When designing combat moves for your character, first consider your character's personality. Is your character acrobatic like the Prince of Persia? Is your character jumpy like Mario? Stealthy like Solid Snake? Brutal like Kratos? Each of these characters has a uniquely different combat style because they have uniquely different personalities.

What genre is your game? What kind of gameplay experiences do you want the player to have? These questions will help determine your character's weapons. Or maybe you just have your hero carry a laser scimitar and a phase-plasma pistol. Either way is fine.

Study real-world fighting styles to make your character's attacks feel more realistic and distinct. Give your character a signature weapon. It will help quickly define their personality to the player. Can you picture Cloud Strife without his huge sword or Bayonetta without her guns? Your character's weapon is going to dictate how they fight. Rygar's throwable shield creates a different combat experience than a Big Daddy's melee drill. Even if your hero uses an unconventional weapon like a giant spatula or bubble wand, brainstorm all the different uses to which the player could put them. The more original, the better!

Now that you've chosen your weapon, let's fight!

In combat, the attack used totally depends on the player's distance to the target. Check out the four ranges of combat: close range, medium range, long range and area effect.

Knowing what your character's combat range (or ranges) is going to be makes a huge difference in how the player approaches combat during gameplay. A Mario game is almost exclusively close/medium range combat whereas Contra is a long range combat game. As a result, Mario must come into close contact with enemies in order to defeat them, while in Contra, the player's goal is to keep away from enemies and keep them from ever getting close by shooting them at a distance.

In addition, attacks can be delivered from four different elevations to give combat variety: standing, low, high, and aerial. While you don't have to use all four of these elevations in your game, you will have to make each of these elevations have their own set of attacks as they make the player deal with combat in very different ways:

Attacks from any elevation and range can be delivered both vertically and horizontally. In Maximo: Ghosts to Glory we designed enemies that could only be defeated by one of the two attacks.

A skeleton guard wore an armored helmet that deflected Maximo's overhead vertical attack. Another skeleton warrior used a shield that blocked Maximo's horizontal attacks. The solution was to use the opposite direction attacks to smash the skeletons.

An attack matrix like the one above is useful to track important information about combat moves. An attack matrix should include the following data:

Feel free to add as many columns as you might need to your attack matrix to accommodate degrees of severity, defensive items/moves, and so on.

You can use an attack matrix to track combat moves and compare and contrast values for maximum variety. Each attack should be distinct and usable in a specific combat situation.

Timing is one of the major keys to great combat. When the player presses a button, the character should quickly perform the attack. If you want your combat animations to feel smooth, then you must strive to have your game run at 60 frames per second. While many games run satisfactorily at 30 fps, lagging and stuttering that can happen at these lower frame rates will really impact your player's combat experience. Don't waste time with long and elaborate wind-up animations. If you do this, it will throw off the player's timing and they may end up missing or striking when they don't want to. Quick moves can be rapidly done in succession, but they tend to lead to button mashing.

Lunges are more fluid thrusts that return the player back to his original standing position. By combining quick strikes and lunges you can create a combat chain that will keep the player's basic attack from feeling boring.

To create a combat chain, create three or more attack moves that will run one after another. If the player presses the attack move once, play the first animation. If the player presses the button again within a short (usually within a second) time period, the player goes into a second attack move. Usually, this second attack move deals more damage, so there is an advantage for the player to "chain" these attacks together. A third attack will do even more damage, and so on.

If the player is allowed to land multiple hits in a row, make sure that your animation (or game code) also moves the player character forward; otherwise, when the enemy is knocked back, the player won't be able to land the next attack in the chain. The hero in the image below misses because he doesn't translate forward. His attack only succeeds when he shifts forward.

OK, remember when I told you back one page ago that you shouldn't do elaborate wind-up animations? I meant it—but only on that page. Elaborate wind-ups are awesome because they lead to powerful attacks that can chop a player in two! These moves work great when the player is wielding an oversized or heavy weapon. Because of the long wind-up, the player is forced to risk the wait for the reward of landing a more powerful attack! Risk vs reward. Remember it. It's gonna be big.

