Cartography for strategic gaming - Play Of Battle Systemic War
For this project, I worked as a UI Designer on Play of Battle, a video game in the tradition of grand strategy and RTS titles inspired by studios like Paradox Interactive. My role moved beyond traditional interface panels and focused on the cartography of the game world: designing how maps communicate complex systems of economy, war, and geopolitics.
The task was to create clear and visually consistent map elements:
Borders and names of nations
Railway and road connections
Economic dependencies and flows of goods
Military logistics and troop movements
Zones of conflict, contested areas, and shifting frontlines
This work required balancing aesthetic clarity with strategic readability, ensuring that players could instantly understand the global situation. My approach was closer to that of a cartographer, designing symbols, markers, and visual hierarchies that explain what is happening on the map in the context of a systemic war simulation.
Map proposal. At this stage, it's more of a concept art.
The idea for presenting the map has been accepted. Now comes the more difficult task. Check whether we are able to present the functionalities designed by the designers on the map.
The map should not only look cool, but above all clearly convey information typical for a large strategy game.
It is necessary to propose visual forms for national borders. Consider how they should look after selecting a country, how much information we want to show on a given layer, and at what zoom level which information must be visible.
These proposals are created so that the best map for a grand strategy game can ultimately be selected.
Throughout the entire process focused on UX and UI, there is an ongoing discussion about the style of the map and its colors.
Map In such a complex strategy game, it is necessary to constantly consider which information is truly essential. Too much information on the map makes it illegible.
Creating maps for a strategy game is an interdisciplinary task. It requires the knowledge of a designer, UX designer, UI artist, and concept artist.
When working on such a project, you can learn a lot about cartography, which is why this work can be described as UI cartography.
There are several maps in the game. We have the Grand Strategy map, the RTS map, and there is also a mini map.
Each map allows you to zoom in and zoom out. At each zoom level, we can see something different. In addition, we have layers that we can switch between. Together with countless mechanics, this creates countless possibilities for displaying information.
The mockups presented here were created during the development of the game and do not necessarily reflect what the game will ultimately look like. The game is still in development and the direction it will take is likely to change.