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#screenshake#gamefeel#vlambeer

Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake" at INDIGO Classes 2013

Dutch Game Garden

2.9K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 10 people: 10 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2014 to 2025.
  • Presented by Jan Willem Nijman, co-founder of Vlambeer
  • May be out of date. Uploaded 12 years ago, in an area where tools change fast.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

385K views12 years ago10 recommendations

Game developmentGame designGame programming

Jan Willem Nijman demonstrates how small visual and physical effects like screenshake, recoil, and particles can dramatically improve game feel.

INDIGO Classes 2013: Jan Willem Nijman is 50% of indie power house Vlambeer. He talks about 'The Art of Screenshake'. Why is it that one game plays great and another, similar game feels terrible?

Why it's here

10 people recommend this, 1 disputes it

What people say. Widely recommended as one of the best talks on game feel, polish, and making interactions feel responsive and satisfying.

ncallawayon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Twitter Suspends PG's Account”

> vlambeer, if anyone knows them I absolutely love their "art of screenshake" lecture. link to this video It really shows how there's a very high ceiling for polish and _feel_ when it comes to interactions. "Screenshake" is something that I'm sure a lot of people might look at and say: "oh, that would take 15 minutes to add", and if you're just talking about shaking the screen a bit, absolutely! But if you want to make the screenshake _really_ communicate a feeling and an emotion, there's so much more you can do.
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abetuskon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How do you make an addictive video game?”

Ultimately pretty shallow. This is more an exploration of how it feels to make a "sticky" game rather than how to actually make a sticky game. I certainly don't have any expertise or deep insight but I will say that one of the best videos I've seen on this is "The art of screenshake" by J. Nijman of Vlambeer 0. There, he walks through what's a very basic 2d sidescroller shooter and adds in effects until it looks like an actual fun game. The idea being that layering feedback and effects so that every aspect of the game becomes more fun to play. It sounds like this podcast was focusing more on Hearthstone and Marvel Snap, both games which I haven't played but are more strategy and luck orien…
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abetuskon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Starting game development in JavaScript with no experience”

For me, the "owl" was all the polish and game feel. "The art of screenshake" by Jan Nijman of Vlambeer 0 was what helped fill in the steps to "making the owl". I think most people with reasonable know-how can make a basic game, whether it's asteroids, flappy bird, breakout, etc. For me, I never understood how to get past the "finished the tutorial" to "looks like an actual game". Screenshake, aka game feel/polish/production effects, was what made it gel. 0 link to this video
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autoon Hacker News • Recommends

On “DOOMscrolling: The Game”

…t would greatly increase the difficulty curve - Hitboxes feel a little meh, and don't seem to match the sprites - If there's sound, it wasn't working for me, which leads to... - Pump up the juice. You've got a great core loop, but you need the juice. One of my favorite game dev talks of all time would be perfect for you to watch and iterate with ( link to this video ) - Monster diversity. Again, maybe I didn't play long enough yet to get to newer monsters, but from what I can tell the only diversity is their looks, health, and approach angle. Monsters that are faster and incentivize different movement, or that shoot back at you, or blow up after shooting so you have to a…
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drhayes9on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: I'm building one HTML5 game per week, need feedback”

Great games! Great start! Here's a talk you might be interested in from one of the guys who made "Ridiculous Fishing" on the Art of Screenshake: link to this video Basically, it's a bunch of interesting points on how to make action games feel more responsive and fun.
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Vermeulenon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Game Mechanic Explorer – examples for game mechanics, algorithms, and effects”

I love these interactive demos of game dev techniques. Another great one is this Aztez post on fighting game effects - link - and Vlambeer's demo in their 'art of screenshake' talk link to this video
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polm23on Hacker News • Recommends

On “I Have Created 50 Games in 2014”

Here's Ryan Clark (Crypt of the NecroDancer) writing about what makes a game commercially viable: link Here's Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer discussing a large number of small improvements that make games feel good: link to this video Here's Rami Ismail, also of Vlambeer, explaining how making a game a week helps you develop an intuition for some parts of game making: link Here's a talk by Sid Meier (Civilization) about Interesting Decisions: link
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jean_claudeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days (2005)”

The core essence of a video game is the game feel (which not everyone likes, because it's ill-defined). How does a player interact with a game? Via game mechanics. No amount of polish is going to make up for horrible game mechanics. Jan Willem (of Vlambeer), who hates the phrase "game feel", talks about it through a simple iterative process of improving game mechanics. See: link to this video
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abetuskon Hacker News • Recommends

On “In-browser retro-futuristic tank game, open source”

…ere are many videos on it but the most enlightening one I found was from Nijman of Vlambeer 1. You might need to take care with literal screenshake as it's 3d but there are many other suggestions that are relevant (kick back from firing, enemy blood/armor splatter, detritus persistence, small variations in bullet direction, etc.). 0 link 1 link to this video…
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yetiheheon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: How do I get started to game devevelopment/design?”

> I don't consider myself a person that good at writing stories (or anything other than programming) Read a book link > often find my games bland and boring pretty fast. Art of screenshake link to this video
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doomlaseron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Juice”

I believe the term comes from the game development sphere originally. Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho (creator of Noita and Crayon Physics Deluxe ) gave a famous talk about it in 2010, Juice it or lose it : link Another classic talk on the same topic comes from Jan Willem Nijman in 2013, The art of screenshake : link to this video It's nice to see these terms being adopted by the wider software development industry, though I doubt we'll be seeing much screenshake on websites or utility apps any time soon.
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modernerdon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?”

…nish. You don't have to release them all, but you should watch other people play them sometimes. 5. Don't listen to people who tell you not to watch YouTube for game design ideas, there are plenty of great videos out there that have positively changed how I think about game design: The art of screenshake (starts a little slow, but stick with it!): link to this video Designing to reveal the nature of the universe: link Game design is a search algorithm: link…
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badpunon Hacker News • Disputes

On “Ask HN: How do I get started to game devevelopment/design?”

> Art of screenshake link to this video I'm actually opposed to that. Adding screenshake etc. for boring games is essentially putting lipstick on a pig, i.e. adding a (short-lived) illusion that the game is fun while it actually isn't. The best game designs don't require any screenshake to captivate players for a long time. I mean, I'm not opposed to adding visual gimmicks during the polish phase. It should be used as a way to rescue a bad game though.
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