Speaking of rewards, use particle and visual effects to make attacks feel more dynamic and rewarding; from "slice streaks" on sword attacks and speed lines for dash moves like those seen in the Onimusha games, or resort to those old standbys of fire trails and blood splatters like in Madworld (Sega, 2009). Be big, be dynamic, and be dramatic! Give big action moves like ground pounds and smashing uppercuts big screen effects that fill the screen with debris, dust, lightning bolts and other eye-catchers. The more spectacular the better!

So what happens when you actually hit something? A strike without a reaction animation from the enemy doesn't feel like the player has hit anything. It's like the attack is merely skipping off the surface of the enemy. If you can't afford to have the enemy have reaction animations (due to memory limitations, for example) at least have effects and sound effects that indicate that a successful hit has landed. Powerful sound effects make attacks feel more rewarding. Vocal reactions such as a big "Oof!" from enemies are always satisfying!

Exaggerate the impact of a powerful hit to heighten the feeling of strength of the attack and increase drama. The enemy should react to wherever they've been hit. Got cracked in the coconut? The enemy's head (and some teeth) should fly. Kick out their leg and a bone should splinter or they should at least topple to the ground. This kind of animation is getting easier to do within the game code using rag doll physics systems like Havok and PhysX, but sometimes nothing beats good old fashion key frame animation.

If conflict is drama, then combat should be a freakin' opera complete with flying spear-carrying valkyries and a glass-shattering fat lady! Hype up that drama! A particularly powerful strike should be accompanied with a camera shake, a rumble from the controller's actuator or combat slowing down to show off the power of the hit. Batman: Arkham Asylum uses slow motion to indicate that the player has defeated the last of the enemies in a combat encounter.

Before I forget, here's a pearl of wisdom: close battles are more exciting. Don't get me wrong, kicking hordes of enemies' asses can be quite satisfying, but just make sure that your player is evenly matched to his skill level for the majority of the game.

You can really pull out all of the stops if you use a cinematic finishing move where the action slows or freezes and the camera pans around the action. These finishes are frequently seen in fighting games like the Soul Calibur and Street Fighter titles, but they've crept into other action games since they just look so darn cool! This is because of this very important thing:

"PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY GAMES THAT MAKE THEM LOOK COOL

And nothing makes a player look cooler than a QTE. Just look at the Mighty Bedbug in action below. You have to admit that pressing button prompts to create a choreographed combat sequence makes the battle look spectacular.

Case in point: Batman's combat in Batman: Arkham Asylum relies on QTEs to choreograph combat moves rather than leaving the player to flounder around on their own. Why? Because Batman is a badass. He'd never miss a punch. Why should the player? The result? When the player successfully does an attack using a QTE, the player feels like an expert of combat—just like Batman.

While QTEs have been around since Dragon's Lair, they can be found in some of the most recent action games. They are combat-oriented minigames that are activated within combat when an enemy or boss has reached a certain level of health. The player has to press a certain button or complete a certain move (like waggle a motion controller or analog stick) within a very short window of time. If the player is successful, they are rewarded with an animation of the hero performing an elaborate attack on an enemy. Most QTEs require several button presses for the player to reach the end of the sequence, which ends in the death of the enemy or boss.

Here are some tips when designing QTEs:

• Reserve QTEs only for the most bombastic and elaborate attacks. Since control during QTEs is limited, ask yourself "is this something the player can do instead?" You can always use single button QTEs like those found in Darksiders or Batman: Arkham Asylum as finishing moves.

• Always position the button prompt in the same location on screen. Otherwise the player will get confused about what button they have to press.

• Allow the player time to recognize the button prompt and then press the button. This recognition usually takes most players a beat (a "one-one hundred" count).

