How Games Do Health

[@Midwinter_Snow]

I remember an old arcade game (I think it was called Avenging Spirit). It was a rather unique side scroller beat them up. The twist was that you were a ghost. As a ghost you couldn't be attacked and enemies didnt even react to you however your life bar would passively go down rather quickly. You have to possess enemies, then you become that enemy. Different ones had different stats. Hp, attack damage/range, speed, etc. When the possessed body dies you go back to ghost mode. Felt super unique for the time period.

[@torgranael]

That sounds fun.

[@truji2582]

That actually sounds amazing

[@Mt.Berry-o7]

Shit, I remember that game. I feel old now, thanks.

[@florbengorben7651]

That sounds super cool. It creates a beating, driving force forwards that makes you constantly switch things up by inhabiting new bodies

[@gustavovasconcelos9857]

I didn't know it was originally from arcades, but I have played the Game Boy version and yeah, it's truly unique and such a fun game.

[@esoterra1024]

In Hollow Knight the Knight regenerates soul by melee attacking enemies and soul can be spent to use powerful abilities or regenerate health. This rewards masterful melee combat and makes trying to outrange enemies difficult or impossible in the long run

[@Dinoman972]

It also makes using Spells a risky but rewarding thing, since they're pretty powerful and very satisfying to land (no joke, apparently it's possible to defeat Troupe Master Grimm with 6-8 Abyss Shrieks if you have the right charms), but if you miss them you'll waste Soul that you could have used for healing later on. The fact that you can only hold up to 99 Soul (without Soul Vessels) and that each Spell/Focus costs 33 Soul helps too.

[@enderallygolem]

There's also the fact it is difficult to regenerate health as it immobilized you a bit, making it easy for you to get hit, especially in bosses

[@bendunkley5623]

On top of all that, the Hollow Knight soul mechanism allows you to change gameplay style as you progress. Initially you're exploring and killing everything so you can get your precious geo coins, but after a while you just want to get to places you've already been. You end up jumping over enemies, giving them a quick slash on the way. This lets you top up your soul and your health when retracing your steps, without having to engage and defeat every enemy on the way. The whole Metroidvania experience becomes a lot less arduous.

[@abstractplayer8004]

and there’s also the fact that, if you try and fail to Focus, you’ll still lose the soul you used. meaning that you’ll always make sure that you can actually finish using Focus.

[@FlameG]

@@abstractplayer8004 Not if you cancel it fast enough (I think it's around third or half way throug the focus)

[@plant3341]

"Games don't expect you to play perfectly" shows footage of Ghosts 'n Goblins

[@maxwell9561]

lol

[@wasgehtsiedasan5432]

tEcHnIcAlLy you have one extra hitpoint as he pointed out. But I get what you say and agree

[@swiftyxrd]

Mentions traps doing small but lasting damage Shows a trap in Dark Souls doing 75% of the player's health

[@Geckotr]

@@swiftyxrd Traps in DS usually instantly kill you

[@swiftyxrd]

@@Geckotr Yeah, that's the irony of the situation. Because the example is quite literally the opposite of small but lasting damage. Then again, I guess any damage is small if it doesn't one shot you in dark souls.

[@hadoom848]

Dwarf fortress. I was once an assassin in adventure mode, my attack missed, and my target cut my leg's nerves with a cooking knife. I stayed paralyzed until I eventually lost to a crab.

[@biffman6]

nothing quite like having your one of your limbs cut off, picking it up, and then beating your opponent to death with it

[@nerd_nato564]

I love games that have different effects for different injuries. I much prefer those (in shooters or base builders, at least) than standard health bars.

[@aidanchappuis3245]

Yeah, and it also is, I would say, the best example of a game that does not have hit points as an abstraction. More games need to work to find interesting and fun ways to represent damage other than hit points, especially ttrpgs

[@connorforce01]

It's amazing how they almost made DOOM into Call of Duty, then said, "oh shit, this is call of duty, we need to restart". Then made this.

[@Jay-og4yb]

"We made COD, whoops. Let's restart." *Makes one of the best first person shooters ever instead*

[@mdstevens0612]

Oh yeah, what about the Smashed Percentage from Smash Bros? That is a hella interesting concept of health. Instead of counting downwards, when you take a hit, your smashed percentage goes up. The higher your smashed percentage, the easier it is to knock you out of the arena, which is essentially the fail state. Which means players can flail at each other theoretically infinitely until one of them is knocked out of the arena. Reaching 100% doesn't mean you've lost the fight, it means you have to start playing carefully and avoid the special moves which can instantly knock you off screen at a high smashed percentage. Players also don't start back at 0% if one of them is knocked out, the battle continues and the winning player has a handicap, which makes the matches more fun and closer.

[@DanielAvelan]

Also, with that system, the stakes get so freaking high by the end of a match.

[@cachotognax3600]

Matthew Stevens is such a particualr concept that makes it easy to miss when talking about hp in games!

[@cachotognax3600]

DOUGGGYOUBETTERREVIEWWME don't make me beg i don't see how this would encourage random button mashing, cheap ranged damage isn't viable for mechanics: it's either only horizontal, and the game has a lot of verticality, or dodge-able and with enough lag after the move to leave the spammer vulnerable

[@cachotognax3600]

DOUGGGYOUBETTERREVIEWWME don't make me beg little time? The score in this game, even if you are playing timed mode, is how many times you knocked out the opponent off the screen. %is only used as a tie breaker. If you at hight % you just try to mash buttons you could leave you open to a mid-strong attack from the opponent, leading to death. And 1 stock advantage is all you need to win in timed, and a life less for the opponent in stock mode. Of course new players might not know that at certain percents they are safe and at others they can die in one hit, but you can't die to a light attack, witch means that even if you are at hight risk you can still be a bit on the agressive. So yeah it might not be 100% obvious and clear, but i don't see that as such a big negative, with all the positives it brings

[@cachotognax3600]

DOUGGGYOUBETTERREVIEWWME don't make me beg the first game in the series is for the n64, if you know what i mean. Hp us not shown with bars but with 1-8(yup 8, the wii-u one supports more player) numbers at the bottom of the screen, that get reddish to dark red above a certain value. Personally i hit the guy closest/ more vulnerable to me in a brawl, yeah you might score more kills if you keep an eye on them, but I never play timed XD, in stock mode who kills who does not matter. Plus, maybe you have not completely clear that the highter the % is the further away you fly, so when i see a guy almost die after a strong attack, i know that another one might do the trick. Now that's something not in mortal kombat and similar: you can get a "fell" of the enemie(s) % by how far they fly after an hit. About the much more: the knockback of an attack depends also on the weight of the character, how long the attack has been charged and the part of the hitbox you manage to land for some attacks. Also an attack being deadly depends also on where you are in the map(if you are at the center the blast zones are further away) and on the map itself too, since some are smaller thus blast zones are closer, and don't get me started about DI(directional influence), you can find tutorials on that on yt. "What about new players?" You may ask, how can this game have such depth with all theese complex mechanics? Simple: they are very intuitive and not that complex, or not necessary for casual play, you just grab a bunch of friends and beat the shit out of each other. I'd almost say that this game is at least as newcomer-friendly as mortal kombat-ish without the need of cheap tactics (fat guy endlessly moving his hand for example, i know little about that genera, only a few yt videos so i may e wrong on this)

[@aeternalslime9670]

I think it'd be interesting to see a game that mimics real life by making health during an enemy encounter constant-- no matter how much damage you take, within reason, adrenaline keeps you going-- but then once the encounter is over, you have a health bar tomer, where you have so long to seek medical attention/ heal yourself before your wounds do you in.

[@jeremycanning7058]

I like this, its a good idea. I imagine some hits would be enough to overcome adrenaline, like a knockout punch (or something more violent). Also it seems like adrenaline would wear thin if a fight drags on for too long or the intensity of the encounter falters.

[@matthewwysong644]

Isabelle Clover Or even have a standard health bar over the health, and when you hit zero, adrenaline kicks in, and you have a minute to make or break your situation. (Like Borderlands Fight for Your Life, but however long you stay in that mode effects the amount of health you get back after you leave it and no debuffs to speed.)

[@reservoirfrogs2177]

Isabelle Clover That would stop being cool or fun like immediately

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Don't forget that it might take weeks to heal. So once the fight is over and the player seeks medical attention the character is out of the fight for a long time. (Would work in a game with more than one character and which story spans over a fairly long period, something like Xcom or C&C comes to mind. Depending on the severety of the injury a unit might be out of the pool for a certain amount of rounds or even multiple missions)

[@a8lg6p]

GURPS has a pretty interesting system for a tabletop RPG, and fairly realistic, and is super-straightforward to program. You have HP, but if you go below 0, you don't die... But you have to pass a health check to not die... (Roll your attribute score or lower on 3d6, with penalties depending on how injured you are.) I think it's every time you get to a new negative multiple of your HP, so at -10, -20, etc. Until negative 5 times your HP, at which point you're presumably mutilated enough to be automatically dead. I think you also have to make a check every turn to remain conscious. The only wonky part is if you have a really high Health score (and perks like Hard to Kill, and Hard to Subdue), you pretty much never fail your checks, so then it just works like normal hit points, except you die at -50 instead of 0. (Or -10...is that still how D&D works?) (Or more like -90, since the attribute you roll against is the same one that determines your base HP, and you'd have a score of like 17 or 18 to have a good chance of never failing any of those checks...which is considered basically godlike...an attribute at 15 in GURPS is basically like 18 in D&D...and in a super-gritty realistic game, stuff like Hard to Kill might be banned or at least limited...so for a normal human character, it shouldn't be an issue.)

