I like how this game's menu is less complicated than it feels.
I need to start designing the pause menu so I have a nice place to mess around with debug settings. Making a game this huge is going to require a lot of jumping around the map and adjusting stats. It's also another feature that will make the game come alive a bit more. I've made tons of menus before so this should be a piece of cake.
The idea is to have it pop up above all the camera elements, be black but transparent, have an outline similar to the one above that matches the GUI scheme, and delete itself when the pause button is pressed again. If I make it a prefab in Unity I won't have to worry about hiding all the layers and buttons and rearranging the text. Each menu can be it's own object, summoned when called on and deleted when gone.
I took my doodles from class and scaled things out on a 1/4 size mock-up in MS Paint. This is generally what I'm aiming for. These are all the things I want available on the start menu. Well, I should squeeze in your current level above the exp bar and add a continue button to Options in case some people don't like pressing the pause button again to play, but aside from that I just have to make buttons and things to match up.
I'll explain what each menu does when I have the final version up and running. Until then, try to guess by looking at the image. There's a few unannounced features on display but everything is pretty self-explanatory.
It's kinda funny how much those doodles changed just a few hours after posting this. There's a bunch of missing things up there.