• If the player fails to press the correct button in time, then try to get the player back to that QTE state quickly. For example, if it took three different sets of patterns to reach the QTE, don't repeat those three sets if the player fails. Have the player repeat one set before the QTE is activated.

• I'm torn over instant player kills for failing QTEs. On the one hand, it allows for some very bitchin' animations of your hero getting ripped apart by the boss monster. On the other hand, I'm against instant kills in general. I recommend the player taking substantial damage from failing a QTE sequence, that way they can survive to try again. If they are on their last bit of health, you can still have that bitchin' animation play ...

I have played targeting systems that allow the player to choose enemies in front or behind them by selecting a specific button or direction with the analog stick^[120]. Other games treat targeting like a QTE, where the window of opportunity to attack lasts as long as the enemy is in view or nearby.

Melee is hand-to-hand combat. Pretty much all the rules of combat apply but remember that those hands can be lethal weapons and hold impromptu weapons found in the world: props or objects such as lead pipes, chairs, or even cars! Make it easy for players to pick up and drop these items—provide on-screen prompts if you have to.

When designing weapons, think about their speed, their range, the damage they do and what other effects they may have, such as fire or poison. If a weapon is upgradable, then make sure the effects are seen on the weapon. Merely adding a +3 to the stats doesn't provide the player with the gameplay information and visual rewards that they deserve.

While swinging a weapon around, be mindful of it sorting through objects. That just looks bad. Instead, have weapons respond to the world, such as rebounding off of stone or metal surfaces or blades sinking into wooden ones. Be aware of the flipside of this, that the player's weapon will rebound off of any non-breakable item in the world. Carefully design your combat environments to use this to the player's advantage and disadvantage. For example, a hero would learn he couldn't swing his giant axe around in an arena filled with unbreakable stone pillars lest he risk rebounding off of them, which would give the skeletons a chance to attack.

Stealth kills are quick attacks used to kill or disable an enemy in one move without alerting other enemies nearby. They are usually performed from a crouch or cover position or by positioning the player behind their target. They often use QTE style prompts to activate and reward players with dramatic enemy kills. Make sure that stealth kills can only be done under certain conditions (in the right position, while under cover, while in shadow), otherwise players will constantly use them over regular attacks as an exploit. Don't let a cool move become stale to the player.

Grapples are similar to stealth kills in that a player can activate them under specific circumstances. Grapples are rare in most games with the exception of the fighting and wrestling genres (for example, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2010 (THQ, 2009)). It's difficult to program two-character collision as it requires the main character and the enemy to be animated together so the moves look natural and sorting doesn't occur. However, if you take the time and effort, you can have your hero pull off some pretty devastating attacks and slams. Just like with grabbing items, make it easy for players to grab and release their opponents. Many games make this a context-sensitive move.

What's another way to make the player look like an expert? Use a lock-on system. The later Legend of Zelda games have a particularly good lock-on system in which the player can lock onto the enemy closest/in front of them with a button press and flick the analog stick to select the next one over to the right or left. As long as the button remains depressed, the player is locked on to an enemy. As each enemy is dispatched, the targeting system latches onto the next available enemy. Lock-on systems require HUD visuals to help the player track their targets. Here are some examples:

Letting the player miss isn't such a bad thing. The player will be forced to become more skilled with their attacks, which will make them feel like more of a badass as they master combat timing. Or if the player just doesn't get it, you can always increase an enemy's collision dynamically if the player misses or dies too many times in a row. Or you can offer to drop the game down to a lower difficulty setting. Do whatever you can to keep your player playing.

If you take any martial art, you quickly learn that moving is just as important as attacking. The goal in a real-life fight^[121] is NOT to get hit. Why should video games be any different? Allow your player moves that give them options for retreating or avoiding damage, and also ones that can be combined with combat moves for quicker or more powerful attacks.