[@calebtaylor4352]

I programmed a game about a cactus. The cactus had stamina (to attack, to dash) and health, both regenerated by picking up water droplets droped at random when enemies were killed. Because Cacti in real life die if over-watered, if any of the two bars (stamina or health) were full, getting water would result in both levels drop dangerously low. So, for example, if you were low on health and high on stamina, you would need to use up some stamina by attacking or dashing to avoid the risk of dropping both levels. Or, if you had 100% health but needed a bit of water to refresh your stamina, you would avoid the water.

[@mjc0961]

If I needed water to refresh stamina, why would I avoid water? You aren't making sense.

[@juliohinojosa6923]

mjc0961 are u dense? The rules are if you're capped on any of the two bars HEALTH or STAMINA u would be penalized if you took any more water, in other words, it's a clever system that makes the player not spam potions to heal themselves.

[@hyperx72]

Though, it could also be seen as unnecessarily punishing for just needing health...

[@TheSquareOnes]

That's a great system but it needs more context. Can you dash whenever? If so then obviously the player just does that whenever they have too much stamina and need to pick up some water, turning the cool mechanic into a pointless chore that will gradually add up to many wasted minutes by the end of the game. The same can be true of the opposite if ways to damage yourself are anywhere nearby. In the right game I could see that working very well though.

[@lukasnovella9001]

Cool idea.

[@Arasaka_Denier]

"Should you combine that green herb with that red herb?" Yes. Always yes.

[@BardockSSJL]

Nope. What if you want to use a Yellow herb but are full life and only have one green herb. You would be wasting a red herb.

[@carolinacortesmartinez4305]

Should you combine that green herb with the other green herb? Never. Ever. Ever.

[@kentknightofcaelin4537]

@@BardockSSJL why would you need to use it when you're on full health? Just combine all three and use it when you're on low health.

[@Caitlin_TheGreat]

"Health" in games can come in many forms -- especially when you start looking at non-standard games, and branch out beyond videogames. There are card games where you essentially have "health" but it's represented by the cards in your hand and once they're gone you're "dead" or eliminated. But health is always an abstraction (though I'm sure there's some extremely crunchy tabletop RPG out there that's the exception) because the character doesn't need to go to the hospital, there isn't a need to clean and sanitize wounds, take medication in case of an infection, and wait a week or months or more to heal. Generally, because that wouldn't be fun (but there's always a possible exception) and it'd be very difficult to implement either in a video game or an analog tabletop game. But since health is probably always an abstraction... what does it really represent? How necessary is it? Some people reason away hit point/health bars as "luck" that turns what should be debilitating damage into near misses. Eventually your luck runs out, you get a fatal hit, and the character dies. I think that while from a programmer's perspective the distinction isn't all that important (there's a pool of points that get subtracted from, eventually it reaches zero, and that initializes a game-over function or increments a death counter and restarts a section of gameplay), it's really worth it for the designer(s) to contemplate what the "health" system actually represents in the game's setting/fiction or what it _could_ represent and from there decide how to deal with it (functionally, narratively and thematically) running out and how to deal with it replenishing. Is it luck, or mental/physical stress, or actual physical damage, or a guardian spirit or magic protection, armor, or what? A lot of popular games -- COD especially -- are very creatively lazy in this regard. Just have some blood splatter on the screen that fades over time and call it good. The health packs in DOOM 2016 were a nice change back to the old way of doing things, and a bit better about having an in-universe and game-play related explanation for regaining health. As opposed to just "I got better" after being shot a crap ton.

[@Hazel-xl8in]

Shawn Wesley what’s interesting is that the original hitpoints came from an old board game called Ironclads, where you play as civil war era battleships that were nigh impenetrable. they represent a cool moment where the counter to cannonry had just been invented, but cannons hadn’t yet gotten good enough to overpower this armor. it’s also why losing hitpoints in most games doesn’t affect your abilities. in real life, these battles ended because neither side could really hurt the other and it was expensive to deploy them. but that’s a lame end to a board game, so they decided that eventually after enough hits, one shot would be lucky enough to sink you. everything’s fine, this is fine, we’re all good, oh i sank game over.

[@jasonreed7522]

Well i think if we use the literal name of HP = Hit Points we can gain some insight. If they represent how close you are to death then somewhere along the scale you should pass out from excruciating pain. A sense that irl is meant to stop you from hurting yourself but is extremely hard to meaningfully model in game in a way the player understands. With this i think we could let HP in games with a living player represent pain tolerance. This would still align with most scaling of health like DnD where a raging barbarian takes half damage but a wizard (nerd) has very low health. Now in dnd their is already an explanation but its just an example of how HP = pain tolerance makes sense where if you pass out from pain and go into shock you ate probably dead in 95% of game settings.

[@nerd_nato564]

@@jasonreed7522 Yeah. This also allows for partially regenerating health to mean your pain subsiding, at least a little.

[@keltondavis4559]

One game that follows your suggestion very well is war thunder. For example in the f86 there are 33 different components on the plane and each has it's own amount of health. And each component has a different importance to the air-worthy-ness of the plane. For example if the middle fuselage becomes damaged the all that's gonna happen is you're going to have more drag thus be slower and not turn as sharp, however if your oil cooler gets damaged then you need to hightail it back to the airfield to repair cause it'll be leaking oil and run out soon and engines can't run for long without oil.

[@notjeckup]

A game that does take into consideration the lore reason behind the characters health and abilities is Katana Zero. The main character has precognition time abilities and those are the reason he can do what he does. Every death is just an alternative timeline where you could have messed up.

[@pedrogarcia8706]

In some games that use a regenerating health bar, like Call of Duty 4 or Uncharted, the point of the game isn't to reward skillful gameplay, it's to facilitate a movie-like experience. To that end, a regenerating health bar lets the player experience the story without punishing them for playing poorly.

[@ELFanatic]

It'd be better to get some health back per kill. That'd keep them in the action and it'd be more cinematic.

[@indiefruit]

It also keeps the player engaged in a skirmish. Between acting and reacting, you are always responding to what is currently happening in the fight. Once you add other elements like different enemy types, ally NPCs to divide attention, and enemies losing track of the player (and therefore the ability to flank), then a simple concept like regenerating health is just a part of an incredibly dynamic skirmish.

[@arcadeassassin7176]

then why not just make it a movie.

[@FraserSouris]

@@arcadeassassin7176 Because Interaction is fun and makes it unique. Games are a pretty different medium to movies but emulating the style of the latter is possible. Playing through scripted and cinematic set pieces has its appeal as demonstarted by God of War and COD and Uncharted. It's a niche many people want movie like experiences in games. Secondly, many mediums have attempted to emulate each other. The MCU attempts the emulate the style of serialized comic books in movie form. Podcast Audio Dramas will emulate old Radio Serials, Audiobooks, Found Footage and more depending on the desire of the author. Many books have attempted to focus on more imagary and spectacle. and so on. These don't diminish the value of either medium or approach and can be interesting in their own rights.

[@arcadeassassin7176]

@@FraserSouris yea i see your point and never meant to say things like that have no place in video games. i just feel like video games have a lot of untapped potential as a means of story telling and if the everyone just does the same thing we may never see that potential explored.

[@salabimsalabao]

Project Reality makes something interesting with health: when you get hit, there is a high chance that you will start to bleed, and it will not stop until you a medic heals you, forcing the players to play in a more cooperative way

[@teddobrotin2855]

The health, or rather death, system in Transistor (Supergiant Games) is fantastic. With each enemy encounter you can take a certain amount of hits before lose your most used ability/attack. You now have less abilities to defeat the remaining enemies, which makes you feel like a boss when you do succeed without your favourite move. From memory, there are 4 main abilities which, when all lost, resets the game to the last save point. I think this is a great mechanic as it not only ups the challenge of the fights, but it also forces you to explore and use the many combinations of available abilities. Certainly one of my favourite games.

[@MrEnvisioner]

To add on to your comment (since I don't think it was too clear), when you lose all of your health once, one of your skills is removed (which, through multi-skill upgrades means you could lose up to 3 skills from that one death). You then are unable to access those skills for some time, even if you do come back to a save point, so you are therefore forced to create an entirely new skill from the remaining abilities you have. Over time, you get back access to the ones you've lost and can reacquire your old skill setup, but by then, you may have discovered that you actually liked/preferred the new one you tried or want to experiment with it more. In the end, the system's "lives" mechanic funnels you into experimentation with the tools given to the player. Excellent design.

[@teddobrotin2855]

Thanks for clarifying :)

[@Ninjat126]

I like it in theory, but in practice you get an unstable equilibrium. Just like a classic flight shooter, failing once makes your character MORE vulnerable, and makes you MORE likely to fail a second time. It's realistic, but it's a little harsh.

[@OrangeIncarnate]

Its the skill with the highest memory cost

[@Tustin2121]

It would have been nice if the game told me that losing a skill was not permanent. There was a lot of restarts against that one boss because I thought I had lost the skill permanently...

[@MEDelai]

4:34 "Traps that do smaller ammounts of damage" Immediately gets hit by a boulder taking almost half your health away.

