FORZA HORIZON 4

Playground Games / 2016 – 2021

On Forza Horizon 4, I worked with Playground Games’ UI Art team, collaborating on the UI Style and UX for the project. I also steered the concept and implementation of UI & UX for live content post release on Forza Horizon 4, adapting to working on a game which operated as a service and ensuring new features shipped at high quality. In particular my 3 biggest contributions to the game where the Festival Playlist, Super7, and Horizon Backstage.

Festival Playlist

The Festival Playlist was designed to be the driving force for players during the game’s live service: a constantly revolving series of events and challenges, updated weekly, to bring players back for new rewards and gameplay. Two things were incredibly important for this feature: showcasing a wealth of content, and offering a deep feeling of satisfaction upon completion. One of the areas I had contributed to the most on the Forza Horizon franchise was establishing a unique, consistent voice for in-game imagery within our UI (and eventually in social media assets for the game), and we leveraged this here to communicate core information via images. With a single, well composited image, we could show off:

1. The reward players will win
2. The type of vehicle players will be expected to use for the challenge
3. The weather conditions the event takes place in
4. Specific gameplay the player may be required to engage in

Super 7

The Horizon Super7 was considered the last “major” feature for Forza Horizon 4 – comparable to an full DLC expansion. The core idea was to leverage UGC content, and random gameplay mechanics, to create an endlessly replayable game mode where drivers bet on their skills to complete 7 player created challenges. I was responsible for the full visual presentation of the feature: including graphic design for the feature branding, UI design, and images used to market the feature.

The feature branding was heavily informed and inspired by social media and sharing platforms like Twitch, Youtube and Tiktok. TikTok especially was a huge inspiration for the feature’s small form logo and colour palette. The feature logo was designed to not only be a striking visual identifier alone, but also to offer a unique shape that stood out in the game’s many UI areas. As with many features in Forza Horizon, The Super7 had a physical start location on the game’s map, so the logo had to have a unique shape to stand proud in the existing map icon language.

Horizon Backstage

The final feature I worked on for Forza Horizon 4 was the Horizon Backstage. By the time the Horizon Backstage first appeared, the game had been live for 2 and a half years, and many of the game’s rarest cars were nearly impossible to earn. Backstage gave players a chance to win “Backstage Passes” – which plugged into the game’s existing challenge system as a reward – to be spent on these rare vehicles.

My role on the feature was to design the feature branding, the store UI, and the “voting” UI: a weekly player vote screen where the community would collectively decide which rare car should be added to the Backstage store next. For the feature brand, I leant into luxury brands such as Gucci, Prada, Louis Vitton and Cartier: Alluding to rare gems, and an additional level of quality on top of metals such as Gold or Platinum, iridescent materials were used heavily within the feature branding. Topping this all off was a tactile, quietly confident repeating square pattern, building on and expanding the Horizon Festival logo. The festival logo, originally designed by Principal UI Artist Richard Evans, was already elegant and bold in it’s presentation, making it a great foundation for the direction the Backstage brand required.