Dodges and rolls allow players to get the heck out of dodge and quickly move out of the way of attacks. They should be quick and easy to perform too: a button press and single control stick move. Mind your metrics. Make sure your dodge lets the player get completely clear of wide-range attacks and longer-reaching weapons like halberds and huge swords, or radius-based attacks like explosions and magic spells—otherwise you might be doing what they call in WOW "the graveyard hustle."

After the player does a dodge, there should be a beat to allow the player to get back on their feet. Not only does it give the player a chance to reorient themselves, but it keeps the player from using it as a movement exploit.

Allow players to use dodges and rolls to get past hazards. They add a nice moment of tension when dashing through a closing door or rolling under a swinging blade. But be careful. During a roll or dash, the camera has a tendency to collide with whatever the player is trying to avoid. I don't suggest having the camera to pass through the hazard (that looks sloppy) or have the camera dip down with the player (as that gets disorienting.) Consider the camera locking in place as the player dodges and then have it "catch up" with the player when they've cleared the obstacle.

Dashes are forward moves that can be used for defense or attack. Like dodges, dashes should be very quick to perform. Many action games like Devil May Cry (Capcom, 2001) and Darksiders (THQ, 2009) have dash moves that can be upgraded with more powerful sword or punch moves. Even your basic dash move should do something besides move the player. You want a dash to feel quick and powerful. And fast. And dare I say, dashing?

The player should be able to use the dash to ram into enemies or smash breakable objects. Even though a dash targets one enemy, you can have the player's momentum continue to have him hit several enemies at once or create a "sonic boom" to send bad guys flying! Whee!

While generally used for traversal, jump moves can be combat moves too. Where would Mario be without his famous "butt bounce" attack? The collision zone should be like a good pair of pants; there should be plenty of room in the butt. Don't make these pixel-perfect attacks. After the attack hits, apply recoil bounce to move the player a short distance away so the player doesn't land on or next to the enemy and take damage. If the enemy hasn't been killed by the butt bounce, minimize risk to the player by putting the enemy in a stunned state.

Many games allow the player to maneuver during this recoil bounce to let the player chain bounce attacks off of the heads of multiple enemies! Make sure you award an escalating bonus for each additional bad guy bounced. Make it a big moment for the player—they've just done something cool!

You don't have to be a short Italian plumber to do jump attacks. Weapon-wielding tough guys can do these moves too. Just make sure you follow these guidelines:

If jumping is a little too frivolous for your big bad space marine or soldier, you can have them vault over obstacles to add variety to battlefield movement. Vaulting works well with cover systems (see below) and ducking. Gears of War 2 (Microsoft Games Studio, 2008) provides players with a prompt to notify them when they can vault over a low wall.

Shooting is simple. Aim the gun, pull the trigger. Right? But let's look at some of the most popular multiplayer shooters and see how wide they vary from each other:

Even in games where shooting isn't the main focus of play, ranged combat can immediately change the dynamic of the game. This is why I recommend that if a game isn't a shooter then guns should be saved until later in the game. Let the player get used to their moves and attacks without a gun first. When you feel like they've learned all they can, then go ahead and arm them.

Creative Director Hardy LeBel, who has designed many successful shooters like Halo: Combat Evolved and SOCOM 3, says that ranged combat is about building a distinctive rhythm. There are several factors that influence that rhythm such as targeting methods, reload times, weapon fire rate, weapon accuracy, rate of fire and lethality, the availability of ammunition, the availability of area-of-effect weapons like grenades, player health mechanics, and so on. Even level design, AI behavior and mechanics all contribute to that rhythm. Whew! That's a lot to digest at once, so let's start with the three As: action, aiming and ammo.

Action is the loading, firing and unloading of a gun. Here are some questions you need to ask about a weapon's action:

Aiming is how the player sights a target. Aiming is a huge issue in games. It can make or break a shooter. Early shooters relied on the player's reflexes and skill in positioning the cursor over the target and pulling the trigger at the right time. Until Halo: Combat Evolved (Microsoft, 2001), most successful first-person shooters were played on PCs—partially because of the ease of aiming with a mouse. To help players manage the tricky task of aiming with the Xbox's analog sticks, the game used aim assist.

