UI & Information Design
What a game hides from the player is usually the finding. Highwater hides an unusual amount, and almost none of it looks deliberate.
The verified complaints
| Element | Problem | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Sailing HUD | A small white compass ring with a barely visible dot; several reviewers did not notice it existed | Nintendojo |
| Objective dots | Cleared locations reportedly keep their markers, so the player cannot distinguish done from pending | Player feedback (Netflix build) |
| Combat action menu | "Finnicky, small, lacking in colour", white-on-black, cramped for turn-based play | Xbox Tavern |
| Grid affordance | Red squares on the movement grid read as forbidden; they are in fact attack-range tiles | Forbes |
| Inventory | No button prompts on console — a direct artefact of the touch original | Games Asylum |
| Animation skip | Fast-forward exists on a face button but is never stated anywhere | Games Asylum |
| Equipment rules | Weapon restrictions per character are enforced but never explained (Equipment & Boosters) | TheGamer |
| Collectibles | No completion tracking, despite four collect-them-all achievements | Metacritic-aggregated review |
| Tutorial | "Very hands-off"; the first battle teaches by omission | Hardcore iOS |
Reading the pattern
Three distinct causes are tangled together here, and separating them matters:
- Aesthetic minimalism applied to functional elements. The art direction is deliberately spare and flat-shaded; the HUD inherited that language without the compensating step of asking what a HUD must communicate regardless of style. A compass ring that matches the art but cannot be found is a style win and a usability loss.
- Untranslated touch idioms. Tap-targets and drag-lists become invisible affordances on a controller. The inventory with no button prompts is the clearest case — the console version arrived a year after the Netflix release and was ported by an external partner (Production & Reception).
- Under-signalled rules. Range tiles, equip restrictions and animation skip are all rules the game has and never states. This is the costly category: it makes a deterministic system feel arbitrary, which undoes the main benefit of removing hit chance (Combat).
Determinism needs disclosure
A no-miss tactics game promises the player a solvable board. That promise only pays if every rule is visible — a hidden restriction in a deterministic system is worse than a hidden roll in a probabilistic one, because the player has been invited to plan exactly and then punished for information they could not have. Highwater's UI is where its best combat decision leaks value.
What breaks if you remove it
Nothing here is a system; it is a communication layer. Fixing it (labelled range tiles, an equip-reason tooltip, a collectible tracker, dots that clear) would cost little and would neutralise a visible share of the mixed-to-average review consensus without touching a single mechanic.
Related
Combat · Equipment & Boosters · Player Journey · Boat & Navigation