Hacker News Reader

> It would be interesting to see if that was a game design decision to allow for the game to be more dramatic.

It is, it's called "grazing."

Small hitboxes are just small hitboxes. "Grazing" specifically means closely approaching things that are harmful to touch, usually because the game rewards it in some way. This makes the game more fun by encouraging the player to take risks. It's been around for a long time, but AFAIK the first game to use it as a core mechanic was Psyvariar (2000), where it's used to power up your ship.

Seems like it should be older than this. Lotus Land Story (Touhou Project #4) has a graze counter, but being a doujin game it should be riffing off of other games that use graze for scoring or as a mechanic.

Ah interesting, not come across that term for game design, thanks!

It's a term used by players more so than designers I think - you usually get more points or something for getting as close as possible to bullets without getting hit, and some really dense patterns will require it, because the bullet sprites will practically be filling the screen.

It's possibly also worth mentioning for people unfamiliar with danmaku games that most are one hit kills against the player.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com