Game feel (juice)
What is game feel, or juice? How input response, motion and polish make controls feel good, from Steve Swink's 2008 book to Celeste and Hollow Knight.
Game feel is the tactile sense of controlling a game: how a jump or a hit responds and lands. Steve Swink’s book Game Feel (2008) defines it as real-time control of virtual objects in a simulated space, with interactions emphasised by polish. That polish layer, from screen shake to hitstop and particles, is what designers call juice. The term has no single agreed definition.
Examples
Each game links to the source that describes it using the mechanic.
- Celeste
- Hollow Knight, made with Unity
- Dark Souls
Related terms: Hitstop, Screen shake, Coyote time, Input buffering.
Sources
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