[@williambarker1705]

No that was still a small amount of damage

[@padraigdonelan]

@@williambarker1705 considering you can get 2 shot by the first boss and 3 shot by the first enemy in DS3 I'm not surprised.

[@spamaccountlmao]

perfectly timed too

[@devilbobgaming]

Hehe smaller compared to big handheld log wielded by someone with high strength.

[@derpoi]

Terraria, and those re4 boulder QTEs lol

[@Mr_Maiq_The_Liar]

I'm always fond of games that dont even handle health with HP. Like the smash games. Unfortunately, not too many come to mind without it just being one shots

[@ELFanatic]

You have to have the goal of the game to be something uncommon for it to work. Smash's goal is knocking people off the ledge. Cool idea, but not a common game design. Mario kart also doesn't have deaths, and you don't even take actual dmg but getting hit with an item slows you down and may cost you the match. But racing games where you attack each other is also not a common game design.

[@TechBlade9000]

I'll try naming some from memory Mario Sonic Yeah you're right not that much

[@BrickBuster2552]

Uncharted doesn't use health. Nathan Drake dies in one hit. The fade to grey and red is his LUCK decreasing as he's exposed to gunfire.

[@rustyshovel7179]

@@BrickBuster2552 That's still just health but called something different.

[@ace_kicka]

@@TechBlade9000 yeah but Mario and Sonic are also just one-shots.

[@subwayvesubscriber]

I really like the health kit + regenerating shield format. Without the shield I'd get annoyed way too quickly if I constantly have to hunt down health kits. The shield allows me to look out for them and explore areas without forcing me to do so and of course it provides some leeway for inexperienced players (like me).

[@GnarledStaff]

subwayvesubscriber I agree. And someone pointed out in another reply that Halo used the Elites regenerating shields to force players to have to choose between a dash to kill them and regenerating their own shields in safety. Personally I enjoy playing cautiously and sniping enemies from a distance. Its satisfying. I don’t like games that try to prevent that playstyle. The hide to regen your shield/health mechanic fits some of these games but its overuse without understanding the mechanic drags some games down. Specifically, if my screen becomes unreadable when I get injured, it pulls me out of the immersion unless done really well. Usually I’m just frustrated that Incant see!

[@veziusthethird]

although half-life does make you hunt down health kits sometimes, when you have suit energy, you take like 1-2 damage from a bullet so it's really tanky, kinda removing the "hunt for hp" if you play well enough

[@monke1295]

Like soul knight

[@davefalk304]

I actually thought that the Duke Nukem series would benefit from an "Ego" meter instead of health. As he takes damage, his ego drops. It is replenished a bit if he encounters a mirror (like a bathroom), replenishes fully if he encounters a woman (who of course is totally in love with him), or somewhere in between if he finds weight equipment and has a chance to work out. However, I always thought that the primary way of replenishing health should be through close quarters, visceral kills. Not necessarily melee, but walking right up to a pig-man and blowing it's face off with a shotgun would net a boost of ego over precisely killing enemies with a sniper rifle or mid-range assault rifle. This way, the "safest" way to kill enemies (from a distance, maybe without them knowing you're there) will be of no advantage to you, especially if you are hurt. Conversely, it could allow developers to create a "blaze-of-fire" style move that actually rewards you for, functionally speaking, pulling the pin on a grenade and running at a group of enemies with it still in your hand. Or point blank destroying a group of baddies with an RPG. I don't know how the bonuses would work necessarily, but it would be something fun to play with and force you to change your play styles, as you try to herd the baddies together for one big rain of carnage.

[@Thatonefuckinguy]

Not going to lie, but the blaze-of-fire is the funniest idea I have heard in a while. It reminded me of the soldier taunt in TF2.

[@sabbathjackal]

Dave Falk that sounds pretty kool. I feel like it could work like the stamina bar in MGS3 wher it affects your health regeneration. As far as a bonus id say a damage bonus would work fine or at full ego you could have an active ability akin to the berserk power-up in doom. Oh wait they did that in borderlands. Damnit back to the drawing board

[@Metaphizzle]

The funny thing is, _Duke Nukem Forever_ actually did use "Ego" instead of a health meter. Unfortunately, it functioned exactly the same as a generic "take cover to regenerate health" mechanic. Which leads to the amusingly stupid implication that Duke feels better about himself when he hides from enemies.

[@kcsledge95]

Thanks

[@kcsledge95]

The

[@kmlkmljkl]

Mario doesn't break blocks with his head... he punches them.

[@SamButler22]

+

[@bagandtag4391]

Thus unlocking the full spectre of anarcho-capitalism

[@enkiimuto1041]

he punches them with his head!

[@jurremioch316]

what the fuck are you doing here go back and make memes

[@undaredeallende822]

I think, they are not blocks. IN the manual says its mushroom people turned into blocks by a curse of bowser. So in the end, its just plain murder...

[@strawberrana]

I'm surprised he didn't talk about SSB's percent system and survival games' (Minecraft comes to mind) food contributing to regen

[@Eddesignful]

In sonic, you collected rings and lost (and scrambled to retrieve) them when hit. I liked that you could play with just one ring if you kept retrieving it.

[@DrRank]

And since the Ring counter is tied to both the lives system (if applicable) and the level score, the player is encouraged to grab as many rings as they can without getting hurt.

[@BanD1t8]

Fistful of Frags has a fun health system. The game is set in a wild west setting, so the weapons are slow and every shot counts. You restore health by drinking whiskey, but drinking too much makes your vision wobbly and makes it harder to aim. So when you're low on health you have to make a decision either to sacrifice your aim for a few seconds but be topped up on health, or to take a few sips retaining your aiming ability but making you more fragile.

[@Ironforce7701]

Zee captain!

[@gonzalo061994]

AAAAANDALEEE

[@RAFMnBgaming]

Oooo. I like the sound of that

[@edwnx0]

They should make the enemies health also replenish. To discourage you from resting too long.

[@bugslayerprime7674]

Interestingly a lot of roguelikes (not analyzed in this video) base health regeneration on one of four things: 1. Leveling Up. 2. Potions. 3. Exploring the dungeon. 4. Resting. In some recently made roguelikes i've played, the procedurally generated dungeons are covered in a fog of war, and only the areas you've been to are revealed. Revealing these areas recover health. Each action you spend, in some games, passes a universal turn, in which not only your health, but also the health of your enemies regenerates one point or so. Usually, resting till you're at full health means that your enemies are also at full health.

[@losalfajoresok]

In Dark Souls some enemies drink the estus flask to replenish their health if you take too long to attack them, but also you can use an item to prevent this. This is an amazing mechanic.

[@smotbutterman1127]

In Fallout 4 enemies mutate and some use stimpacks.

[@enkiimuto1041]

Although there is no regen in combat for Dofus, it kinda does that. Some bosses discourage you from healing otherwise you'll die, etc. Each one is different but it is quite interesting how they play with this. League of Legends also forces you to combat monsters once and for all when you start combat, otherwise they'll not consider a combat anymore and get full health again.

[@deriznohappehquite]

Halo uses this mechanic pretty well. Do you hide and let that elite replenish its shields, or take a chance and finish it off? Also, games with regenerating health should have enemies push your position and try to flush you out when you try to hide/are on low health.

[@michaelramon2411]

While it does use bog-standard auto-heal regenerating health (which was a departure from its predecessors), I think Rainbow Six Vegas is an interesting example of how you can have variety even with that system. You see, Vegas is a cover-based tactical shooter in which the "cover" and "tactical" bits are actually really important. While your health regenerates, it is very low overall, and any enemy can more-or-less two-shot you if you're out in the open. Additionally, the checkpoints are pretty far apart, which normally is bad game design but in this case gives you the feeling that mistakes have consequences and makes you fight more cautiously and thoughtfully, giving you a sense of what it's like to be a single-life, one-HP real life SWAT member even though you're not. The result is a shooter that, despite you having regenerating health, you can still at the end of the game say that you won not because you're an unkillable god, but because the enemies got shot and you didn't.

[@alsoarkb0t]

COD:Hey, you're injured, get to cover. COD Player: Okay, I go to cover den. DOOM: You're injured! DOOM player: Okay I guess I'll get in cov- DOOM: *Did I say stop being doomguy?*

[@desmondcayce]

lol

[@alexrandall8557]

Rip and tear!

[@Flamuski]

DOOM Slayer*

[@nannobot1280]

The fact is this is really funny

[@christopherbenson5160]

Doomguy 😂😂😂😂

[@variaold3303]

One of my favorite health systems is in Ultrakill. The tagline is "Mankind is Dead, *Blood is Fuel*, Hell is Full." Instead of health pickups, splashing enemies blood on yourself regenerates health. SImilar to Doom (which the game clearly takes major inspiration from), this encourages agressive, close-quarters combat, as firing at enemies from far away means no blood can reach you. Once it hits the floor, you can no longer use it to regen.

[@NintendanGX]

The 3D Ninja Gaiden games (not counting 3) had a really cool way of implementing health pick-ups in a game. Aside from healing items, Ryu can collect yellow essence or blue essence from his fallen enemies. Yellow essence is currency, whereas blue essence restores health. If the player charges Ryu's heavy attack, they'll eventually be able to unleash an ultimate technique to defeat enemies more easily, but if they charge near essence orbs, then Ryu will absorb those orbs to charge up the ultimate technique a lot faster. And if you choose to absorb a blue essence orb instead of healing yourself with it, you're charged up straight away, allowing the player to attack faster without being left open while they charge. So Team Ninja have created a health system in which the player must decide whether they should sacrifice a health pick-up to unleash a devastating attack, or play it safe and restore their health. And due to the fast-paced nature of the games' combat, they must make this decision as fast as humanly possible.

