Should menus/dialogs be confirmed with A or B when B is the primary action?

Consider the setup where the crank is used for steering and B is the primary action, usually throttle. Star sled, hyper meteor and my own game Gravity Express all feature a triangular spaceship that employ this scheme. Omaze also uses the B button as primary + crank rotation.

While you are playing, the left thumb is resting on the B button. Let's say you get a game-over or level-complete screen. What button should then confirm to retry / go to next level? It might seem most natural to use B, so you can keep holding the PD the way you are.

But Starsled and Hyper meteor chose to match the System software while in menus: A confirms, B cancels.

What do you think about this?

Personally I favor keeping A and B for Act and Back when it comes to menus. People will assume it anyway.

BUT if there's some specific reason to swap them--like to prevent a destructive accidental press—then I say it's fair game!

I suppose I'll keep it consistent with expectation, then

On the level-select screen I have an on-screen timer to prevent accidental B-press there

image

Shouldn't bother too many people because there is little reason to go back to the start screen. After seeing this, ppl will hopefully have learnt that B is always cancel in menus

I also saves me the work of creating alternative assets for visual "A buttons" like in this screenshot

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