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In Bloom

UX Case Study

CLIENT

School Project

SERVICE

UX/UI

YEAR

2025

TIME

7 weeks

Introduction

In Bloom is a student project that was made during Future Games course “Game Project #3” as part of the curriculum.

In this case study I will show my contribution to the project, and how I worked with user research, playtesting and every step of the design process with the UI and HUD.

In Bloom is a student project that was made during Future Games course “Game Project #3” as part of the curriculum.

In this case study I will show my contribution to the project, and how I worked with user research and every step of the design process with the UI and HUD

In Bloom is a student project that was made during Future Games course “Game Project #3” as part of the curriculum.

In this case study I will show my contribution to the project, and how I worked with user research and every step of the design process with the UI and HUD

Product Overview

Product
Overview

In Bloom is a survival-horror game developed under the school’s "environment" theme. Unlike most games where lush nature signals safety, we inverted this expectation, creating a world where vibrant flora is sentient, hostile, and consuming life into a hivemind.

Built in first-person with realistic graphics, the game delivers an eerie atmosphere while emphasizing dread and vulnerability. In bloom also has limited ammunition that reinforces tension, requiring players to carefully consider each encounter, echoing the resource scarcity that is central to survival-horror.

In Bloom is a survival-horror game developed under the school’s environment theme. Unlike most games where lush nature signals safety, we inverted this expectation, creating a world where vibrant flora is sentient, hostile, and consuming life into a hivemind.

Built in first-person with realistic graphics, the game delivers an eerie atmosphere while emphasizing dread and vulnerability. In bloom also has limited ammunition that reinforces tension, requiring players to carefully consider each encounter, echoing the resource scarcity that is central to survival-horror.

In Bloom is a survival-horror game developed under the school’s environment theme. Unlike most games where lush nature signals safety, we inverted this expectation, creating a world where vibrant flora is sentient, hostile, and consuming life into a hivemind.

Built in first-person with realistic graphics, the game delivers an eerie atmosphere while emphasizing dread and vulnerability. In bloom also has limited ammunition that reinforces tension, requiring players to carefully consider each encounter, echoing the resource scarcity that is central to survival-horror.

Goals

The goal I had while working with In Bloom was to design create UI and HUD systems that both reinforced the game’s tone and ensured usability, but that also were align with the games atmospheric and uncanny horror experience theme. This included creating tutorial prompts and ingame prompts that guided players smoothly through the gameplay, supporting clarity and immersion without breaking the intended mood.

Challenges

Problems &
Challenges

Throughout the project me a UX designer had to navigate several challenges, many of which me my UX-colleague had anticipated early on. To stay aligned, we regularly discussed potential issues in advance and prepared solutions where possible. A key learning was the importance of remaining flexible and willing to adapt, which often meant letting go of ideas to serve the project’s broader goals. While communication dynamics required us to rely on intuition at times, we consistently grounded our design decisions in validated user insights. Despite the complexities, our vision stayed clear: to deliver a user-centric experience that reflected the needs of our target audience.

Researching the Market

Researching
the Market

The first thing I did was to research what other survival horror games there was on the market, to find games that had similar key features of what we had in mind for our concept, and that could be used in a competitor evaluation.
I ended up evaluation three games in our competitor evaluation. This was a great start for this project. The amount of data and takeaways helped me to lay a solid foundation to work from.
The games that met In Bloom's concept was Resident Evil VII, Maid of Skeer and Doom 3. All of them had focus on immersing the player in a haunting atmosphere and had a satisfying usage of forearms.
Some of the gathered valuable insights was:


UI/HUD

Minimal and clean, showing information only when necessary and aligned with the game’s atmosphere.




Prompts

Clear, consistent prompts to guide players with key items and functions.




Feedback

Impactful responses to player actions, with the gun designed to feel both rewarding and vital.


Visual Cues

Use leading lines and vistas to guide players toward goals, and distinguish pick-ups with clear visual hints.




Audio Cues

Rely on sound to set the mood and use spatial 3D audio to direct players to key functions.




Atmosphere

Emphasize audio for greater impact in horror, while journals and radio dialogues subtly expand the story and enhance the uncanny tone.

The first thing we did was to research what other survival horror games there was on the market, to find games that had similar key features of what we had in mind for our concept. And that we could use in a competitor evaluation.
We ended up evaluation three games in our competitor evaluation. This was a great start for this project. The amount of data and takeaways helped us to lay a solid foundation to work from.
The games that met our concept was Resident Evil VII, Maid of Skeer and Doom 3. All of them had focus on immersing the player in a haunting atmosphere and had a satisfying usage of forearms.
Some of the valuable insights we gathered was:


UI/HUD

Minimal and clean, showing information only when necessary and aligned with the game’s atmosphere.




