Add "juice" and game feel that makes actions satisfying — screen shake, hit-stop/freeze frames, tweened/eased motion, squash & stretch, knockback, and layered audio-visual feedback — as engine-neutral techniques that pair with the detected engine's tween, particle, and camera APIs. Use when the user

Game feel (juice) The difference between a mechanic that works and one that feels good is feedback: the layered, slightly exaggerated response an action provokes. This skill covers the engine neutral techniques — screen shake, hit stop, easing, squash & stretch, knockback, and stacked feedback — and tells you how to apply them without burying the underlying simulation. It adds polish on top of an existing mechanic; it does not implement the mechanic. When to use Use when an action (hit, jump, dash, pickup, death, button press) is mechanically correct but feels weak, weightless, or unsatisfying, and you want it to feel responsive and punchy. Use to add screen shake, hit stop/freeze frames, eased motion, squash & stretch, knockback, flashes, or to layer multiple feedback channels onto one event. Use to decide how much juice is enough and where it crosses into noise. When not to use: for the raw controller math (jump height, coyote time) use the platformer genre and the engine movement skill. For camera follow/deadzone/orbit framing use camera systems (this skill only triggers the shake). For mixing, ducking, and adaptive music use audio design . For shader based dissolves/flashes use shader programming and the engine shader skill. For the concrete tween/particle node APIs, use the engine animation skill ( godot animation , unity animation ). Core principle: feedback is layered and exaggerated One satisfying hit is usually 5–8 tiny responses firing together within ~100 ms: a sound, a particle burst, a brief hit stop, a flash, a knockback, a small screen shake, and a number popping up. Each is cheap; stacked, they read as "impact". Two rules keep it from becoming a mess: (1) exaggerate briefly and return to rest (juice is transient, not a new resting state); (2) scale juice to event importance — a footstep is not a boss death. Core workflow 1. Confirm the event hooks exist. Juice attaches to discrete events: on hit , on land , on pickup , on death , on fire . If the mechanic doesn't emit these, add them first. 2. Pick feedback channels per event from the menu (sound, particles, shake, hit stop, flash, knockback, tween, number pop). Start with 2–3; add until it reads, then stop. 3. Make motion eased, not linear. Route scale/position/UI changes through a tween with an ease (overshoot for "pop", ease out for "settle"). Linear motion feels robotic. 4. Reserve hit stop and shake for impact. They are the strongest, most abusable tools — short durations, scaled to importance, and never on routine actions. 5. Keep feedback off the critical simulation. Shake moves the camera/visual , not the body; hit stop uses time scale or a real time pause, not a gameplay logic stall. 6. Tune by importance tiers. Define small/medium/large feedback presets and assign events to a tier, so the whole game's juice stays consistent and proportional. 7. Verify by playing and watching. Trigger the event repeatedly; confirm the feedback fires, returns to rest, and is not nauseating or input blocking. Report what you observed (does shake decay? does input still register during hit stop?). Patterns 1. Screen shake by decaying "trauma" (smooth, not a random jitter) 2. Hit stop / freeze frame (sell impact by briefly stopping time) 3. Squash & stretch + overshoot via an eased tween (the "pop") 4. A feedback bundle scaled by importance (keep juice proportional) Pitfalls Shaking the player/body instead of the camera offset desyncs collision and aim. Shake the camera (or a visual pivot), never the simulated transform. Random offset every frame buzzes like static. Drive shake from sampled noise/sin and a decaying trauma value so it's smooth and self ending. Hit stop with WaitForSeconds / a scaled timer never resumes (at time scale 0 the timer never advances). Use a real time wait ( WaitForSecondsRealtime , or Godot's ignore time scale timer). Hit stop on every frame of a held attack locks the game. Trigger it once per impact. Overlapping hit stops (two hits 30 ms apart) let the first timer restore time scale in the middle of the second freeze. Let only the newest call restore it, as above. Linear tweens everywhere feel robotic. Ease almost everything; reserve overshoot (BACK/ELASTIC) for "pop" and ease out for "settle". Permanent exaggeration (scale never returns, shake never decays) becomes the new normal and stops reading as feedback. Juice must return to rest. Over juicing routine actions (full shake + hit stop on every footstep) causes nausea and hides real impacts. Scale to importance; add a "reduce screen shake"/"reduce flashing" accessibility option. Feedback that blocks input (long freeze, un cancelable animation) hurts responsiveness. Keep juice short and let input buffer through it. References For the trauma shake math, easing curve cheat sheet (which ease for pop vs settle), knockback + flash + number pop recipes, importance tier presets, and per engine tween/particle bindings, read references/feedback recipes.md . Related skills camera systems — owns camera follow/deadzone/orbit; this skill only feeds it shake trauma. godot animation , unity animation — concrete tween/AnimationPlayer/particle APIs juice rides on. audio design — the sound layer of every feedback bundle; ducking and SFX variation. physics tuning — knockback forces and the timestep juice must not destabilize. platformer , fps shooter , roguelike — genres whose moment to moment feel this elevates.

game-feel