Online Game Menus That Make Great First Interface Projects

Every online game has menus: a main menu, settings, character selection, inventory screens and pause menus. They are so familiar that players barely notice them, yet they contain many core ideas of interface design and programming. For beginners who want to move from text programs to graphical interfaces, recreating a game menu is an excellent first project. It is small enough to finish, visual enough to be rewarding and full of real concepts.

I teach Python to beginners and often use menus as a bridge to interface programming. Here is why online game menus make great first interface projects, and how to build one.

Menus are state machines

A menu system is a simple state machine. The game is in one state at a time: main menu, settings, playing, paused. Actions move between states: pressing Start goes from main menu to playing, pressing Escape goes from playing to paused. Representing this with a variable such as state = "menu" and conditions that check it teaches one of the most useful patterns in programming.

This builds directly on the loops and conditions explained in how online game logic teaches loops and conditions.

Buttons, input and feedback

Menus teach how interfaces respond to input. A button needs to know where it is, whether the mouse is over it and what happens when it is clicked. Highlighting a button on hover and playing a sound on click teaches feedback, a core principle of good interface design. Supporting keyboard and controller navigation adds another layer: tracking which button is selected and moving the selection with arrow keys.

Settings and saving preferences

A settings menu introduces sliders, toggles and choices: volume, difficulty, fullscreen mode. Saving these settings to a file, then loading them when the game starts, teaches file handling and data persistence. Beginners learn why settings must be validated, so a corrupted file does not crash the game.

Accessibility from the start

Game menus are a great place to learn accessibility: readable text sizes, high contrast, keyboard navigation and options for colour-blind players. Building these into a first interface project teaches habits that matter in every kind of software. Many studios now treat menu accessibility as essential, since a player who cannot navigate the menu cannot play the game at all.

When I set this project for a group of learners, we studied menus from real online games and gaming sites for inspiration, including the clear, large-button layout on an online game site such as ankertoto, and then recreated the structure with simple Python code and our own designs.

Tools for building a menu

Beginners have several options. Pygame Zero and Pygame let you draw buttons and handle mouse clicks with a little code. Tkinter, included with Python, provides ready-made buttons and windows. For web-minded learners, HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript make menus quickly, with styling and hover effects built in. Each tool teaches the same underlying concepts.

Is a menu too boring for a first project?

Some learners and teachers think menus are dull compared with building the game itself. I understand the appeal of jumping straight to gameplay. But I think menus are underrated as a learning project.

A menu is achievable in a few sessions, which gives beginners a finished, polished result early. It introduces state, input handling, files and accessibility without the complexity of physics or graphics. And once the menu exists, adding a simple game behind the Start button feels like a natural next step rather than a mountain to climb.

A step-by-step menu project

1. Draw a main menu with Start, Settings and Quit buttons.
2. Highlight buttons on hover and handle clicks.
3. Add a state variable to switch between screens.
4. Build a settings screen with a volume slider and a toggle.
5. Save and load settings from a file.
6. Add keyboard navigation and larger text options.
7. Connect the Start button to a simple game.

Testing menus with real users

Once a menu works, watch someone else use it without explaining anything. Do they find the settings? Do they understand what each button does? Can they go back easily? Simple user testing like this teaches one of the most important lessons in interface design: what is obvious to the builder is often confusing to others. Small changes, such as clearer labels or a visible back button, can make a big difference.

Keep your first menu simple. Three working buttons and one settings option are better than a dozen half-finished screens, and you can always add more once the basics feel solid and the code is tidy enough to extend.

The front door of every game

Menus are the front door of every game. Building one teaches state, interaction, persistence and accessibility in a small, satisfying project. Once you have a menu, the game behind it is waiting, and ideas are in the simple online games beginners can code in Python. More in our Games section.