Nature and effects
Learning paths through this topic
Show dust floating in a beam of light, glowing only inside the beam
Dust hanging in a shaft of light through a boarded window is a quiet, strong picture, but dust drawn all over the room looks like noise, and dust that wraps at the edge visibly pops. Here is how to make the specks light up only where the beam falls and slip in and out unseen.
Make a flashlight fail with a flicker that gets worse as the battery drains
A flashlight that simply gets dimmer is dull, and one that flickers randomly every frame just buzzes and hurts the eyes. A good dying light gives the player a few readable moments and then takes them away. Here is how to build that so it repeats the same on every run.
Make an egg wobble on every tap and crack in stages until it hatches
Tapping an egg is a classic reward loop, and the wobble must answer every single tap, even fast ones, without piling up into a spinning blur. The cracks should come in clear steps and the last tap should feel like a finish. Here is a wobble made of overlapping little swings and a stage rule for the cracks.
Make eyes in the dark forest watch, blink, and vanish when lit too long
Two glowing eyes between the trees are an old trick that works, until they stay put when you shine a torch on them, or flick away at the first touch of light. The player should feel watched, then feel that the watcher judged the light. Here is how to give the eyes a patient state of mind.
Make blossom petals fall with a flutter, slow when flat and quick when on edge
Falling petals in a gentle story scene look like confetti if they all drop at one speed and spin like plates. A real petal turns, shows its face, then its edge, and the fall changes with every turn. Here is how to get that tumble from a few numbers, with no list of petals to keep.
Let fire or flood creep across a tile board and flow around the walls
When a puzzle board catches fire or fills with water, the effect should spread from the source like it really travels. If it grows as a circle it jumps through walls and lights tiles it could never reach, while tiles in sealed pockets must stay untouched. Here is how to time every tile.
Make fireflies drift into flashing together over a few minutes
A swamp full of fireflies that all blink at random is wallpaper, but a swarm that slowly pulls into one beat tells the player that something in the dark is coordinating. Here is how to get the drift into step working, why it must not happen at once, and the mistake that makes the whole swarm freeze.
Fire a win-screen firework show so every burst lands on its beat
On a level-complete screen you want bursts in time with the music, high ones and low ones mixed. If you launch every rocket at the beat, the bursts arrive at different moments because higher rockets climb longer. Here is how to work backwards from the bang, and what to do when the first one is already too late.
Keep ambient animation steady when the app returns from the background
A player switches to a message and comes back thirty seconds later. Butterflies, clouds and water jump, speed through a burst of catching up, or the game freezes while it tries to simulate the time it missed. Here is the small loop that keeps the picture calm and never falls behind itself.
Make a cloud of flies circle something and burst apart when disturbed
A buzzing swarm over something dead says a lot without a word. The swarm needs three moods: busy, scattered, and slowly gathering again, and the speed of the change matters more than the picture of a fly. Here is how to get the burst to come fast and the return to take its time.
Open a flower petal by petal and close it again in the reverse order
When a puzzle piece blooms into a flower, opening every petal together looks like an umbrella. Delaying them one after another helps, but closing the flower by simply running the same animation backwards is wrong in a way people sense. Here is a timeline that opens and closes naturally and ends on a known time.
Make flowers droop where a ghost passed, and recover only long after it left
A trail of dead flowers behind an unseen visitor tells the story without a line of text. The effect fails if flowers die the instant it comes near, or if they spring back as soon as it leaves. Here is how to read the wilt from the path alone, so the same garden can be rebuilt after a reload.