[@nitehood108]

I'm surprised you didn't mention Metroid Prime 3. Very clever health system if you ask me. At any time, the player can hold - on the Wii mote to sacrifice one full energy tank of health to enter Hyper Mode, which gives you new attack options and increases the damage you do for about 10 seconds. While in Hyper Mode, enemy attacks don't hurt you, but instead make you leave Hyper Mode faster.

[@Monody512]

NiteHood Hypermode wasn’t clever. It was a stupid gimmick which replaced much better mechanics from the previous games. The idea of using health as high-powered ‘berserker’ ammo sounds interesting on paper, but in practice… it’s impossible to balance. When I play the game, I usually find hypermode to be a complete waste unless I’m just really sick on some enemies and want them to die quickly. This is because the fixed amount of health a hypermode activation drains is almost always more than I lose to damage by not using hypermode. This also created the previously brushed-upon problem of enemies needing to be balanced with hypermode in mind, thus having much more health than in previous games. This makes them a chore to fight, instead of fun. If Retro’s goal was to make hypermode like a drug addiction, (it makes you feel powerful, but slowly kills you) they should probably have focused more on the corruption aspect, and ditched the health-ammo entirely. After all, the game tracks how many times you’ve used hypermode in a playthrough… why not give that a lasting, cumulative effect?

[@kartblaster9987]

@@Monody512 hm. interesting.

[@RationalSlave]

Dark souls also has a darn hyper mode and it's called "Red Tear Stone Ring" 😂 RTSR for short :P

[@BigBoy-lk2gj]

@@Monody512 I haven't played the Metroid games, but do you think some sort of semi-permanent or completely permanent reduction in maximum health would've given this a nice balance and lasting consequence?

[@Monody512]

@@BigBoy-lk2gj Maybe, but I think it would've been even better to make it work more subtly. With each use of hypermode, increment a hidden value that makes hypermode a little stronger, and makes you weaker when not in hypermode. (Damage output and damage resistance are candidates for stats to change.) This could be paired with a gradual change in the visual and audio effects, with hypermode becoming less harsh, and non-hypermode becoming washed out and dull. So the more you use it, the more the game design encourages you to use it.

[@MtnSmithy]

I saw F-Zero GX and immediately got incredibly happy. That game's use of health is pretty intense.

[@romantistcaveman]

I know, right? It adds a really impressive skill ceiling to the game, so you've got all these insane speedrunners that can just fly around the track on a sliver of health.

[@Melkac]

The health system in F-Zero is not unique to that game, though...it's a mechanic unique to the series.

[@briangeer1024]

The health system in kid icarus: uprising is designed to make the player feel powerful. The last 1/3 of the health bar is tougher than the previous 2/3, and losing all your health (in solo mode) puts you for a few seconds into a state called “crisis mode” where each attack received has a chance to kill you based on the damage it deals, and you lose the ability to heal. After exiting Crisis mode, you’ll regain a sliver of health (and the ability to heal), but it can only be activated 3 times between loading screens. After that, you’ll die outright. And every time you die, you can continue from just before the place you died, on a lower difficulty.

[@Wownerd1265]

"Compare that to a game like Dark Souls" "Aw shit, I got hit one time. Gotta go back to the bonfire and try again." - me a week ago

[@Demonskunk]

check out Furi's health system. it gives you one large bar and a few small boxes of health. same with the bosses. whenever you drain the boss' current bar it heals your current bar completely and transitions you to the next phase of the fight. if the boss drains your current life bar it resets the current phase and fills the boss's current bar completely. so it rewards you for skilled play and lightly punishes you for unskilled play.

[@black1blade74]

It also gives you an extra life everytime you complete a phase so you'll always have at least 1 try to figure out the attack patterns of a phase.

[@Ten_Thousand_Locusts]

+black1blade -Eesa Ali And if you manage to parry attacks you'll get a bit of health back also

[@TylerSmith-wh3oh]

And last but not least, shooting green bullets shot by bosses drop health orbs that heal you.

[@black1blade74]

But those green orbs are very rare in furier mode.

[@Bananahogie]

Furi is so awesome. I can't recommend it enough. Especially as a free PS Plus game

[@sagewaterdragon]

I assume you are familiar with how health works in Earthbound and Mother 3 - health is a rolling meter that can be stopped and reversed if you manage to use a health item before it drops to 0. I think that this is an inventive way to turn a static turn-based system into something frantic.

[@lucybranford2095]

Yeah, it definiitely helps making the fights more interesting. Especially when you compare EB and M3 to EBB/EB0/M1.

[@TheViolaBuddy]

It was interesting, though I'm not sure I personally liked it all that much (though I know many others do). Frantically going through menus and mashing A did not seem like a particularly exciting experience (it was more frustrating than anything, when the character dies before you get to heal him/her). Paper Mario 2's Action Commands are my favorite way of incorporating real-time elements into a turn-based battle system, though that's not quite the topic at hand.

[@lucybranford2095]

Viola Buddy When it comes to real time elements in turn based battles, you can't beat the Mario & Luigi series, imo.

[@TheViolaBuddy]

Matthew the Hylian I haven't played anything from that series, actually. I might check it out if I get the chance.

[@sagewaterdragon]

Viola Buddy The must-plays are Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story, the rest are good but could be skipped.

[@DanielAvelan]

What I love about Resident Evil 2 is that your health affects your walking speed. Since most of the times in this game you outrun and dodge most enemies to save ammo, when you get hit you have to make a choice: try to dodge more, which is much riskier now that you are slower, spend your ammo or spent precious health items to make you faster, which would give you an edge against bosses. Another one I like a lot is Cave Story. While the health is much like 16-8 bit games, in this game you loose your weapon upgrades when you get it, and from there you have 3 options: use your invincibility (when you blink) to escape the fight and loose your upgrades, use the it to get them and get yourself even more in the middle of the fight, or retreat a bit and kill the enemies to get upgrade points from them. On a similar note, the ring system in Sonic games is freaking awesome.

[@Gaff.]

I miss the way RE2 did it. As the series went on, they preserved the idea but didn't make you limp as if you were ready to keel over the way it was in RE2. It felt truly desperate and I loved it. At the same time, RE2 was probably the easiest classic-era RE game. I'm trying to get my hands on a version that has the harder difficulties now that I know about them.

[@kchikwete]

Limb damage affecting game play. Get shot/cut one arm no dual wield or 2 armed guns, too close to a grenade blast hearing is affected, fall and break a leg etc. Get hurt too many times the limb has some permanent effects eg reduced speed till the end, abuse of health or enhancers having psychological effects e.g hallucinations or reduced response time .

[@Ankhyl]

I felt that there was no conclusion to this video, only showing how different games have different approaches.

[@MichaelRRyan]

Well there isn't really a conclusion, there's no right way to do it, jus different ways. I think the title conveys pretty well that it's just about how different games handle health systems

[@pirateclick1d169]

@@MichaelRRyan there is a right way to do it but it's subjective

[@MichaelRRyan]

@@pirateclick1d169 *no definitive right way to do it

[@Terithian]

I feel like the conclusion is encouraging developers to try new things with health systems, and not just fall back on the "regen behind cover" system because everyone else is doing it. Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with that, but lots of other options exist, and should be explored when designing a game.

[@somedudeintheinterweb8665]

Well it does clearly state "how games do heath" not really how to do health right. So it makes sense

[@ghost_ship_supreme]

4:35 "that does small amount of damage" *takes away half the health bar*

[@stupid90able]

In bloodrayne 2 when you run out ammo your guns start using your health as ammo.

[@Afaik777]

In Crimsonland there was a perk that allowed you to use health for ammo while your gun was reloading

[@05predo]

Something similar was in SoulSacrifice (PSvita) where you can use a spell that used your health as your ammo

[@Techtronos]

IIRC It used EXP for ammo. Not sure if there was a health perk.

[@Afaik777]

I think you are right, haven't played that game in a long time

[@Techtronos]

Andrey Kim Maybe there was the healh one, but it was totally useless because there was EXP one and it was vitally important for score atacks.

[@Fedezeza]

In Banners Saga health is also your attack, meaning that the more health you have, the more damage you will do.