Prompts

Clear, consistent prompts to guide players with key items and functions.




Feedback

Impactful responses to player actions, with the gun designed to feel both rewarding and vital.


Visual Cues

Use leading lines and vistas to guide players toward goals, and distinguish pick-ups with clear visual hints.




Audio Cues

Rely on sound to set the mood and use spatial 3D audio to direct players to key functions.




Atmosphere

Emphasize audio for greater impact in horror, while journals and radio dialogues subtly expand the story and enhance the uncanny tone.




The first thing we did was to research what other survival horror games there was on the market, to find games that had similar key features of what we had in mind for our concept. And that we could use in a competitor evaluation.
We ended up evaluation three games in our competitor evaluation. This was a great start for this project. The amount of data and takeaways helped us to lay a solid foundation to work from.
The games that met our concept was Resident Evil VII, Maid of Skeer and Doom 3. All of them had focus on immersing the player in a haunting atmosphere and had a satisfying usage of forearms.
Some of the valuable insights we gathered was:


UI/HUD

Minimal and clean, showing information only when necessary and aligned with the game’s atmosphere.




Prompts

Clear, consistent prompts to guide players with key items and functions.




Feedback

Impactful responses to player actions, with the gun designed to feel both rewarding and vital.

By combining our concept with the insights gained from competitor evaluations, I were able to clearly define our target audience. From the start, we had a strong sense of who we were designing for and the type of players we wanted to attract as our primary users.

The Design process

The Design
process

Menus

The first thing I designed was the game’s menus, focusing on a minimalistic style to reinforce the survival horror mood. Starting with user flows and competitor research, I sketched, wireframed, and tested different layouts before finalizing the design. I chose left-aligned menu options for consistency and to highlight the atmospheric background.

The final design featured smooth transitions, text-based buttons with hover effects, and clear readability adjustments. I implemented these designs in Unreal Engine using Widget Blueprints, while collaborating with a programmer for functionality. Other menus such as pause, options, and game over followed the same principles.

HUD

HUD

Ammo Counter

Most of the design and the functions regarding the ammo counter is backed and based on the previous competitor evaluation where key points and insights were extracted. Sticking to one of our core principles of never causing any unnecessary confusion for the player, having the ammo counter follow a familiar standard that is more than often seen in this genre proved to help the player in handling the game as expected.

  • Match the inventory minimalistic style

  • Color changed by high/low ammo as a visual aid

  • Expected standard placement in the genre

  • Fading in & out when necessary for the player

  • Easier to remember ammo count due to being dynamic


Ammo Counter

Most of the design and the functions regarding the ammo counter is backed and based on the previous competitor evaluation where key points and insights were extracted. Sticking to one of our core principles of never causing any unnecessary confusion for the player, having the ammo counter follow a familiar standard that is more than often seen in this genre proved to help the player in handling the game as expected.

  • Match the inventory minimalistic style

  • Color changed by high/low ammo as a visual aid

  • Expected standard placement in the genre

  • Fading in & out when necessary for the player

  • Easier to remember ammo count due to being dynamic


Inventory

The whole inventory section was something that was never originally planned for initially, but had to be designed and implemented due to development taking a different direction. I were able to come up with some solutions that would make the Inventory slot fit in. The solutions I recommended were:

  • Same minimalistic style as the ammo counter

  • Fades in and out with the ammo counter

  • Curated to the maximum items at the same time


Due to time constraint the inventory system were close to be left out. And that would result in having no inventory screen or information regarding key-items. Leaving the player to remember all by themselves. This was a big No from me and my UX-colleague, so we heavily pushed iterations to the team in how to display and give the information for the player regarding key-items. Lifting up the positive impact it would have for the user experience.

Icons

The icons that are used in the game is very much like the inventory slot, not something that we initially planned for.
We struggled a bit with them since there where no information or decision to how many or what kind of items it was going to be, making our job designing them stagger.


We knew that there were gonna be some kind of key so we started with that icon, making it minimalistic and fit the rest of the ammo and inventory visuals.
Doing the rest when information came available, we prepped our coming work by looking up inspo on iconography that would match our established visual identity and started on mock-ups, thus making it easier once said information was available

Learning the Player

Prompt

Learning the
Player

Prompt

The pick-up prompts in the game went through several iterations, with different kinds of shapes and indications, but all of them aligning into the same identity. Final result ending up into a merge of the different variations. This look is not only visaully appealing but also a clear indication on what can be interacted with and where said event is in the world space. On pick-ups, the prompt is also accompanied with a light glow to highlight it’s presence.

