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splitgate: arena reloaded
1047 games (2025) • UIUX director
FPS Arena Shooter & Battle Royale
SPLITGATE: Arena Reloaded delivers classic arena combat and a reimagined battle royale in one free-to-play experience. Jump into fast-paced arena modes or drop into Arena Royale, built for less looting and more shooting.
nifty starfish
tl;dr
uiux direction • uiux design • ui art • ui tech art
Splitgate: Arena reloaded involved a full uiux redesign to support a newly imagined splitgate successor that removes factioned gameplay, creates a self-serious tone, and reimagines the player experience within a 7-month dev cycle.
as director and the principal ux designer, my work spanned hands-on uiux design, art development, and tech art across all surface areas of the game. This work inlcluded but was not limited to: hud ui, gameplay experience, rewards experience, play menus, customization menus, social menus, mtx experiences, map creator experience, and more.
in addition, as uiux director I managed, grew, and mentored a team of UX Designers, UI Artists, UI Tech Artists, and UI Engineers across Splitgate 2, Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, and Traction. in this work, the team delivered a world-class, cohesive UIUX product beloved by the splitgate:arena reloaded playerbase that multiplied engagement success, engagement period length, and day over day player retention as evidenced by KPI tracking across variant data slices.
the following pieces demonstrate a cross-section of this design work. please reach out to me directly if there are any features not showcased below that you'd like to learn more about or see design samples of.
play menus
splitgate: arena reloaded focused heavily on stripping back intrusive, hyper-visible ui in favor of an almost dark-mode, high-contrast approach that fit within the existing color palette while emphasizing a distinctly self-serious, aspirational tone. on the player menus in particular, the desing focuses on melding into the background where possible to better spotlight the aspiration of elite competitors in motion. in areas where communication, rather than aspiration, is at the forefront, the ui occupies space boldly and intentionally, owning it's role in the screen's composition and tone. within the play screens, the ui presents the player with next items to chase, and next rewards to be excited about, rather than inundating the player with every opportunity available. in this way, the ui conceals and reveals complexity according to the player's goals, allowing the player to dig deeper into areas of interest instead of presenting all information at the top level where it degrades the opportunities to present aspiration.
moving to factionless weapons
Moving away from a faction based game that splitgate 2 had brought forth required heavily adjusting the nesting and ux of weapon customization, loadout building, and weapon progression. Without factions to anchor the importance, strength, and roles of a weapon, the weapons themselves needed to carry their own identities and weight. bringing the weapons forward in these screens as the hero of the composition helped to develop a distinct identity and character for each. in addition, the ui panels themselves follow a material design inspired motion, sliding elements in and out of focus to give the player a stronger sense of position within the nested menu layer stack, allowing us to provide depth while concealing complexity that caused overwhelm in the splitgate 2 loadout and progression systems.
factionless customization
in the splitgate 2 launch, faction based customization put factions, rather than player choice and identity, at the forefront of the player's experience. in arena reloaded, the uiux design refocuses on the player's physical identity as the hero of the composition, positioning ui as a toolset of tuning around the character. in these menu experiences we want the player to have quick and seamlessly smooth movement into and out of layers of customization, especially when new items are unlocked, without minimizing the physical footprint of the character themself. In this area, we want the player to feel deeply connected to their physical representation.
career
The career feature, including challenges, weapon progression, player stats, and account level progression, represents one of several features unique to arena reloaded in the splitgate universe. these new features give players new and exciting avenues to progress, gain momentum, unlock rewards, and live out the aspiration of an elite athlete in the splitgate world.
player stats
player stats, a subsection of the careers feature, provides players with access to their unique representation of extensive and gameplay-relevant stats. this data can be viewed cumulatively, or split by mode, season, ranked/unranked, etc. importantly, this feature's ux is aimed at broad accessibility so that there are points of interest, representations of skill, and a sense of progression for all play styles. while skill curve stats like kda have a home here, so too do alternate playstyle styles like allies revived, or portal-centric skills, so as to celebrate a broad range of players and experiences.