[@Jadfisk]

Fedezeza same as in Advance Wars. A units health is also it’s attacking strength

[@jeromealday614]

That's kinda one-sided

[@elgman4649]

This is a long post on an old video, sorry about that! But i just discovered your content and i'm loving it, and you have inspired me to share some thoughts on the game play mechanics of the health system in one of my fav games. I hope you find it interesting! DayZ's health system is pretty inspired IMO, perhaps with the caveat that it is rough round the edges and only works in its genre. I see it as a phenomenal system both in how it pursues the game's core objective (survival combat simulation), and also how it manipulates player and multiplayer behaviour. From halo it takes the idea of having multiple health metrics (in this case Bone, Health, Blood and Shock). All of these Regenerate (well, shock depreciates, more on that later), However at varying rates and depending on things like how well fed the player is, and whether their wounds have been treated. Additionally the Bone, and Shock values are hidden from the player, while health is revealed via status messages and blood by fading of screen colour when low. The REAL genius however is how these metrics interact. Shock is different from all the other stats in that it starts at zero. If bone, health or blood drop to 0 you die, if shock rises above your current blood, you fall unconscious. The player has a natural rate of shock recovery (that is, reduction), and every attack carries a certain amount of shock "damage" based on the weapon, hit location, and armour. Note that this unconsciousness emerges from the interaction of blood and shock only. Blood can be changed independently by attacks causing blood "damage", but also by attacks causing bleeding (that is, constant blood damage over time. And of course, the lower your blood value is the less powerful an attack is required to knock you out, as the value your shock has to beat to make you unconscious is lower. Additionally if you are bleeding faster than you can recover shock then you will NEVER wake up unless somebody else bandages you. without this aid you will remain unconscious until blood reaches zero, and you die. The next layer brings long term survival "strategy" into play alongside short term combat "tactics" in a way that rewards both. Your health stat is an abstract measure of how well your basic needs are met. Players who are fed, watered, not sick and not too warm or cold will regenerate health optimally and tend to have a high health stat. Over the medium term (that is 20mins+), health is automatically "spent" by the body to regenerate lost blood. Put simply players whose' basic needs are catered for tend to recover faster from combat, and tend to enter combat with higher blood stat. This makes them less likely to fall unconscious from weaker attacks, able to regain consciousness faster, and able to make more mistakes before they bleed out. The final stat bone is mysterious somewhat. It may regenerate naturally, if so it does this very slowly indeed (ie many hours), though it can be regenerated using certain health items. This may well be the main cause of death for experienced characters and just makes the game generally more dangerous as you survive longer, arguably simulating that even a well handled survival situation slowly wears you down. What i love about this, and what made me want to share it here, is how this combine so many elements of what you have discussed in ways that are complicated to describe but just *work* intuitively when you're playing. Its a true hybrid system that has a health bar, multiple health stats like halo, health as a "currency" and also the gut wrenching low health stress of dark souls. Your survival skills allow you to survive combat better, and your combat skills reduce the burden on your survival. And when you get knocked out you're never sure if you'll wake up because your buddy saved you or because the guy you tried to rob has tied you up and administered first aid. In the later case maybe you can talk your way out... Its definitely not for everyone, but it is exquisitely fit for purpose.

[@gameformation2100]

Thanks for sharing this :)

[@itaisinger1360]

hi mark. i have been thinking recently about interesting ways to do health in games and i came up with a cool idea for a game. in the game, you play as a bloodthirsty monster or a sociopath. the player character is over powered in every way, you have different abilities that can one shot enemies and the enemies themselves aren't that strong, but can deal damage here and there. your main source of damage and transportation is your abilities. your abilities don't use cooldowns or mana, they use your health. basically, every time you use an ability, you take damage. you also have regenerative health, so in a fight, you will be fighting yourself more than the actual enemies, consistently pushing yourself to your absolute limit, getting yourself in danger just so you could deal the extra damage. the game is super fast pace and should feel brutal, like doom for example. i want to make a prototype but im using game maker and im not sure how a 2D pixel art style is fitting for this type of game but lemme know if you are interested, maybe I will try anyway.

[@matman000000]

The thing I don't like about regenerating health isn't that it's easy (it can often be harder than a health bar, because the game expects you to get hurt), but that it breaks the flow of the combat. I'm tired of sitting behind a wall and staring at the ground for 10s before I can get back to playing.

[@FraserSouris]

Depends on the pace of the game. Some games like Rainbow 6 Vegas, Metro etc use the tension that comes with that well and could not be accomplished as well without regenerating health. I feel it only hurts when the game encourages momentum like Uncharted, where regenarting health brings it down. Perhaps a system where kills restore health so players can be out in the open more?

[@DantesInferno96]

Uncharted truly has a conflicting combat system. Its gunplay encourages fast pace action but the health system works against it. The whole world going black and white is very off putting. The last of us did it better.

[@KilloZapit]

There is also the fact that just having meter or number for how healthy you are in the first place is a kind of silly and overused gaming abstraction. I kinda wish more games would be like Dwarf Fortress and actually attempt to keep track of body parts and their functions and how they are damaged, but that is a really complicated system. A simpler system might be how Metal Gear Solid 3 uses a hybrid system with a health meter that has it's maximum be effected by wounds, or how Dues Ex uses multiple meters for different body parts.

[@TanitAkavirius]

Fallout implemented it to a limited extent. But I agree. Rimworld is like that, but it's based on DF. The characters' health bars are their blood level. But an unlucky (or lucky, if it's a raider) shot in the brain or the heart is an instakill.

[@Sylfa]

Sniper Elite sorta kinda does it I believe, where your shots are tracked and it even has model for the innards, giving it the ability to track what organ the kill shot hit. It uses it more for gory kills (instead of the Doom glory kill) but it wouldn't be terribly hard to use a similar method for "health". And another game (forget the name) have you decide if you want some assistance at "vending machines", but you randomly get a negative effect as well, such as losing a leg, making you jump along to move for the rest of the game (Rogue lite game). That one had traditional health bar as well though, just an idea for the consequences of body part damage.

[@ELFanatic]

Depends on the game and it's goals. I don't wanna worry about what limb is injured in overwatch. That said, Bushido Blade still holds my full respect for disabling limbs and having heads wounds be an instant kill in a fighting game.

[@zeropositivo1990]

Isn't Star Citizen kinda heading that way? Or at least I remember hearing that a few years ago. Who knows what the heck they actually are doing by now, considering all the compromises they are making to actually make the thing work

[@AndrewBrownK]

I was looking/waiting for this comment

[@Kaldrin]

Now that I noticed it, Mario's health system is amazing

[@Xonatron]

In Thexder, your health and energy is the same. Used up by taking damage or using your main weapon. Using up lots of your health to generate a shield where you cannot get hurt (for a while) is also possible.

[@Parker--]

"Call of Duty CODified the system we have today." I see what you did there. >_>

[@casekocsk]

- ICO has interesting health system... you can't dead but Yorda is weak and can be easily kidnapped (which means game over). - And I think there are some games where you are indestructible being but always has some kind of glaring flaw... like constantly drained battery... or weak companion that you must actively protect... not sure if it makes the game fun though... - Helldivers also have a very interesting health system. Your life bar is divided into two parts. Losing the first half will knock you down and your second half life will be drained slowly... You must quickly press buttons to regain health until you get back about 3/4 of your overall health. You can "increase" your health by wearing energy shield equipment. Now things get more interesting when you dead... and playing co-op (with up to 3 other players). When anyone dead, they can be "reinforced" (or respawned) by other players. As long as there is one other player able to jot down the reinforce combination, all dead players will be respawned at once and with no cost (other than slight delay before you can reinforce again... and every player has their own recharge meter). This means as long as one player alive, all the players can be revived again... and again... and again... and again... it's really intense since the game can be very hard and punishing. And to make things even more interesting... you can prepare the "reinforce" before you died, so you can respawn yourself (and the rest of your teams) when you die as long as you can press the combination before you die.

[@Let_Toons]

The turn based RPG "Steven Universe: Attack the Light" has an interesting health system. The game is based on a cartoon, and the main caracter of the show can't lose health, but can't attack either, and has only healing (cheapest ability of his) and abilities that influence your party. On the other hand, all the other caracthers can attack, AND be attacked, but after taking an certain amount of damage, the stronger ability gets disabled until that health is healed again, and losing more health means losing more abilities. This system pushes you to a healer based gameplay, were you heal not only to prevent the caracthers from dying, but to win the fight faster. It also makes you use the main caracter of the cartoon more, making him still hold such tytle even though its a game were you can choose wich carachter acts or not.

[@sprazz8668]

Hollow Knight has one of my favourite health systems. Basically you have base 5 hitpoints, and you lose a hitpoint when you take damage. When you deal damage to an enemy with your melee weapon you fill up a meter, and if you hold down the heal button for about a second you can use up 1/3 of the meter and regenerate one hitpoint. The meter can also be used to cast spells, and the healing is cancelled if you take damage. The result of this is that you need to go and fight enemies when you're low without using spells (but you don't have to kill them, just hit them), and you also need to learn enemy attack patterns or find cover in order to get the time to heal, as the healing is cancelled when you take damage.

[@markkelly2073]

I think one of the best health systems I’ve seen in a game is Minecraft, where you regenerate health, but only if your saturation (the second variable influenced by food though never shown to the player) is at a certain point. It turns the hunger bar from just something else to kill you to a strategy of what foods will make you heal fastest.

[@monochromatic9601]

Which is fairly common in survival games, but a fair point none the less

[@adams13245]

That sounds like an interesting idea. I've wondered if food in survival games could be more than a game over for running out. You could combine it with a system where food gives you a bonus, like in Breath of the Wild, and have a trade off of the more nourishing food give worse bonuses.

[@generalkitten2100]

@@adams13245 i think one game called vintage story(basically minecraft mod turned into standalone game) handles relation of food to health quite well, as you get extra max health from each food category you eat, making it beneficial to eat a varied diet to get the most max health

[@mrj4990]

The Darkness has a neat idea how eating the hearts of enemies gives you a significant boost in health. Great game that I highly recommend

[@Moonsaladz]

Borderlands 2 handled it interestingly. You choose how health works in it. There's packs that drop that Regen 25%, guns & grenades can have life steal, Perks and class mods allow health Regen and in some cases you have to play certain ways such as melee for the health Regen.