No matter what type of aiming method you use (aim assist, auto-aim, free aiming, and so on), you need to design and implement targeting mechanics for the tastes of your target audience.

The targeting reticule and/or the iron sights on your weapons should be one of the most sophisticated feedback mechanisms in your game. They will likely need to communicate aim, bullet spread, recoil, jamming, overheat, ammo, successful hits vs near misses, friend or foe, and the list goes on and on. And it will need to accomplish that while remaining useful and unobtrusive to the player. A great deal of time and writing could be dedicated to designing the targeting reticules for shooting, but suffice it to say this very important thing applies:

PLAY THE BEST SHOOTERS AND STUDY THEIR SOLUTIONS

Taking some time to deconstruct the mechanics and behaviors of the best-in-breed games will add immeasurably to your own gameplay.

Ammo is what the player shoots. Ammo raises it own questions:

• Where and how is ammo carried? Is there a limit to the amount of ammo carried by a player? Do you need the right ammo for the right gun?

• Does ammo have any special effects like incendiary, poisonous, heat-seeking, or armor-piercing properties?

• What happens when a shot misses a target? Does it impact against something in the environment? Does it affect that item? Break glass? Chip plaster? Ricochet off of metal?

Here are a few more tricks to make your gunplay more effective:

• Accentuate the excitement and danger of a gunfight with sound: weapon firing, bullet impacts, enemy gunfire, whizzing bullets, and so on.

• Play the SFX of the gunshot and bullet impact at full volume regardless of the target's distance to the player. This will let them know whether they scored a successful shot. Don't forget to let the player hear the voiceover of the character, too.

• Don't forget the weapon visual effects. Muzzle flash, spent shells kicking out and smoke from the barrel all make the experience more realistic.

• In general, players like gunfights at shorter ranges, as they are more exciting.

• Regardless of how graphic your weapon hits are, show some sort of impact effect when a bullet hits its target—from sparks to explosions to spraying gore.

• Needless to say, level design IS game design when it comes to building the rhythm of ranged combat. If you design spaces that are long, open corridors and you have a high lethality combat model, players will play cautiously. If you have lots of cover and break line-of-sight frequently PLUS you have a regenerating health model, then gunfights will feel like swirling dogfights as players engage and disengage to heal.

Mr. LeBel leaves us with this important thought: "in general, players expect ranged combat to feel powerful and satisfying. It's an easy mistake to try and make ranged weapons weak to help offset the perception of too much power in the hands of the player; fight that impulse and try to remember to be "generous" to the player, and they will thank you for it."

When designing guns, even if you are creating made-up weapons, it's helpful to start with their real-life counterparts; after all, weapons are built for particular roles that can directly apply to their use in your game. But that will only get you halfway there. You should consider thinking about them in terms of effectiveness:

But balancing weapons can be tricky, especially if basing them on real-world equivalents. There are gun-nut players that have their own opinions about which gun is better and how they should perform. You could go crazy trying to please everyone, so base your weapons on what fits the needs of your game first. Here are some guidelines to get you started:

No matter what the weapon, think about the range, speed and strength of the weapon. You can use an attack matrix like the one below to track these values and compare and contrast your weapons for maximum variety.

Notice how there is very little overlap in weapon attributes, and any overlap that does exist has a disadvantage like shooting/reloading speed. Keeping the weapons distinct will help in making the game feel well rounded.

Ranged combat weapons aren't always guns. Fantasy games, for example, have a wide variety of projectiles from arrows to magic missiles to cones of cold. Regardless of the genre, as long as you design your ranged combat with the guidelines set down for guns: range, damage and the three As, you should be fine.

One last question to ask is in a multiplayer game, should you allow friendly fire or not? It totally depends on the gameplay mode. It seems much more logical to have friendly fire in a player vs player mode than in a cooperative mode. Whatever your choice, allow the player to turn it on or off.

