How Games Do Health 

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?*

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

"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.

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

"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

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.

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

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.

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 .

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

- 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

"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

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

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

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.

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 !

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.

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.

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

One solution to this is to create 2 stats that represent health. One is relevant in combat, regenerates when not taking damage, and when it drops to 0, the player is dead. The second is the sum of health that can regenerate, and is consumed upon regeneration. It can be recovered via items, loot, maybe abilities. This makes health "simple" to perceive in combat, but also gives a long-term factor to it.

The biggest behaviour change in me playing Halo for the first time was to take cover! I never took cover like that playing other FPS games before Halo. Suddenly, I had reason to take cover, I could take a breather, get my shields back and get back in the fight. And I've always said, the brilliance of what Halo did wasn't to have your shields recharge, it was to have them recharge in a matter of seconds after not taking damage for a short time. Nothing like the slow trickle of a constant recharge.

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

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

Love this channel its a great way to come up with new ideas for my game when im procrastinating or doing school work

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.

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.

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".

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

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.

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

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.

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

I've always been a fan of health stations the idea of trying to make it to the station with a sliver of health changes my play style from all up in the enemy's face to a more calculated approach

Insurgency: Sandstorm: "What is this health you speak of?"

this is why tf2 is a timeless masterpiece

The way the health bar works in destiny is really clever, and I didn't even notice it until this video The first 2/3 of the visible health bar depletes way faster than the last part, so when you think you're about to die, you actually have over half of your health still remaining This encourages you to get to cover and regen, without making it deadly to do so

Amazing Compilation!!👍 Keep such videos coming

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.

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.

this is my favorite gmtk video. i re watch it all the time

Shadow Tower also by From Software, similar to the Dark Souls game which make you use your XP as currency, Shadow Tower made you use your Max HP as currency. So after upgrading your health you were left with decisions to either maintain your newfound longevity, or blow it on some shiny new equipment.