Hey everyone!

Quick but meaningful update this time. I’ve been gifted something absolutely game-changing: a second screen! 🖥️💻
A huge shout-out to my incredibly generous colleague who surprised me with it — you know who you are. You’ve no idea how much easier this makes everything from streaming, level design to coding, and especially… well… UI wrangling.

🧩 UI Still Baffles Me

Now that I’ve got a full view of both the Unity editor and the game itself, you’d think UI would be a breeze, right?

Nope.

UI still baffles me.

Making menus and settings screens that behave nicely is already tricky. But making them work for everyone — including players who can’t see them at all — brings an entirely new layer of complexity I didn’t anticipate when I first dreamed up Gaia.

🎮 Accessibility: Keyboard-Navigable UI

I want Gaia to be a game that everyone can play. That means screen reader support, proper focus order for keyboard navigation, and audio feedback for things that normally only exist visually. Which is easy to write in a devlog, but it’s a whole other beast to actually implement.

Simple example: buttons.

A normal player might click or tap them. But someone using only a keyboard? They have to be tabbable, properly highlighted, and then actually triggerable by Enter or Space or other keys. And Unity’s UI system doesn’t make that seamless. Throw in localization, different resolutions, and screen readers that don’t always behave nicely with Unity… and it becomes a rabbit hole deeper than the Underworld.

I now understand why entire teams exist just for UI and accessibility.

💡 What’s Working So Far

I’ve started implementing a system where players can navigate menus using just the keyboard or a controller, with clear audio cues for which item is currently “in focus.” It’s still rough, but it’s starting to work. And honestly? That’s super motivating.

The second screen has been a huge help here. I can now have Unity’s Inspector and Scene view on one screen, and playtest fullscreen on the other without constantly tabbing like a mad wizard casting Alt+Tab every few seconds.

🛠 What’s Next

Next step: making sure sliders, dropdowns, and other complex UI elements are fully accessible. I also want to start experimenting with narration for the menus. That’s new territory for me, but if I’ve learned anything from working on Gaia, it’s that “impossible” just means “I haven’t figured it out yet.”

❤️ Thank You

To everyone following the development of Gaia: thank you. Your kind words, encouragement, and feedback mean the world to me. And to my colleague who made this dual-screen setup a reality: I owe you more coffee than is medically advisable.

Until next time —
Max from Dragonspirit Games