The March of Giants interface is built around the map rather than around a character sheet. The main screen carries a minimap with objective timers at the top, an ability bar for your Giant, and item slots on your Warshell, and the developers walked through all of it during the official Pioneer Playtest broadcast. Ubisoft has also confirmed that the UI was reworked after Closed Alpha.
What the developers said about the UI
Ubisoft's vision post lists UI among the areas that received work after the Closed Alpha. It says the team "made broader improvements across the map, UI, visuals, animations, game clarity," alongside new Giants and expanded itemisation.
That phrasing is deliberate: "game clarity" sits in the same list as UI, which tells you the goal was legibility rather than cosmetic polish. The post also notes that the spaces between lanes became more important, which the interface has to communicate.
No official UI changelog, design blog or screenshot gallery has been published beyond the broadcast, so anything more granular than this list is 待确认.
The minimap and its objective timers
The most important UI element is the minimap. During the premiere and in community tutorials, the timers that matter sit at the top of the minimap, tracking the Colossus, the siege dozer and the Abomination.
One reason they matter so much is that spawn locations are not fixed. The siege dozer spawns either in the top lane or the bottom lane, and the Colossus has two spawn positions, one on each team's side, so you must read the map rather than memorise a route.
Merit camps are also marked on the minimap, with three per team, and they keep stacking resources until somebody collects them. The exact spawn timings quoted by community tutorials vary between 3:30 and 4 minutes for the first dozer, so treat precise numbers as 待确认.
Your Giant's ability bar
Each Giant carries a passive plus three abilities and an ultimate, mapped to Q, W, E and R in the builds shown on stream. The names are displayed in the interface and repeated in the official ability videos.
Kragg is the clearest documented example: Q is Brutal Charge, W is Shatter Earth, E is Monstrous Presence, and R is Traitor's Freedom. Voidmaster follows the same layout with Void Sphere, Tentacles Grasp, Ritual of Madness and Eldritch Ascension.
There are no character levels in the current build. Instead, merit thresholds of 1,000, 2,000 and 3,000 unlock more abilities, so the ability bar reflects your economy as much as your experience.
Item slots and the Arsenal
Items work differently from a standard MOBA. Rather than buying from a shop mid-lane, you install items onto your Warshell, and the interface shows the loadout you have assembled.
The official site explains the same loop: "Spend Merits at the Arsenal to upgrade your Warshell and customize how your Giant fights," with builds grouped around Kinetic, Alchemic, Survival or Soldiers. The Arsenal is the screen where that spending happens.
Some slots are filled by objectives rather than purchases. The Sovereign Gun, dropped by the Abomination, occupies slot six when you pick it up and can shell Bastions as long as you hold vision.
Augments, supply and the scoreboard
Augments are a separate layer, and the interface prompts you for them with a simple question: "Where should we install that augment?" They come from map objectives, and one augment point spawns at the five-minute mark and then every five minutes.
Supply is the other tracked currency, shown because it funds Battleworks. Supply crates arrive by balloon at points on the map, and you spend it to place trenches, bunkers, soldier drops, Ironclads and cavalry.
The scoreboard covers pacing as well as kills. Developers used it during the premiere to show which Outposts had fallen on each side, which is how you read lane pressure without scrolling the map.
Community reports on the interface
Community sources add details that the official broadcast did not cover. One fan wiki describes two auto-attack buttons, one for lock-on and one for free fire, plus a ping system whose defaults require holding Alt and then clicking.
The same source says voice communication is built in but there is no text chat at all, and that a star system lets you improve the odds of getting your preferred Giant in draft. These describe an alpha build on a page that also mislabels the game as a mobile title, so treat them as 待确认.
Players have raised smaller UI questions directly. One playtest discussion asked whether the item icons are placeholders in the current build, which is the kind of detail an in-development interface usually changes before launch.
Known gaps and accessibility
Replay and spectator tooling are the most visible gaps. Community commentary during the playtest noted there is "no replay functionality yet, though it's planned in the short notice," which pushed casters into narrating matches live.
Accessibility is listed but not itemised. Steam shows "Accessibility Features (4)" as a collapsed panel, so the four specific features, and any subtitle or colourblind options beyond the standard localisation, are 待确认 until you expand that section.
Language support is confirmed, though: the interface, full audio and subtitles are available in English, French, German and Spanish (Spain), which is the same set the developers listed for the playtest regions.
Onboarding and the new-player interface
The interface has to teach three systems at once, which is why onboarding gets as much attention as the HUD. Community sources describe a step-by-step introduction and a Learn tab, though both are alpha-era details and should be treated as 待确认.
The developers have described the challenge openly, saying the game is meant to see whether players can master the Giant and the battlefield at the same time. That is a UI problem as much as a design one, because the interface is what makes two jobs manageable at once.
Tutorial content from the playtest leans on the minimap timers for exactly this reason. Knowing when a siege dozer spawns is the difference between a new player flailing and a new player making decisions.
Information the HUD has to carry
A match asks you to track a lot at once: three lanes, three Outposts per side, Bastions, army camps with turrets that retract when enemies leave, supply crates arriving by balloon, and the augment point that respawns every five minutes.
That is why the map is doing the heavy lifting. Objective state and timers live on the minimap, and the scoreboard carries pacing information such as which Outposts have fallen, leaving the ability bar and item slots for the moment-to-moment fight.
Community tutorials describe exactly this division of labour, telling viewers to keep their eyes on the timers at the top of the minimap while they fight.
What is likely to change before launch
Item icons are the most visible candidate. A playtest discussion asked whether they are placeholders, and in an in-development build that is normal, so expect iconography and readability work to continue.
Replay and spectator tools are confirmed to be missing but planned, which will change how matches are documented and cast once they arrive. Documentation and casting both depend on tooling that does not exist yet.
Accessibility details are also unfinished on the store side, where the features are listed but not itemised. Anything beyond the confirmed four-language support should be treated as 待确认 until Ubisoft publishes the specifics.
Sources
- Ubisoft news hub, Our Vision for March of Giants: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/news/ignt.63864/our-vision-for-march-of-giants
- YouTube, official Pioneer Playtest premiere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo-neUPxKoA
- YouTube, Kragg ability showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iempNAgMzWs
- Steam store page, March of Giants: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924600/March_of_Giants/
- Community tutorials on map timers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV9PYGyhRw8