Damage vignette

The damage vignette idea came alive as soon as we pitched our concept of the world where vibrant flora is sentient, hostile, and consuming life itself. The idea was to have flora or branches slowly growing into the screen from the sides when the player took damaged, instead of the regular blood vignette you often see in horror games.

The vignette had some iterations to go through to find a design that aligned with our games visual identity.
The designs where first done in Canva to get a feeling ot how it would work, then later made in unreal engine with assets we used in the game.

One wish was to make it “grow” in to the screen, but due to our teams different experience we had to settle with the vignette as a fade in by damage instance the player took instead, acting as a compromise to get the vignette to function.

Usertesting

We had the opportunity to conduct a proper usertesting of our game in between the alpha and beta sprint. At that moment it gave us the chance to test out the functions, understandability and formed out hypothesises at a more raw prototype stage which gave us a fair window for us to take the time afterwards to work with iterations and improvements. The users were curated to fit our target audience.


Method
We used the silent observer method, observed the user taking notes on how they navigated the game and everything they did and say while playing.

  • Observation

  • Interview questions


The goal we set up for the users were clear and simple, go through start to finish from what is available, from point A to point B. We as observers set up some hypotheses that we wanted to test and see how the users handled the game and it’s certain aspects, if it would validate or challenge our design. Some of the more meaningful hypotheses are:

  • The games sections are easy to navigate, and the player doesn’t get lost, giving the player a good flow and sense of direction.

  • The amount of ammo available to the player is good and reasonable, not giving too much so they feel overpowered.

  • The pacing of the game feels right and no sections drag on for too long so that the player doesn’t feel bored.


We had the opportunity to conduct a proper usertesting of our game in between the alpha and beta sprint. At that moment it gave us the chance to test out the functions, understandability and formed out hypothesises at a more raw prototype stage which gave us a fair window for us to take the time afterwards to work with iterations and improvements. The users were curated to fit our target audience.


Method
We used the silent observer method, observed the user taking notes on how they navigated the game and everything they did and say while playing.

  • Observation

  • Interview questions


The goal we set up for the users were clear and simple, go through start to finish from what is available, from point A to point B. We as observers set up some hypotheses that we wanted to test and see how the users handled the game and it’s certain aspects, if it would validate or challenge our design. Some of the more meaningful hypotheses are:


  • The games sections are easy to navigate, and the player doesn’t get lost, giving the player a good flow and sense of direction.

  • The amount of ammo available to the player is good and reasonable, not giving too much so they feel overpowered.

  • The pacing of the game feels right and no sections drag on for too long so that the player doesn’t feel bored.


We had the opportunity to conduct a proper usertesting of our game in between the alpha and beta sprint. At that moment it gave us the chance to test out the functions, understandability and formed out hypothesises at a more raw prototype stage which gave us a fair window for us to take the time afterwards to work with iterations and improvements. The users were curated to fit our target audience.


Method
We used the silent observer method, observed the user taking notes on how they navigated the game and everything they did and say while playing.

  • Observation

  • Interview questions


The goal we set up for the users were clear and simple, go through start to finish from what is available, from point A to point B. We as observers set up some hypotheses that we wanted to test and see how the users handled the game and it’s certain aspects, if it would validate or challenge our design. Some of the more meaningful hypotheses are:

  • The games sections are easy to navigate, and the player doesn’t get lost, giving the player a good flow and sense of direction.

  • The amount of ammo available to the player is good and reasonable, not giving too much so they feel overpowered.

  • The pacing of the game feels right and no sections drag on for too long so that the player doesn’t feel bored.


Hypotheses
The games sections are easy to navigate, and the player doesn’t get lost, giving the player a good flow and sense of direction.

  • The amount of ammo available to the player is good and reasonable, not giving too much so they feel overpowered.

  • The pacing of the game feels right and no sections drag on for too long so that the player doesn’t feel bored.


Hypotheses
The games sections are easy to navigate, and the player doesn’t get lost, giving the player a good flow and sense of direction.


  • The amount of ammo available to the player is good and reasonable, not giving too much so they feel overpowered.

  • The pacing of the game feels right and no sections drag on for too long so that the player doesn’t feel bored.


Interview & quotes

After the observations we had a short interview with the testers afterwards.