[@jacobskarda]

Until you get to UVHM and your health doesn't matter anymore. No matter your build, taking any more than 3 hits at a time means that you get to go into fight for your life, because the damage scaling gets so high

[@buttered__toast_2899]

Jacob Skarda grog nozzle + storm front = gg ez

[@TurboButton]

I knew Other M wasn't a real Metroid game the moment floating balls of health didn't pop out of aliens and instead I was asked to restore health by thinking really hard.

[@ItsLeah43]

Granted, Other M was going for a more action-y, less focus on exploration and resource management, while pushing the combat elements more heavily. Given what they were trying to accomplish with the game, that health system isn't exactly inane, and despite it definitely not feeling like a metroid game at all really, I still enjoyed it on it's own merits

[@Monody512]

There were many aspects of Other M that I didn’t like. …Its health system wasn’t one of them. It actually worked quite well to eliminate the problem of being stuck on 1hp, while building tension on your way between navigation booths. (Much like Dark Souls builds tension between bonfires)

[@foxymetroid]

@@Monody512 But that removes the risk/reward system of the other games.

[@Monody512]

@@foxymetroid Risk/reward works better if it's deterministic like DOOM, not RNG like other Metroid games.

[@DisKorruptd]

@@Monody512 since when is Metroid RNG? Metroid is VERY static in how things work, that's a big thing in most Metroidvanias, the only time there is RNG is when it's got RPG elements, and that RNG is only in the loot drops

[@rainbowbatsuit]

I like Broforce's one hit death system. If forces you to consider how each Bro can approach an encounter and ensures you play with and learn all of its characters to keep going. The randomised character selection on death helps boost replayability by forcing you to adopt new tactics to face old threats.

[@RuthwikRao]

Ayyyyy literally wrote a comment regarding this a while back on another thread regarding Hotline Miami.

[@ImperishableDani]

inFamous’ regenerating health system is my favorite regenerating health system in any video game. I think its brilliant. You regenerate far slower than a lot of shooters or games with regeneration. In order to get health and stay in the fight you need to use cole’s electricity powers to sap electricity from nearby power sources to gain it back really quickly. I love this system because it constantly reinforces Cole’s powers without making him feel unstoppable. It creates a better relationship with you and the game world. There is a lot of tension when there arent power sources near you and you have to risk being in the line of fire to find one.

[@lincolnmiller4757]

In Shovel Knight: King of Cards, the more dangerous enemies drop health hearts after taking enough damage, giving the player an incentive to fight them despite the risk of getting hurt.

[@hippiehippo9030]

Skyforge, a mmorpg does something similar, with bosses and the occasional elite units dropping golden orbs that heal like 20% of your health. But the game has zero (as of the last time i played) healers. Other than the gold orbs or finishing combat, there is no way to heal your character. Well, there os god form, but thats a 15 minute cooldown...

[@unapersona100real6]

also specter of torment ng+ you health is also magic

[@slowbro13215]

That reminds me of a mechanic in Wild ARMs 2, although it's not a health mechanic. You can bascially overkill bosses to get extra experience points. It basically gives the game an easy mode and hard mode that you can choose on the fly. You can skip the overkill completely if you just want the game to be easy, or you can overkill most bosses but take the easy way out on just the really hard ones, or overkill every single boss if you're a completionist. You also get to skip more of the random encounters in the dungeons if you get extra experience during boss fights, which is really nice in an old JRPG.

[@Shadow_Noceda]

Something similar passes in the actual donkey kong country games (returns and tropical freezee) during the bosses

[@oliverwirth42]

"And you're rewarded for truly skillful play" **spams r1**

[@SonOfSparda3139]

haha shield go brrrrr

[@l.pietrobon3925]

@@SonOfSparda3139 Lmao imagine using a shield

[@TheCandyManTeam]

I like regenerating health in some games because it allows the developer to design encounters knowing that the player will be able to take a predictable amount of punishment. It's a reason I'm turned off of early shooters like DOOM, since my amateur performance early makes progress later impossible, as I get hurt more than I heal. I like Halo's system of a combination of static and regenerating health, allowing a reward for playing well: If you beat an encounter without making too many mistakes, the next encounter is easier. The fact that it regenerates in battle also allows for newer players a chance to "fix" their mistakes in the middle of a fight by playing more cautiously. It's not the right choice for all games, because if frequently hiding from threats in the middle of combat becomes a first order optimal strategy, then the game may become boring quickly. I do miss healthbars though. Depriving that information from players means the decisions they make may not be completely informed, like not realizing you aren't fully healed, or that you are closer to death than you might realize. It might be good for some games that may rely on that uncertainty to create tension, but it actually discourages risky or intelligent behavior.

[@ExTess]

Ross from Accursed Farms pointed out a neat little health system in the game Dungeon Siege, wherein you have the typical red health and blue mana bars, and to replenish the bars quickly you can drink a potion. However, each potion acts as a backup health bar, and the player simply drinks what they need to fill up the bar and saves the rest for later. This leads to deciding whether you can pull out a potion in the middle of a fight and chug as fast as you can to fill up your health bar, and trying to decide whether you should save time chugging by drinking a single full potion, or risk the extra frames of animation to finish off several half-full ones. I've always liked that idea, and it would be cool to see other RPG-type games follow this formula.

[@syrelian]

While there isn't the frame issue, the MegaMan X games and beyond have a similar system, SubTanks, which store up excess energy you collect at a 2:1 ratio, in most of the X Series you would always consume the entire SubTank no matter your remaining HP, forcing a thought between "Can I take another hit" and "Do I use the tank now and lose a bit of energy in the exchange", Later games moved to only using what was needed, which sadly just makes them like expanded HP Bars, but there's still those moments where its like "I should use a tank now, because this Full Energy will just top it up afterwards since I'll be full myself"

[@matthewparker9276]

Terraeia also does the enemies drip health thing, which encourages interesting gameplay such as entering a large collection of enemies to collect health, interacting with boss minions because they will drop health quicker, and even summoning in small enemies to exploit their health drops.

[@jimmypetelol]

MGS3 Cure System. 14/15 years later and I have yet to see a video game with a system at such quality

[@myungkeon]

702 likes to 1 dislike ratio. Honestly why doesn't he have more subscribers? His videos are of really high quality.

[@wordsshackles441]

You can't have the best and the greatest numbers.

[@DrBeefmaster]

The dislike must be because he said that Mario hits blocks with his head when he actually punches them. Big difference, I see why the dislike is there.

[@TheGuardian163]

someone needs to post it on reddit

[@cdubsb3831]

Because he's British?

[@garagavia]

YT does not promote someone with such infrequent uploads as much as you would think.

[@mdstevens0612]

I have commented this on so many videos but what about the rings system from Sonic the Hedgehog? Keeping your rings and building up to 100 gives you an extra life; losing them puts you down to 0 but you can regain 25% of your rings if you're fast enough. Take a hit at 0 Rings and you lose a life. Essentially it means you can take infinite hits if you can recover at least one ring, and you're rewarded for playing well and not taking any hits. The rings also increase your score. It's so simple and effective and personally I think underrated.

[@wordsshackles441]

Actually yes, Sonic has a great health system, I am surprised he didn't think of it.

[@CediraNagae]

I'm just gonna go ahead and leave my pet peeve here 4:00 IT'S A SLIVER OF HEALTH NOT A SLITHER. SLITHER IS WHAT SNAKES DO.

[@ollieb9875]

Blanc's secret fanfic collection I was actually going to say the same thing but scrolled though hundreds of comments in case.. 😂🙃

[@chrissylvester7101]

Just had to be that guy

[@lotrbuilders5041]

Well he is only one or two places of articulations of

[@W3Rn1ckz]

He said sliver. The accent must be confusing.

[@oldvlognewtricks]

@@W3Rn1ckz He really didn't - definitely said slither. This is a common error in the UK - hypercorrection since many dialects replace voiced 'th' with 'v' (and unvoiced 'th' with 'f'). Mark does quite a few of these, so it's in character for the odd malapropism to sneak through. See Majora's Mask Boss Keys for 'exasperate' instead of 'exacerbate' - although exasperate is exactly what it did when he said it.

[@TheMagicalNam]

In a survival/exploring game you could make fruits regenerate health but they give you effects like nausea 30-120 seconds after fore ca 15 seconds. The effect is dependent upon with plants and how grown the fruits are. Sometimes the effect is more bad than the health it restores. This encourages experimentation and exploration, especially if you can store like 3 of them. And you will after some time recognise what is good and bad.

[@duchi882]

*Meanwhile Sekiro* _"That wasn't even my final form!*_

[@OldyAlbert]

Furi did a nice thing where some bosses's bullets are health orbs and you need to skillfully grab them and dont get hit. I liked how Earth Defence Force did Health in co-op. You don't regen and can heal yourself only by rare limited weapons or health-packs and ressurecting a friend will give him half of your current health. So while a game let you ressurect alot - it doesn't break the balance because general amount of health in a mission stays the same. I honestly hate modern health regen. My main problem with it is that it's boring because it forces you to basically sit in one place and do nothing rather then counter-attack and since i usually play on maximum difficulty it becomes a chore. I like health-pack system like Max Payne, Resident Evil, Dark Souls because it basically the same thing as old school system where you need to find health packs, but it let you store some on you so you don't need to run back after getting hert to pick-up what you left behind. RPGs and health is another topic alltogether where healer is a often a whole role.

