Unless you’re playing a REALLY casual game like Animal Crossing or Monkey Island, one of the main aspects to keep in mind is your health. You’re always looking to keep yourself from sleeping with the fishies, so it’s important to keep yourself aware of it at all times. So if we were to look at all the different games out there, how does each one go about presenting that information to us. Well, that’s what I’m going to be looking into today. I’m going to be examining a number of different health bars from across the range of games out there and looking at their pros and cons, figuring out which ones are most effective at doing their jobs, and just how well they blend into the game.
The Coloured Bar (Elder Scrolls, Megaman)
Who needs text, when you can simply show how much life you’ve got! Usually represented as a bar of green and black, depending on how much health we have, the more the bar will be filled. It’s a simple gimmick that works well. In something like the classic megaman games, we have a bar to the side that’s filled with yellow. As damage is taken that bar is depleted until it’s completely black where you go boom. Rather than focusing on numbers it provides a visual interpretation of the number rather than the digit itself. In terms of specifics, it doesn’t give the actual number rather a percentage between 0% and 100%, in that way it’s not exactly a specific value being shown. Instead we get a rough estimate or the value. The bar always remains the same size in Megaman, but in an RPG game like Elder Scrolls we have increasing digits as we level our stats, so the bar loses less colours as we grow stronger, and sometimes potions which we thought healed half our bar before now only heal a quarter. This type of bar is for those games where a rough estimate is usually all we need to get by, we can open a state screen if we wanted better results. For most games, it’s one of the simpler ones.
Numbers (Final Fantasy, Pokemon, other RPGs)
So it’s another one of the more basic variety of health displays yea, but it gets the job done doesn’t it? We’re all aware of the psychological understanding of the number 0, as in void, null and so on. We try and keep those numbers above nonexistence as much as possible. A clear number helps us understand just how much distance is between us and the ultimate void, and depending on the genre and game itself, we create our own little sweet spot of when we need to fall back and recover for a whee bit, and when it’s safe to move on. It’s very simple and it blends in with the previous type of bar as well. It’s clear and precise and it’s better than the maybe a little better than the regular coloured bar in that respect, and as far as health displays go it works very well. However the immersion factor is another thing as having a number just sit on the screen for the majority of the game is somewhat distracting at times and sometimes it may break the flow having to glance at it to make sure you’re not knocking on death’s door.
Graphic Representation (Alone in the Dark, Call of Duty)
For those who want to be as immersed in their game as possible. No bars, no numbers, all damage your character receive is simply shown via bloody screen or bodily damage. The more you see, the more injured your guy is, no need for a HUD to ruin the experience. In the Call of Duty series, your health is measured in red blotches on the screen and audio muffles, used to show just how damaged your guy is before he/she’d go down. No need to glance at a specific section, it’s all there clear as day, and you’d be prepared to react accordingly. Similarly in Alone in the Dark as you take damage your character starts to show injures on his character, as in scratches and tears in the clothing, all without a display showing you how much hit points you have, and sadly therein lies the problem with this type of representation. It’s very vague as to how damaged you can get. Unless you’ve already died before, there’s no clear indication of when you’ve hit zero or even how close you are. You may have seven patches of clothing torn, but what does that even mean in terms of health? Am I allowed another 3 hits, 5 hits, 13 hits, what!?! Likewise with CoD, just how much blood is too much. In terms of immersion, yes this is one of the more fun and interesting ways to bring us into their world, but in terms of actually showing us our health, no, sadly it’s better to go with numbers or something a little more accurate.
Symbols (Mario64, Zelda)
Rather than have numbers and vague displays on how healthy we are, we can assign different symbols to represent the state of the player that have a specific meaning. This can be especially useful, depending on the game itself, as we can design certain objects to have that meaning of health in their own universe and sometimes that can extend into our own as well! Take for example, the Legend of Zelda series. The heart symbol which is usually presented in groups of four. The more you have, the more health you’ve stockpiled, and because in this reality the heart is one of our more necessary major organs, we immediately identify that that is our health, and it did that without giving us numbers or vague interpretations. As you take damage this way and see this bits of hearts drop off, you start to gain an awareness of how much each bit of heart represents and can make our own judgments on low and high as we go along. This kind of representation allows designers to create a more immersive display, as well as giving us the information as accurately as possible.
The Best Health Bar I’ve seen (Sparx: Spyro 1,2 & 3)
So which health bar does it’s job best? Personally, I believe that the character of Sparx from the original spyro trilogy was one of if not the best health bar I’ve seen out there. This character falls into both the graphic representation and symbol category as using an actual character to represent health is both immersive and inventive. In the world Insomniac created dragonflies act as sorta guardians for baby dragons, so as Spyro takes damage Sparx’s colour (gold, blue, green , nonexistent) reflects how much health he has. When he’s gold, Spyro can take three hits before he disappears, where if he takes another he loses a life. As you explore the world Sparx will continue to buzz around the purple dragon so he’s always in plain view and easy to spot, so when you take hits and he vanishes you’ve got that extra bit of motivation to get your buddy back, and they coulda stopped there but Insomniac added an extra influence to make us want to keep our health high. As long as Sparx is around you, gems you pass that are just that whee bit out of reach will be dragged in by him, giving you even more incentive to keep him around otherwise, you’ll actually have to walk into the gems. Creating a health bar out of an actual character that we want to grow attached to and keep around was just a genius move on Insomniac’s part and turned out brilliantly.
Conclusion
After looking at the many different kinds of health views across the genres, there really isn’t a perfect health bar. Depending on the game itself the health bar will be different to reflect what’s needed to be presented. You wouldn’t use a numbered display in game where immersion was key, you’d want to use it in something like an RPG where managing your different stat numbers was important and you’d want to see how high your numbers are. Likewise if you’re targeting a game at a younger audience, you need to find a way of representing health that they’d understand, I’m sure at a young age that numbers just fly right past our heads and we focus on visual stimuli more. It’s all about finding the right way to display your information in the best manner, which in some games is critical, others maybe not so much.
So what health bars have you found to be most helpful in your gaming experience, or maybe not so much? To you, is it easier to see health as number, or some other interpretation?