decent enough that you can get lost in the game as is. Even if momentarily, like trying to kick the ball while playing ping pong and it falls near you