Oh no. You've just run out of bullets. Now what?

Players feel incredibly powerless when they're playing a shooter and have nothing to shoot with! So give your player a melee weapon that is always available. It can be a knife, fists or even a pistol whip or clubbing attack with a rifle butt. Giving the player this option to bash the baddie allows things to feel fair and realistic. The Gears of War games don't mess around in this department: they give you a chainsaw mounted onto your gun!

They say you can never have enough guns, but you don't want your player to be carrying around a golf bag full of firearms. Many games limit weapons to a main gun and a side arm. But if you do that, you'll need to be able to switch between them quickly; preferably with a single button press.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allows you to draw your side arm faster than you can raise your rifle; helpful for those situations requiring a quick shot.

Gears of War and Uncharted use a cover system. This not only allows the player a way to take cover against surface or barricade to avoid being shot, but to also fire "blindly" or in a limited manner at the enemy. The player is often penalized for avoiding risk by not being able to aim while under cover. Cover systems usually require a button press or command by the player to place them in and out of this mode. Be careful that your cover system doesn't become too "sticky", otherwise the player may be going into cover when they don't want to.

There are many, many ways to shoot at things in video games: from a plane, from a train, out of a box, at a fox—you name it! Here are the main elements of a shooting gallery screen:

Mounted ranged combat is a shooting gallery style gameplay where the players defend against waves of incoming enemies. Players will tend to fire constantly if the weapon has unlimited ammo, or in short bursts if it doesn't. You can also get the player to fire in bursts if the weapon needs a cool-down time. To help the player aim, add tracer bullets. Not only does it look cool, but it will help players get "leads" on fast moving enemies or ones with erratic movement patterns. Let the player know the range of the weapon. If the player can't reach a target, then create a good visual justification as to why there are areas of the screen the player can't hit.

As both the target and the weapon move during aerial combat and vehicular combat, give the player opportunities to line the target up in their sights. If the player has a chance to see the target coming, line up the target and fire at the target they will feel in control. If too many targets whip by the player without giving him a chance to react, the player will resort to firing blindly which will make the experience seem mindless and frustrating. Adjust the speed of the targets or the craft either naturally or artificially to give the player ample shooting opportunities.

Rail shooter gameplay happens when player movement control is taken out of the equation. Games like House of the Dead: Overkill (Sega, 2009) and Star Fox (Nintendo, 1993) are rail shooters. You can also find rail shooter sequences in titles like Red Faction Guerrilla, Uncharted 2 and Wet.

A unique advantage of rail shooters is that the game developer has complete control over the game camera and the sequence of events. This allows the developer to create scares they know the player will experience, furious shooting sequences and dramatic scripted events.

In fact, some rail shooters bear more resemblance to a theme park dark ride like Disneyland's Haunted Mansion^[123] than a video game. In fact, interactive dark rides have started to appear in theme parks around the world^[124], completing the circle of inspiration from dark ride to video game to dark ride.

You don't really need a gun or melee weapon to defeat enemies. There are so many ways; one hardly knows what to choose! The more variety you introduce into your combat, the more fun the player will have:

Grenades. When throwing grenades, allow the player to predict the arc. Gears of War and Uncharted both have "throw path" targeting aids to assist the player. Don't neglect the effects when those suckers blow. Kick up dust, debris and blow props sky high to really sell the explosion.

Throwing a grenade should always carry the risk/reward of having it accidently go off if held for too long, or even bounce back at the player. Soldiers "cook" their grenades by holding on to them after pulling the pin to make sure it goes off where it lands. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare not only uses a HUD element to warn players of an incoming grenade, but allows players to pick it up and throw it back! Remember that grenades can also be shot from rifles and launchers for greater accuracy and range.