What follows are some examples of the interview questions and quotes that left a meaningful impact with us:


“The interactions and pick-ups itselves needs to give more of an impact and more feedback to the player.”


“I got the feeling that I’m in a place I don’t belong in and I didn’t feel welcomed, which is good for a horror game.”

Interview & quotes

After the observations we had a short interview with the testers afterwards.

What follows are some examples of the interview questions and quotes that left a meaningful impact with us:


“The interactions and pick-ups itselves needs to give more of an impact and more feedback to the player.”


“I got the feeling that I’m in a place I don’t belong in and I didn’t feel welcomed, which is good for a horror game.”

Result, organize & improve
Our usertesting session yielded us a lot of valuable data and insights, every user gave us not only correlated data that matched between each user but also each one of them gave us unique insights and valuable information from observing them and from the interviews.




This gave us a lot of information that needed to be indexed and categorised so that we could actually work with the data that we got. How we did that was to break down the data into sections and then find correlations between each section. From there we could easily categorize and name each section, not only making our work easier but also making the future handover and presentation for the rest of the team easily digested and understandable.




With all the relevant data condensed and categorized, it was easy to spot the most critical parts of the game that needed to be improved so that we could deliver the best possible experience for our players. And those parts could be named into five topics:


  • Navigation

  • 

Gun mechanic

  • 

Enemies

  • Area sizes



  • Understanding




The best approach for delivering this information to the team was to present it in a shortened down, condensed format, highlighting the most impactful and valuable information. While also providing the full, in-depth document for those who wanted to go deeper into the usertesting.

Result, organize & improve
Our usertesting session yielded us a lot of valuable data and insights, all ranging from plain information presented to the player such as Menus and feedback to the level design and enemies in itself. Every user gave us not only correlated data that matched between each user but also each one of them gave us unique insights and valuable information from observing them and from the interviews.




This gave us a lot of information that needed to be indexed and categorised so that we could actually work with the data that we got. How we did that was to break down the data into sections and then find correlations between each section. From there we could easily categorize and name each section, not only making our work easier but also making the future handover and presentation for the rest of the team easily digested and understandable.




With all the relevant data condensed and categorized, we could easily spot the most critical parts of the game that needed to be improved so that we could deliver the best possible experience for our players. And those parts could be named into five topics:


  • Navigation

  • Gun mechanic

  • Enemies

  • Area sizes



  • Understanding


The best approach for us to deliver this information to our team was to present it in a shortened down, condensed format, highlighting the most impactful and valuable information. While also providing the full, in-depth document for those who wanted to go deeper into our work.

Analysis & Learnings

Analysis &
Learnings

Conclusion
Every project brings its own challenges, and I learned how important it is to stay grounded in core UX principles, delivering the best possible player experience. For In Bloom, this mindset helped me navigate changes and maintain clarity throughout the design process. I also learned that game projects often evolve in unexpected ways, and being prepared to adapt while relying on user insights and data ensures that design choices remain informed and user-focused.

Key Learnings

  • Communication & Clarity

    • I learned that setting expectations early and explaining my role clearly makes collaboration smoother.

    • Documenting, updating, and sharing information in one place keeps everyone aligned and prevents confusion.

    • Over communicating often works better than under communicating when clarity is critical.

  • Flexibility & Adaptability

    • I learned the value of quickly shifting focus when priorities change.

    • Letting go of ideas (“killing your darlings”) can open the door for stronger solutions.

    • Staying adaptable to evolving concepts is easier when keeping the user’s experience at the center of every decision.


Conclusion
Every project brings its own challenges, and I learned how important it is to stay grounded in core UX principles, delivering the best possible player experience. For In Bloom, this mindset helped me navigate changes and maintain clarity throughout the design process. I also learned that game projects often evolve in unexpected ways, and being prepared to adapt while relying on user insights and data ensures that design choices remain informed and user-focused.


Key Learnings:

Communication & Clarity
  • I learned that setting expectations early and explaining my role clearly makes collaboration smoother.
  • Documenting, updating, and sharing information in one place keeps everyone aligned and prevents confusion.
  • Over communicating often works better than under communicating when clarity is critical.

    Flexibility & Adaptability
    • I learned the value of quickly shifting focus when priorities change.
    • Letting go of ideas (“killing your darlings”) can open the door for stronger solutions.
    • Staying adaptable to evolving concepts is easier when keeping the user’s experience at the center of every decision.


© 2025 JB

Josefinberntsson91@gmail.com

© 2025 JB

Josefinberntsson91@gmail.com

© 2025 JB

Josefinberntsson91@gmail.com