Micade.com Free Design Review
Micade.com is a flash game arcade site with forums and extra features to go along with your games. To have a similarly done review of your own site, don’t hesitate to contact me. Make sure you include some basic information about yourself and your site.
The Design
The first impression here is obvious. There is way too much blue no matter how you slice it. Even the third party bystander sitting beside me said the initial impression is “too much blue.” Even with a site where the main focus is flash games, using too much of one colour can distract the users’ eye.
Stark blueness aside, there are some possible structure issues and some things that may not be apparent to your everyday flash gamer, but from a designer’s perspective come out the dance in the blue moonlight (had to get one last blue comment in there). The myriad of colours portrayed across the site seem to be odd choices, and the left sidebar draws the eye to your ads instead of the content.
That’s either good or bad, depending on who you are 
Use Of Rich Colour
Using a colour of a deep saturation reduces readability and ability to navigate when used a main background. Or, in more simple terms, it can cause reader ADD. In the next iteration of your site I would make sure there is least some white space, so that there is focus. Just from looking around I can see there’s a couple of blues, pink, green, silver and yellow. Too much colour doesn’t have to be a bad thing but when it’s used with such persistence it can be distracting.
Usually when you see such a medley of colours it’s on a white background with pastels or on a dark background used as highlights. Any other way lacks the sort of balance needed in a website design.
Attention to Detail
The thing that can really make a design are the details. The site is very complete and all features seem to have had some time committed to them.Though you do use tables, this allows for a very structured design and keeps a nice grid in place. I’ve noticed the progress has been halted on the next version, but make sure you keep that consistency throughout the design.
Having that kind of quality through every element is a great aspect in the design.
Final Points
I’m sure you’ve been aware of these things for a while now. As far as I know, the next version has been pending for a long time and has been rethought many times. Hey, that sounds like a familiar site of poor quality
Jokes aside, in your new design, I would go one of two ways: The simple, content focussed design, or the graphically heavy, impressive design. The latter will likely bring more traffic/ad revenue, but it’s all up to you. If you can get some good imagery in there it would help, too. This isn’t to say every flash game site out there does this. Many of the popular ones have simple designs.
Leave a comment
Razor
February 24th, 2008 at 2:58 PM
“Yo listen up here’s a story
About a little guy that lives in a blue world
And all day and all night and everything he sees
Is just blue like him inside and outside”
Its not that blue is it?
Anywhoo cheers for the review. The main reason the next version was halted is because of the design. I keep trying to make a perfect design but cannot :S
O and conner, remember that design on TT i posted quite a few months back? The very graphic heavy one.. what did you think of it?
I got a cool logo in the making though
Connor Wilson
February 27th, 2008 at 5:39 PM
About the blue- yeah it’s too blue.
I don’t know if there’s a reader named Conner, but if you’re referring to me (Connor), I think I might remember what you’re referring too, but to my memory it wasn’t great.
Razor
February 28th, 2008 at 2:40 PM
lol sorry connor, i type phonetically when i dont know how to spell something.
Vembl
May 21st, 2008 at 4:49 PM
I agree with the fact that free online game website design is important. However, in my opinion good content is even more important. If you have a nice design and no or very little unique content visitors will not find your website very interesting and will not come back again.
A graphic designer
July 13th, 2008 at 10:56 PM
A buddy of mine writes Flash games that are really good. He should contribute some stuff to that site.
Login »