Style research
Client provided references to a general match 3 game, but the message was about juicy games for ladies. I researched many modern match 3 games and games for ladies to create a moodboard and choose a direction.

Also, I have a personal vision of how the game can look like: what make it more modern and memorable. I picked bright, clean and simple style with tight shapes and realistic light instead of typical match3-asian style with contours and crumpled shapes.

A game should have an exact setting to tell a story. General bubble-style windows and buttons won't tell to the player about new stories and creators feelings. Consequently, no memorable images and forms, no recognizability, no new experience, no retention.

In my projects I try to make a solid environment on the screen space.

I try not to separate a UI layer from environment space, in opposite I try to immerse the UI layer to the environment. I focus on detailed environment instead of decorated UI because the environment is the place where things happens and player lives, while the UI is the place where player operate the game items and ways to interact.

The environment always have more potential to tell a story and contain eye catching graphic, so I try to keep the UI simple and make environment rich and comprehensive.

Initial wireframe suggest to imagine the equipment list as a bar that separate the screen on two halfs: the item view and the list.

Following the principles of "environment first" I start from the solid space and add there additional elements trying to keep this space solid. In this case the window is located in the environment while the bar divides the space in two separate parts so each of them leaves it personal life.

As you can see in the wireframe references the items list cropped by a canvas border. It looks the same as web page cropped by a browser window. That's why the player expects to scroll all the screen instead of scroll the little area.

To avoid this expectation I show the borders of the scroll area.

The "Equipped" button shouldn't be accessible. However, if you'll play the game, it still can be pressed. I enforced the button disability using graphic.