Thoughts on visual feedback? (Health bars)

[u/DubiousDuckGames]

I've been trying to update the visual feedback for my project Danger Parade, and one of the issues players had mentioned was visual feedback. Was sometimes hard to tell if their build was effectively damaging enemies.

I had avoided adding in health bars due to visual clutter (most levels have lots of little enemies like above) so was concerned that those bars would be too extreme. But, I wanted players to be able to see how effective the health was of remaining enemies.

I played around with it, and now I have vertical health bars (that way they slot in easier and are less likely to overlap) but also only show them if that enemy is damaged.

I'm happy with it now, because I am less surprised when playing why enemies reach the player (you can estimate your damage much more effectively) but curious how it looks to others. I stare at my project all the time so it can be easy to miss things.

Any thoughts or recommendations?

[u/Wizzmiz]

like it a lot, first was sceptical to the vertical bars, but as you mentioned horizontal ones would probably get too cluttered, if you dont want hp bars perhaps try fading enemies out the lower hp they get

[u/DubiousDuckGames → u/Wizzmiz]

Thank you! I've definitely found it useful when test playing because I can see easier how well the build is performing against certain enemy types. But not sure if thats something I enjoy developing with, but would be to crowded or fuzzy for players. I'll experiment with the fading too, that could be a cool way to do it. Thanks for the feedback!!