Easing (Slow In / Slow Out)
Accelerating into and decelerating out of motion instead of moving at constant speed.
Anticipation
A wind-up in the opposite direction before an action, telegraphing what's coming.
Follow Through
Loose parts keep moving after the main body stops — hair, capes, weapon tips.
Squash & Stretch
Deforming a shape along its motion to sell weight, speed, and material.
Spring Motion
Motion driven by a damped spring instead of a tween — interruptible, retargetable, and alive on every frame.
Elastic / Overshoot
Letting a motion overshoot its target and settle, instead of stopping dead.
Punch Scale
Popping an object's scale up for an instant, then settling it back with a bounce.
Wobble / Jiggle
A decaying oscillation that makes an object feel soft, springy, or alive.
Hit Stop
Freezing the action for a few frames right when a hit connects.
Camera Shake
Briefly jolting the camera to sell weight, impact, or danger.
Flick
Flashing the hit object itself white (or a color) for a few frames — also known as hit flash.
Screen Flash
A brief full-screen (or local) flash of color to punctuate a big moment.
Knockback / Recoil
Jolting a character or weapon backward the instant it deals or takes a hit.
Zoom Punch
A quick camera zoom-in that snaps back, punching emphasis into a moment.
Shockwave Distortion
An expanding ring that visibly warps the scene behind it, like a blast wave through air.
Chromatic Aberration
A split-second RGB split on impact — for one frame, the lens itself flinches.
Impact Sparks
Sparks bursting off the surface when something hits a wall — collisions you can see.
Particle Burst
A radial spray of short-lived particles that marks an impact or a pickup.
Muzzle Flash
A one-or-two-frame burst of light at the barrel — the visual crack that makes a gun feel loaded.
Weapon Recoil
The gun kicks back and up in one frame, then eases home — the shot's weight told by the weapon itself.
Hitmarker
A tiny X flashes on the crosshair with a click the instant a shot connects — the shooter's handshake.
Impact Decals
Bullet holes and scorch marks that stay on the wall — the world remembering the fight is a feedback channel too.
Damage Direction Indicator
A red arc around the player pointing at where the hit came from — pain with a compass.
Invulnerability Flicker
The classic post-hit blink — the character strobes in and out to say 'you can't be hurt right now'.
Slow Motion
Briefly dropping the game's time scale to stretch out a dramatic moment.
Bullet Time
Slowing the world while the player keeps moving at full speed — two clocks, not one.
Smooth Camera Follow
A camera that eases after its target with lag and look-ahead instead of hard-locking.
Camera Tilt
A few degrees of camera roll while strafing or drifting — the horizon leans into the turn like a motorcyclist.
FOV Kick
The field of view widens as you speed up — the world stretches past the edges and 'fast' becomes physical.
Parallax
Background layers scrolling slower than the foreground to fake depth.
Focus Blur
The background melts out of focus when a menu or dialogue opens — the lens itself says 'look here now'.
Button Press
Giving a button real, tactile feedback the instant it's pressed.
Coyote Time
Letting the player still jump for a few frames after walking off a ledge.
Input Buffering
Remembering a slightly-early input and executing it the moment it becomes possible.
Jump Feel
Heavier gravity on the way down and a soft hang at the apex — the asymmetric arc every good jump hides.
Corner Correction
Clip a platform's corner by a few pixels and the game quietly nudges you past it — the bonk that never happens.
Aim Assist
The reticle slows down over targets and gets a gentle pull toward them — aiming that flatters the player's hands.
Haptic Feedback
The phone taps back — on mobile the hands ARE the screen, and haptics is the only physical channel you get.
Floating Numbers
Damage/heal numbers that pop up and float away from the point of impact.
Combo Popup
A punchy on-screen callout that celebrates a combo, streak, or milestone.
Score Ticker
Rolling a score up to its new value instead of snapping, so gains feel earned.
Juicy Progress Bar
XP lands as an eased surge with a glowing head, and level-up overflows the bar into a burst — progress you can feel, not just see.
Cooldown Radial
The ability button goes dark and a radial sweep uncovers it — the player reads the wait at a glance and feels the exact moment it's back.
Delayed Health Bar
A ghost segment that lingers after damage, showing exactly how much a hit took.
Low-Health Warning
Pulsing red vignette and a heartbeat when health drops low — danger you feel before you read.
Typewriter Text
Revealing dialog one character at a time, with pauses that give the line a voice.
Screen Fader
Fading the screen to black to hide scene changes and frame transitions cleanly.
Transition Wipe
An iris closing on the hero, a beat of black, an iris opening on the new scene — transitions with a personality.
Audio Pitch Randomization
Slightly varying the pitch of repeated sounds so they never feel machine-gunned.
Audio Ducking
Briefly lowering the music so important sounds punch through the mix.
Audio Muffle
A low-pass filter swallows the highs — the world sounds like it's behind a wall, underwater, or inside a pause menu.
Stereo Pan
Sounds follow their objects across the stereo field — the ear tracks what the eye hasn't found yet.
Reverb Zones
The same footstep sounds dry in a field and blooms into echoes in a cave — reverb tells the player what space they're standing in.
Musical Stinger
A short musical accent played on top of the soundtrack when something notable happens.
Adaptive Music Layers
Music stems fading in and out with game intensity, so the score follows the action.
Footsteps
Steps that sound and puff dust in rhythm with actual movement, grounding the character in the world.
Trail
A fading streak left behind a fast-moving object to make its motion readable.
Speed Lines
Anime streaks tearing across the frame during a dash — a century-old comic trick that still sells motion best.
Charge-Up
Visible power gathering — glow, converging particles, and a growing tremble before the release.
Loot Magnet
Coins accelerating into the player from a radius — pickups that come to you feel like being rich.
Death Dissolve
Enemies burning away into glowing fragments instead of blinking out — a death worth watching.
Desaturation
The color drains out of the world — death, flashbacks, and last-stand moments told entirely in grayscale.
Color Grading Shift
The palette leans warm in the lava zone and cold in the crypt — the whole screen becomes a mood dial the player never consciously reads.
Bloom Pulse
A surge of glow that breathes through a pickup or a charged weapon — light leaking is the universal word for 'special'.
Light Flicker
A torch that trembles like a real flame — smooth noise on a light's intensity turns static lighting into weather.
Lens Distortion
The frame itself bulges for a few frames on a heavy hit — as if the blow bent the camera's lens, not just the scene inside it.