[@Skullnaught]

Dorf Fortress has a system not built on 'hit points' per se, but on bodily damage overall it leads to some amazing situations

[@syrelian]

SPONGE OP

[@Kirbman]

I hope to see Dwarf Fortress on this channel someday.

[@WaddleDee105]

Sonic has always done health in a unique way. The ring system allows for players to make as many minor mistakes as they like as long as they have rings, but losing your rings means you aren't going to be getting more points or 1-ups anytime soon from them, so it's still a punishment.

[@MamaFeng]

5:34 Mirror's Edge Catalyst is such an underrated game. The story and some of the characters are garbage, but it's SO FUN. I specially like the Focus Shield mechanic, because with it you're encouraged to run away and parkour around the enemies instead of confronting them, and it feels amazing. The shield builds up the more you run, and it maintains itself so long as you are moving, it's like Faith is ignoring the bullets and running faster than them, dodging all of the fire. It's so great.

[@henryfleischer404]

Touhou luna nights has an interesting approach to health. You regenerate health by grazing enemies and enemy attacks. This encourages risky play, but not aggressive play, as keeping an enemy alive, even just for a few seconds, can be extremely helpful. I'd like to see something like this in an fps, as it works very well in a 2d action platformer metroidvania.

[@michaelmoore946]

Sonic has another interesting health system. As long as you have some rings, you can take a hit; but without any rings you're entirely vulnerable and desperate to get just one ring.

[@santiagovare]

To be perfectly honest, I always thought Sonic's health system was pretty stupid cause it basically means that having 80 rings and having 1 ring is the exact same thing.

[@Afrohawk512]

+santiagovare I disagree, mainly because 1 ring =\= 20+ rings. You always dropped 20 but you could never pick them all up, meaning your chances for getting more on your next mistake twiddled as you continued. Every mistake would give you a choice between getting as many as possible or achieving your objective quicker, whether it was moving forward in hopes of finding more or getting another hit on Eggman. It was fun. A bit annoying for some but it was punishing enough without being too challenging.

[@michaelmoore946]

Not really. Like Mario, Sonic gains a life if he collects 100. It basically gives the coins from the Mario games more of a reason to be there other than to just subtly hint at where the player should be going.

[@michaelmoore946]

It also gives the player more incentive to make less mistakes.

[@DoubleATam]

In Sonic Advance 2, the system has further depth: having more rings means you can hit Boost Mode earlier, thus another way to reward skillful play.

[@TheAlex010]

I think how hollow knight handles health is very smart. In the game your health is represented by masks, each time you get hit or fall in spikes/hazards you lose 1 mask, but some attacks from some characters do 2 masks. The only way to heal in the game is by the use of soul. You gain soul by attacking and hitting monsters. This system makes it so that players are incentivised to play more aggressive even when they're low on health. The player also needs to decide how they want to spend their soul, as throughout the game the player obtains and upgrades various spells, that are far stronger, are easier to hit, and are AOE, unlike the standard sword swing. This dynamic blusters the quality of the game, rewarding the player for being aggressive and having good timing, since the heal takes a few seconds.

[@DigiTism]

All health bars are mistake bars though. If you're health is at 100% an an enemy does an attack that deals 10% of your health and a stronger attack that does 25% of your health, then you know you only have ten mistakes for the 10% attack and four for the 25% attack. From there, you can calculate how many mistakes you're allowed based on different combinations of attacks and mistakes allotted before you hit the fail state. Also, converting soul into health is similar to Bloodborne in which attacking enemies allows you to gain health when you are aggressive. Hollow Knight simply has one extra step that adds to the pressure of low health - you need time to convert that soul into a mask. Or, you can risk it all and use a spell hoping to end the encounter faster. For the first option, Team Cherry did a Doom: The mechanics are designed in such a way to guide players to certain play styles. Hollow Knight, Bloodborne, and Doom are all designed for "aggressiveness" in regards to health. It is interesting, however, how health, healing, and combat are so closely linked in Hollow Knight, but when you break it down, Team Cherry really didn't do anything much different than other titles.

[@DigiTism]

Abel Saavedra 100% agree. I only got the opportunity to play HK when it released on PS4. It’s undoubtedly one of my all time favorites.

[@Gnurklesquimp]

I also really LOVE Dark Souls' bonfire system, it loses some of it's value when you've learned their locations though

[@jahooker]

Hey, I know this is a long time after your video was put up, but Absolver (which came out about a year and a bit ago) has a heal mechanic that is quite interesting. You can activate a heal ability for a cost of two “tension shards” (which are built up to a maximum of five during combat, a bit like adrenaline in other games, but which remain even after the fight is over). This ability only heals a small amount; it’s real power comes from the fact that it begins a timer and hits that you land on an opponent before the timer runs out regenerate additional health. However, the flipside is that if you get hit during the countdown, the ability “fails”. It encourages you to use it only when you feel you can avoid damage for the next few seconds. This means that it requires some genuine skill to reap the largest health recovery.

[@enonsages]

I just love your voice , it's so calm , I feel like I'm listening to a podcast and I am learning something new in the same time , try and expand your youtube channel. Heck , you can even read out loud some facts or documetaries and still be super interesting !

[@shehzaanaabdulla3047]

What's that? COD CODified modern health systems you say?

[@gpjk4172]

Weird that he says that Call of Duty popularized regenerating health, when Halo 2 did away with health packs in favor of shield recharging first when it came out a year earlier.

[@deriznohappehquite]

He said that Halo CE popularized the concept of regenerating health, while CoD codified the 'strawberry jam' system.

[@transformersloverjon]

John D. But you're missing the point that Halo 2 only had one overt health meter, which was the shield that acts exactly the same as CoD's strawberry jam.

[@ieldridge89]

yeah, no med-kits and the health regenerated quicker

[@Beegrene]

For a long time regenerating health was referred to as Call of Duty 2 syndrome.

[@KedViper]

But you _do_ know that you can switch to Diddy Kong at any point, right?

[@GMTK]

Yeah

[@foxymetroid]

Yeah, but the topic was about health in video games. Taking damage limits your possible play styles. Lose Diddy and you're stuck with the slower, less agile Donkey Kong. Lose Donkey Kong and you lose the ability to take out the bigger Kremlings by jumping on them. You're stuck that way until you can find a DK barrel to replenish your "health".

[@cocojs15]

4:37 right when the boulder came, my screen froze. It was like a "To Be Continued" meme

[@moresnqp]

Nuclear Throne is a top-down roguelike shooter by Vlambeer, it uses themedkit system but enemies drop more medkits when you’re low on health, and they fade in about 10 seconds.

[@sapphic_sophie]

It’s cool to see how the PS4 Spider-Man game handles the hitscan bullet damage system. Just before an enemy fires at Spidey, a spider-sense indicator appears above his head along with a vector line denoting the direction of the bullet. This simultaneously gives the player the ability to dodge out of the way and also makes them feel more like Spider-Man. It’s worth noting that that game also allows the player to heal by building up “focus” essentially doing well in combat without getting hit, and then using a button to either use focus to heal or to perform a finisher. This gives even more incentive to dodge bullets (since not getting hit allows you to recover a small amount of health) and it also allows the player to take a risk by sacrifice healing opportunities to take out an enemy.

[@CaptainBagman]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodliness has several ways to recover health, with the best one being through biting people to get their blood. It makes a lot of sense from both a gameplay and storytelling perspective. And there is a lot of nuance to it too as you can drink blood from innocents and enemies as well, drinking from innocents can kill them and cost you humanity points. while enemies can get away from your grasp.

[@SrEncon]

It's also interesting that your health regenerates relatively slow, as stated in the lore, but taking aggravated damage (fire, supernatural weapons) means it will do so at a reduced speed. Blood packs are probably the fastest way to recover health, but they are very expensive or rare. Also worth noting is that both your health and "mana" are tied and recover at the same time whenever you get blood.

[@myriamh.2182]

I personally enjoyed the health system in the Witcher it regenerated slowly with potions and had his drawbacks since it poisened Geralt. The shield let you screw up one time in a while without immediately punishing you. Though I wasn t really a fan of the leveled up version since you could just stand there and take hits while healing. I d like to see a shield that regenerated health if it was untouched for a certain amount of time.

[@Hersi310]

MGS 3's system really grew on me. Can't believe you didn't mention it.

[@testoftetris]

I haven't played MGS3, yet. How did it do health in a special way?

[@RyanArnold]

If im remembering correctly ur heath regains over time depending on how large ur stamina bar is. Hunger reduces that stamina bar. But injury also came into the equation

[@TheAnonymousNumbers]

Snake has a Stamina meter in addition to a health bar. You need to eat in order to maintain your stamina meter. Food can get rotten if it stays in your inventory too long, so you're encouraged to be constantly hunting or else get food poisoning. A high Stamina meter regenerates health, and a low one drains it. Also, there are certain injuries that the player has to fix with a certain amount of steps. For example, to fix a bullet wound, you remove the bullet with a knife, disinfect the wound, cauterize the wound with the styptic, then bandage the wound. To remove a leech, you put out your cigar on it. Leave wounds unchecked, and you lose stamina, or in certain situations, get special dialogue.