live leaderboards
Live leaderboards, similar to player stats, provide a new and juicy way for players to compare and compete on skill trees. Originally launched for ranked only, these leaderboards were later expanded to allow players to compare leaderboards within other contexts including the beloved splitgate mode, races, where players demonstrate prowess in movement skill.
battlepass
the battlepass for arena reloaded involved returning to a simplified pass system in the traditional, linear style with additional opportunities for awards through an ultra pass upgrade and epilogue pass. unlike the older splitgate pass where a season was broken into small, individually purchasable chunks, this pass focuses on interaction simplicity and maximizing reward balance. notably, this pass returns to an auto-redemption reward format, where a pass-specific xp earned from challenges and in-game actions contributes to award leveling. this auto redemption meant less management of items for players and more immediate, as-it-happens reward celebration in post-match sequences. It also removes a manual-redemption cycle players in splitgate 2 experienced where rewards needed to be manually claimed from the challenges screen. this older structure had contributed to missed xp and missed rewards, a ux friction this design is hyper sensitive to addressing and preventing.
social & refer a friend
the arena reloaded social menu received a refreshing cleanup that maintained ux consistency to prevent unnecessary confusion while addressing some areas of high friction from splitgate 2. friend interactions, searching, and navigation are updated to better support scaling friends lists, gamepad interactions, and general state clarity. in addition, the menu and experience is expanded to support an in-game refer a friend system that includes recruiter and recruitee awards, progression challenges, and seasonal refreshes. this refer a friend system was specifically targeted at player retention and virality support, and the launch of the feature quantifiably contributed toward an increase in player-to-player engagement spreading as well as day over day retention.
in-game hud
in-game hud work spanned all areas of the hud, gamemodes, and pre to post match flows. it includes the addition of support for new experiences, like the choose your world prematch or the cash stash game mode, or the return of beloved the races, on top of a general redesign and refresh. these new experiences introduced additional hud systems, including an inventory/buy menu redesign as well as a complex banner display system to better address information architecture and overwhelm on the hud in both arena and battle royale sectors.
post match & reward ui
splitgate: arena reloaded's post match experience deviates significantly from that of splitgate 2. here, the player moves through a complex sequence of challenge completion and reward countup screens for the various splices of player progression. starting with an mvp of the game showcase, the player moves through various reward and rank up / level up displays, before settling on the final podium where the ui summarizes reward progress, makes suggestions for next challenges to complete, and offers up a play again loop.
game mode ui
game mode ui and gameplay experience design was an ongoing effort running concurrently with all other sectors of uiux as the gameplay and creative direction teams iterated, experimented, and honed the gameplay loop goals for each mode. this design work often involved a blend of re-using existing arena reloaded ui and expanding to include new systems. for example, using the existing hardpoint indicators, and expanding them to include complex visuals for cash stash banking counters, or expanding the previously mentioned simple banner system into a more heavily architected system that could support complex information communication without causing overwhelm or priority confusion.
events & daily login rewards
an important new feature for arena reloaded to drive engagement and day over day retention was the expansion of the events system to include a daily login reward system. daily login rewards involved a unique event architecture with a forgiving redemption system that provided catch-up mechanics for players who had either joined a sub-season late or had experienced an away period during a season. additionally, this system, combined with the post-match roundup changes and the refer a friend system, required the introduction of offline reward redemption architecture to capture and celebrate when the player is granted a new reward(s) while they are not in-game, whether it be because the reward is granted while they are offline or due to a fatal crash that caused the player's end of match rewards to unlock while the player was in an offline state.
beloved, truly
While the whole team was excited about the direction and evolution of the ui and ux for splitgate: arena reloaded as it compared to either splitgate or splitgate 2, we did not expect this work to be so extrovertedly beloved by the community. one of the most special and rewarding parts of this design cycle was seeing the unprompted player reactions to the work, some of which are captured below and illustrate how effective this 7-month project was in taking a strong gameplay base and elevating it through uiux iteration, honing, and vision.
trailers
1047 games (2025) • UIUX director
SPLITGATE: Arena Reloaded delivers classic arena combat and a reimagined battle royale in one free-to-play experience. Jump into fast-paced arena modes or drop into Arena Royale, built for less looting and more shooting.
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