Health Bars

Kate B's picture

I'm swearing off health bars for a while. If you see me making a game with a health bar, tell me off

ALTERNATIVES:

1-hit death- I've done this a few times in a few games. It works well, and if you need to give the player leeway you can have it so like, there's a really small hitbox on some things that hurt you, or there's like... Bombs that go off on a timer, and overlapping them makes that timer count down faster, for example

No HP/No death- Speaks for itself. More interesting penalties are: the game's story continues but you are handicapped in some way. Like you're on fire (which doesn't kill you but does inconvenience you on future obstacles)

Getting launched across the map- What is death in most games but simply sending you back a few paces to try again. I think that's why dark souls worked so well, cause there was another penalty on top of that. Anyway, why not cut out the middle man and just launch the player somewhere else as penalty for their fuckups

"Weird Health"- I also had a game still in development where if you get hit dirt appears on you, and once you get dirty enough you have to take a shower (sent back to somewhere else) you healed yourself by physically wiping the dirt particles off yourself. I also tried the opposite where your HP was a petri dish full of bacteria, and whenever you got hit an explosion randomly went off in the dish, killing some of the bacteria. The dirt system evolved out of that. Also you could get different bacteria in your petri dish that changed you into cool alternate "forms"

Anyway that's tha plan

Comments

qrleon's picture

That petri dish health

That petri dish health indicator idea is very interesting!

I can't remember what it was called, but there was a platformer where the main character had a slightly acrimonious relationship with their own status bar. When the player got hit, one chunk of the health indicator would break free and try to bounce away. If you caught it, the health was restored.

Kate B's picture

It's just occured to me the

It's just occured to me the dirt and petri dish ideas are the same mechanic inverted

I.e.

the petri dish requires you to have more particles. As you run out, it becomes harder to die, as the random explosion is less likely to hit something the lower your health.

Wheras the dirt requires you to have fewer particles. As you get more, it becomes harder to heal, as you can't wipe away a high enough percentage of it.

I wanna give the petri dish a shot in a game sometime soon, just so I can lay claim to it, after which I guess the idea goes into the wild to be reinterpreted

SpindleyQ's picture

My favourite "weird health"

My favourite "weird health" idea is from Nintendo World 2 EX, where they put eyes on the health bar and made it a character named Barry. https://gamejolt.com/games/nintendo-world-2/4901#screenshot-10230
I mean, it's still a health bar, but I love the audacity of trying to provide narrative justification for a videogamey abstraction by literally sticking googly eyes to it.

NatQuayleNelson's picture

Kate B wrote:No HP/No death-

Kate B wrote:
No HP/No death- Speaks for itself. More interesting penalties are: the game's story continues but you are handicapped in some way. Like you're on fire (which doesn't kill you but does inconvenience you on future obstacles)

An awesome example of this is the Wario Land games, specifically I've played Wario Land 3. Wario is invincible but different obstacles imbue him with properties like "floating," "on fire", "zombie" and these can all be useful in solving puzzles or also a punishment if they throw off what you need to accomplish. Definitely liking your ideas!

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Making narrative games in Salt Lake City. Writer, coder, punk, queer. Sometimes I think so much it hurts.

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