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VaM, explained in shapes and colors: help me choose the look

Virt-a-Mate can do an incredible amount, and that’s exactly what makes it so hard to get into. The first time you open it, there are buttons, menus and settings everywhere. A lot of people hardly dare to click anything, so they end up relying on whatever someone happened to write in a chat somewhere.

I want to make that easier.

So I’ve started an explainer series: VaM Basics. It’s still a work in progress, and what you see here is only a small preview of what it can become. The series follows the basics chapter of the official VaM wiki, one short clip per topic. Every function is shown with simple shapes, colors and pictograms. VaM is 18+, but these clips aren’t: no scenes, no screenshots, nothing that needs an age gate. That means they can be shared openly, and anyone who’s curious can see what VaM is and what it does before ever installing it.

The series is for everyone who’s new, who isn’t very technical, or who simply feels a bit lost in there. And it won’t stop at the basics. Later I want to take on the topics that cause trouble even for experienced users, in the same calm, step-by-step way.

The video shows issue 03, “Start Up Screen”, in two styles:

Bauhaus: warm, aged paper, like a 1970s design magazine. Flat shapes, strong colors, a little 3D.

Blackprint: a dark construction sheet with white lines. The colors follow VaM’s own logic: green means on, yellow means highlighted, red means off. The figure is drawn as a piece of flat-pack furniture, and the monitor and VR headset always show the same thing, because VaM runs on both.

Whichever style wins, every episode will come in landscape for PC and portrait for your phone.

Please vote for the style you like best. And if you have a completely different visual idea, pick “another idea” and describe it in the comments. I’d love to see it.

And please use the comments for one more thing, because it matters most to me:
What do you wish someone had explained to you properly? Which button, menu or workflow still feels like a mystery? What problem do you keep running into? Write a sentence or two about what exactly you’d like to understand. I’ll collect everything and turn it into explainers in this style, either as a topic of its own or as part of the chapter where it fits best.

No question is too basic. If you’re wondering about it, someone else is too.

Thanks for being here, and for helping shape this.