Since many players duck back under cover after throwing a grenade, make sure you provide enough sound, visual and controller rumble cues to inform the player when a grenade detonates, even if they aren't looking at where it landed. If a player gets too close to an exploding grenade, don't hesitate to blow them up as well.

Sometimes you just need to blow up everything. It doesn't matter if you are calling in carpet bombing or a magical meteor storm; smart bombs are great one-shot solutions to keep the baddies off your back, if only for a few seconds. Show the player the controls for a smart bomb so they don't confuse it with a regular attack. When activated, smart bombs should destroy everything on screen save the player. If there are destructible items, they should blow up too.

You have a few options to how the player can activate a smart bomb, depending on how much tension you want to create. In Defender, the smart bomb is immediate while in R-Type, the player has to charge up the smart bomb before firing it. Let them know what they are working toward so they can make an accurate decision as to when to use it. Be careful that you don't let it charge up too fast or be used too frequently, otherwise all the bad guys in your carefully designed combat encounters will be wiped out in the blink of an eye!

Wherever there are explosions, there is fire. Sometimes there's fire even without the explosions—things just need to be burned. Fire creates great-looking visuals and lingering damage to enemies and environments. But fire takes no sides: players should get hurt by fire if they stray into it. The fire should eventually burn out so the player doesn't paint themselves into a napalm-colored corner.

Fire also means flamethrowers. The closer you are to your enemy, the more damage a flamethrower should do. Flamethrowers are the weapon of choice for players who don't like to aim. Allow them to "fire and forget" or "hose down" enemies with flame.

Don't forget to use fire-based weapons as a gameplay mechanic too. Flaming swords and other weapons don't just do extra damage to ice-themed enemies, they can ignite braziers, detonate explosives, burn through rope, illuminate dark areas, cauterize wounds; the gameplay possibilities are vast.

Another lingering indirect attack is poison. Make sure you have an associated visual for poisoned items. A green gassy effect, a dripping blade, a hovering "death's head" effect are all traditional video game indicators of poison. Players should be able to tell when they are wielding a poisoned item or have poisoned an enemy—make the visual unique and distinct. As a poisoned character loses health, make sure each increment that the poison takes has a clear sound effect and visual effect associated with it. You are creating a timer in which the focus of the player will shift from regular gameplay to "find and administer the antidote." If the antidote is an inventory based item, don't make it too hard for the player to retrieve it. Even if poison is uncommon, make the antidote more common. There is no worse feeling in a video game than making the player feel like death is inevitable. Always give them a fighting chance.

Another horrible feeling for players is to take control away from them. While stunning, knockback, transformation, loss of balance and sliding are worthwhile tools to use in lieu of taking damage, they should be used judiciously by the designer.

Don't let enemies have all of the fun! Design enemy-disabling attacks to give your players the advantage in combat. Use caution when creating attacks with these types of results. Consider what it is adding to the gameplay. Ask yourself this very important thing:

In order for all this combat to mean anything, the player has to have something to lose. That means health and lives.

To calculate the player's starting health, I suggest calculating in terms of the maximum damage the player can take. For example, at the beginning of the game, your hero can take 20 hits from enemies before losing a life and without replenishing health. Next determine how much damage an average enemy's attack does. In this example, a normal hit will cause 10 hit points of damage. That means the player's starting health should be 10 × 20 hit points = 200 health.

There are many ways losing that health can be represented to the player. Numbers are simple and transparent but boring. They stand out against cluttered HUDs like those found in MMOs and RPGs. Just keep the font legible.

A health bar doesn't take much space running along the top or side of the screen. They can be framed with themed artwork to make them look more interesting and part of the HUD. However, it can be difficult to tell when small amounts of damage have been taken. A health bar can be segmented for readability.

If you are feeling artistic, icons can represent the player's health with simple visuals: human outlines that go from green to red (WWE Smackdown), crystal globes of blood (Diablo) or hearts (Legend of Zelda).

Some platform games use a companion character as the player's health meter. For example, Crash Bandicoot is followed by a tiki head that loses feathers with each hit the player takes. The problem with this system is that it cannot support a large amount of health.

