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Are Health Bars Making Games Worse? | Design Delve (Patreon)

Published:
2024-03-01 16:04:33
Imported:
2024-03

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This week's episode of Design Delve is now available!

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Are Health Bars Making Games Worse? | Design Delve

This episode of Unpacked is brought to you by Death Trick Double Blind, out March 14th on Steam and Nintendo Switch. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2254710/Death_Trick_Double_Blind/ In this episode of Design Delve, J & Ludo ask the question, are health bars strictly needed? Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SecondWindGroup Second Wind Merch Store: https://sharkrobot.com/collections/second-wind Music used in order of appearance: Intruder - Stray OST The Abyss - Hyper Light Drifter OST Checking in - Celeste OST The Notebooks - Stray OST Secret Lab - Stray OST

Comments

Tsarius

Are private videos making video games worse? | Design Delve In this episode of Design Delve, J & Ludo dive deep into the depravity of Youtube to ask the question... Was it all a mistake?

chronicDreamer

It's funny, while watching D&D actual plays I noticed if you turn on the heath bar for your opponent and leave the numbers off it acts as an easy visual reminder as to the rough look the enemy is in. It even seemed to encourage the one running to make more narratively accurate fit to damage descriptions based on the physical appearance of the bar. It was also easier on the DM too because if players wanted to know how an enemy is looking they didn't need to ask the DM for clarification. Of course no bar would be more stressful, but require the DM to make their own decisions about how to convey this information and if you include the numbers, the game definitely starts to feel more tactical. It's fascinating to see these areas of design overlap across media.

Tim Wilson

I would say it’s genre dependent. Survival Horror does well from vague indications, action games sometimes just need to say when I’m on my last hit but sometimes I really want all the information to analyse I can get.

Bark Flemmingrad

I like how in some of the Halo games (2,3,4? don't remember) your health bar is invisible so after your shields are depleted you don't know how much health you have left, I feel like it increases the tension without fully removing all health information since you can still see your shield

Anonymous

I can totally see this in a game where your player is a starship or something (I'm thinking Starfox 64). Instead of a health bar, you see a piece of the ship break off or smoke coming out of the ship. I think it depends on how much is going on: if the gameplay is simple enough, this can work, but if you are playing something like fire emblem or starcraft, I can see this being useful. Though there are some games which can go either way, like pokemon. You could totally add wounds and some little animation to show the pokemon breathing heavily if they are low on health.

Matthew Bruno

I feel like the Ultemecia boss in FF8 counts as having used diegetic health indicators. The only way to know if you’re making progress in the final stage of that fight is when she starts blathering

Johan Agstam

Not much to add really, I think you nailed it. Yeah, I want to know my own health, but whether to have access to it for bosses really depends. Yes, it gives you an indicator of how you're doing from run to run, but it also can get you staring too much at the health bar and not how you're dealing with the attacks. As an MV fan many MVs do not have health bars, but some do, but honestly I think I almost prefer to just base it off the different stages of the boss fight, which is sort of diogenic (was the word) feedback, isn't it? You can judge where you are in the fight by what attacks the boss use and sometimes their appearance. Hollow Knight doesn't do this too much, most of the boss fights have their full capacity from the beginning (unlike something like the Mantis lords which has a medium first stage a hard second stage and a piss-easy third stage), but say Ender Lillies does it with all its bosses except the first one.

William Alexander

I would really love the opportunity to move second wind to a new site (or to have a more easily navigable archive). I love this series but it's usually something I like think about rather than catch during a quick lunch or work break. SW's current setup is quite functional. This is not a dig at you all or your work--but it is a reason your views might be a little lower.

William Alexander

Fun essay! To me it also depends on how much focus there is on the player's damage output. If it's a game where your attacks don't vary much a health bar is less useful. Spiderman and Batman might get stronger but they'll usually have the basic strong and weak attacks along with a few gadgets. But if you're trying to decide whether to switch between various weapons or add certain upgrades, it's helpful to know how much each is affecting the boss. (Could also lead to the pitfall of "bad" (unethical or lazy) game design of placing players into a loot upgrade treadmill).

Jonne Taivassalo

This is really interesting! Horizon: Zero Dawn is amazing when I played my first playthrough with Ultra hard and that removed most of the UI like health bars. It suited the game so very very well! If you haven't played it yet this is the way to go (if you also like challenge).