[@syrelian]

You don't lose HP for lacking Stamina, but your Regen slows to a crawl as it lowers

[@DarthFlages]

It is incredibly deep for something that could be so obvious (as many systems are in the MGS series). The game has a deep focus on survival, which means hunting, healing and overall maintenance is the key. Your health bar is dependent on your stamina bar, the stamina bar is dependent on a myriad of things. Your playstyle affects the stamina bar in the sense that different actions and loudouts drain the bar differently. If you keep carrying heavy guns around (if you are a combative player), the weight will drain the bar accordingly, as do your moves. Crawling hardly chips your bar, but running and rolling all the time can be very consuming (even more if it is done while carrying something heavy). Hunger, which happens mostly dependent on time elapsed, will drain the bar constantly. Hunting is fun as hell, as there is an insane variety of animals and food around. Different food regains the bar in different percentages, and some can even give hidden bonuses. The stamina goes full circle affecting your actions, most notably your aim is really dependent on it, having a heavy waivy motion when hungry and a controlled instance when full. Now finally talking about the actual health, it can be chipped away by damage, as usual, but it can also incur in serious injury. When injured, the bar will be limited, meaning that as long as you don't treat the wound, it can only be recovered (by having high stamina constantly feeding health to you) only to a certain point. When it get's low enough, a bleeding status will apply, in which your health will drop very rapidly! Lying down for a moment or applying bandages will stop the bleeding, but not recover the bar (you will be stuck with a very little bar). There's even a deeper system that people seldom know, one that I find incredibly clever. As I mentioned earlier, while injured, your bar is limited and thus won't recover to its full potential, but that's not entirely true! It will recover, but at an almost impossible to notice rate! This has a hidden bonus! Health recovered that way actually goes to even further than your original bar! You actually upgrade your bar recovering this way, kind of simulating a notion that "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" (as with healed broken bones are said to be stronger than their original forms, you know?). So the game has this background mechanic of challenging you to remain with a limited bar, risking being killed by lesser damage, but rewarding you for managing it for a long time!

[@eightyeight3694]

I love how the healing to the next tic mark works, if i ever make a game I'd probly make a health system like that

[@derian1245]

I just started playing Outward and I love their health system! There's no passive healing so you have to take consumables but the best aspect is that when you take damage your max health decreases until you sleep.

[@Harlequin314159]

Binding of Isaac is great too because the devil deals that let you trade health for good items wont spawn if you take too much red heart damage on the level. Basically it says "oh you took no damage, you must not need that health then".

[@santiagovare]

It's beyond me how this channel doesn't get more views.

[@TheAgentAPM]

When I first played Infamous, I wasn't fully awared, that vitality fully regenerates over time. I was used to classic lifebars.

[@GameBoyBlueATGMAIL]

First thing that came to my mind(and I thought would appear, tisk tisk Mark)... Mech Warrior. This is a game where each of your limbs has a health bar. When a limb is fully damaged it is destroyed disabling all systems and weapons attached to it. You can position your body so others are likely to hit a limb, while you protect another one. It's an interesting way to combine defense and offense into simultaneous play it's a very tactical game in this sense. If I had to recommend one it would be MechWarrior 4 Mercenaries. Great campaign.

[@noticeme6412]

in sora and aos2, you can regain red health by grazing bullets, but you also increase the amount of damage you take when you get hit, increases by the heat meter.

[@TomyIneXtriCable]

This channel is a Gem. Thank you for doing what you do,totally lovin' it!

[@CreepyAurores]

"there's a lot to like from the new DOOM game" *Me, watching the video 3 years later*...well, i mean: The new NEW DOOM game is built on this old new DOOM, so i guess this statement did age well

[@Th3_L30n]

I know i'm kinda late, but to heck with it... In the Borderlands games there are certain skills (depending on wich class you're playing with) that make certain tweaks to the way your health system works. To name a few: - Lilith The Siren, in Borderlands, has a skill called "Inner Glow" that allows her to regenerate health while Phasewalking. Wich in result forces you to use Phasewalk has a defensive skill, like a quick escape of near death and pick a new approach or tactic in mid-combat. - Axton The Commando, in Borderlands 2, has another. Has "Preparation", that makes your health regenerate only when your shield is fully charged, encouraging you to take cover when your shield is empty. There's also another one called "Able" that let's you regenerate health for a short time, if you or your turret damages an enemy. - Athena The Gladiator, in Borderlands The Pre-Sequel. She has "Vanguard" that makes you and your party regenerate health when you have your Aspis shield open, and if the shield takes damage the regeneration gets stronger. Something that encourages you to use de Aspis frequently.

[@JorgetePanete]

also Roland on Borderlands can regenerate ammo, shield, and health faster when he/the turret kills an enemy (with the abilities unlocked)

[@duffman18]

Borderlands also have certain shields that if you find and equip them, you get shield boosters that pop out of you when you get hit really badly, but land closer to the enemy, so it's a risk reward thing of do you go pick up the shield booster to boost it back up a bit and risk getting blasted with a shotgun point blank (or in the pre-sequel risk being slammed by one of the enemies that have moon jumped into the air).

[@davidbrickey8733]

One of Maya's skills makes any enemy you kill while paralyzing them with her special ability drop health orbs for her and her allies. That encourages her to focus fire on the locked enemy instead of the still-active ones. The healing is also dramatically stronger if you are low on health vs just topping off.

[@carolaccdr]

Also one of gaige skill regenerate her health when her gun is fully loaded, but going for the anarchy build it won't be really help since you lose your stacks from reloading, and sometimes just shotting to reload isn't ideal since with the low accuracy already waste to many bullets.

[@realpunkfruit]

also the mecromancer can regen health if her gun is reloaded/full of bullets

[@blackcitadelstudios]

Learnt a lot fr this. 😊 I'm making a game right now that ties health with your abilities. Having lower health will remove certain abilities and skills that you have. And regenerating health will take time and will require you to use another resource that can be found by killing enemies or gathering them from resource nodes.

[@darthbradertheinvader342]

The new game Outriders restores health depending on the class you've chosen. For the pyro for example, you must use one of your skills to damage someone and then finish them off. Seems like a great way to encourage skill use, and also to change up from the old tired regenerating health idea. I loved it.

[@aeroboss23]

I liked Hollow Knights way of getting health back. Use some of your "souls" by charging for a second to get one health back. It's simple and the game provides enough drawbacks with it so that sometimes, healing might not even be the best option. In hectic areas or boss fights, that one second you need to stand there charging could screw you over if your positioning is off. Additionally, using your "souls" on healing means one less spell you can cast since those use the same amount to cast.

[@LordDucky1]

I like how Metro 2033 obfuscates its health system. It doesn't make it clear precisely what your health is, or how much it regenerates, so you end up healing yourself just to be safe, when you can afford to.

[@Roboshi2007]

Another side to the losing of exploration is that losing the need for health also means there is one less thing to reward players with for exploring secrets. Perhaps this is the reason halo implimented those skulls to find and thus lead to the achievements we seen in games.

[@deriznohappehquite]

You can also add in things like over-healing items or weapons if you want to reward people for exploring.

[@jackdavies1960]

Hi mark, I’m a huge fan of the series, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen around 80% of game makers toolkit, with boss keys being the only videos I’ve left to watch. They’re fantastic, and you are so bloody articulate and well presented about such a dear topic to me that I would like to thank you greatly. Thank you. I was watching your stream earlier today and you replied to someone about how GMTK has the criticism of being full of things ‘we already know’, and I’d like to say that even though I knew a lot already about what you talk about in this particular video, I’d like to point out how the effort that you put into it and your attention to detail goes a very long way. I’ve been playing a lot of Brawlhalla lately, a smash.bros-style brawler of up to four players with extremely approachable, simple controls - it’s a fantastic party game and very welcoming to new players, however it also has a crazy esports scene and fantastic high level gameplay. Anyway, within its huge roster of characters is a character modelled off of Tarantino’s Kill Bill, named Hattori. Now this is a reference of course to Hattori Hanzo, the infamous Smith who gives The Bride her blade. You mentioned a quote from ‘Koji’, about how the developer of a boss had to be able to defeat it without taking a hit. Koji is also a character within Brawlhalla, and it makes me wonder if he were possibly named after the infamous man himself! Anyway, I found it fascinating that I could be reminded of a completely different game through a real life quote from a developer on a very different game in a video not even 3 minutes in, about health in video games. It’s your commitment to providing varied, detailed videos about abstract topics like these and more that makes me enjoy your videos so much. Thanks, again, and keep it up. Sincerely, an avid game enthusiast

[@umbaupause]

This actually makes me want to point out a really interesting health system: That of Early Access game CrossCode. It works like a risk/reward system outside of significant fights, since you can initiate a battle and keep that running as long as you keep finding and provoking enemies. Your health won't regenerate though, unless you pick the right skills or eat the right food (which takes a moment so you'll be vulnerable, even interrupting you completely on a hit), but if you tap out, your HP quickly go back to full. This ties into a system where you increase a 'battle rank' to get better drops from enemies, but getting there and then keeping the battle going as your HP dwindle means that you risk getting downed - which resets your entire battle's progress to 0. It's oddly fluid and once you master the game, challenging yourself to wipe out entire areas without ever stopping is a lot of fun. Uhm, and I love that game, so yeah...