Things are more direct with character-based health systems. Ghosts 'N Goblins represents health with armor that pops off the player. Dead Space and Ghostbusters have status meters as part of the character's armor or equipment. The characters of Resident Evil clutch their midsections and limp when they've taken damage. Many car combat and driving games show visible damage to the vehicle. You know your car is close to death in Grand Theft Auto when you are dragging a bumper and your engine is smoking! Whatever method you use, you need to have some sort of feedback: the player can't always keep their eye on the health bar, so these character-based feedback mechanisms make it possible for the player to gauge how close to death or restart they are. They can then adjust their strategy (retreat, heal themselves, etc.) based on this knowledge. Just make sure these systems don't interfere with the player's movement or attacks.

Many modern games have moved towards a HUD-less health system. As the player takes damage, the screen becomes splattered with blood which gets thicker as more damage is taken. More dramatic effects, like turning the whole screen blood red, monochromatic or blurry, can be used too. Sound and music can drop off and be replaced by heavy breathing and a heartbeat. In Batman: Arkham Asylum, whenever the player is hit by a taser attack, the screen's video "short circuits."

Other systems that defy classification have shown up over the years. In Sonic the Hedgehog, as long as the player holds one collectable ring, they cannot be killed. Or at the other end of the scale, Bushido Blade 2 featured so many one-hit kill attacks that the health bar was completely dropped.

Players can regain health with the aid of power-ups, increases in level or experience and even time. Halo: Combat Evolved pioneered the concept of regenerating health in first person shooters. As long as the player wasn't taking damage, the health meter would refill at a slow but steady rate. The Ratchet and Clank games ditched health altogether as the developer wanted the player to reach the end of the game, not constantly see a game over screen.

Whatever method of displaying health is used, the player should clearly know when they are getting hurt and losing health. Don't skimp on the dramatic animations and particle effects. Both a hit sound effect and a vocal reaction ("ow!", "oomph!", and so on) should play. Health should deplete in a very obvious manner, because with every hit the player is closer to losing their life.

Let's face it, lives and the game over screen are an outmoded concept.

When video games first arrived, their goal was to suck quarters as fast as possible out of the player's pocket. The best way to achieve that was to make the player want to keep playing despite being killed as often as possible. Additonal lives became a good short-term goal for the player to keep in the game. When game characters became little people in lieu of blips and spaceships, the concept of dying came with them. (After all a spaceship doesn't die, does it?) The emotional impact of the finality of dying (Unless ... Quick! Get that next quarter into the slot!) was too good to pass up.

When games moved to home systems, lives followed—but the players had paid for their game and there were no more quarters to gain. So why kill the player? Why not let them finish the game they've paid for?

Another problem with killing off a player often is that it discourages the player from continuing the game fairly. For example, players of Doom (id,1993) found that it was easier to restart the game from a saved file than it was from an in-game checkpoint. By using this exploit, the player ceased to worry about death and never even saw the game over screen.

Many developers have caught on to this and abandoned the concept of player lives. Instead of killing the player and ending the game, players are reset to checkpoints within the level, where they can keep trying over and over until they succeed. In Prince of Persia: the Sands of Time, the player can "rewind time" to a point where the player is safe. This type of mechanic has to be carefully implemented though: it is possible for a player to get into a situation where they can't rewind far enough to avoid death and would die all over again. A narrator tells the player "that's not how the story happened" before the character restarts from a checkpoint. In Batman: Arkham Asylum, the player is given a chance to save the caped crusader from a fall to death by pressing a QTE button. If successful, Batman climbs back up to safety.

However, some genres like action and survival horror still utilize lives and game over screens. If you have to kill your player, remember the following:

Think very carefully about using lives in your game. If you don't think killing the player will make the game experience better or more exciting, or think it will actually be more frustrating, then don't do it. Because this very important thing applies: