Jan Willem Nijman - Vlambeer - "The art of screenshake" at INDIGO Classes 2013
Why Hacker News recommends it
A perennial recommendation for anyone learning game feel and juice, praised for showing concrete steps that turn a bland prototype into a satisfying game.
What it is
Vlambeer's Jan Willem Nijman shows how to make an action game feel great by stacking small effects like screenshake, recoil and particles onto a basic shooter. It was presented at INDIGO Classes 2013.
Recommended by 10 HN commenters across 11 different months, 2014 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec ncallaway · 2022-12 · on “Twitter Suspends PG's Account”
> vlambeer, if anyone knows them I absolutely love their "art of screenshake" lecture. [this video] It really shows how there's a very high ceiling for polish and _feel_ when it comes to interactions. "Screenshake" is something that I'm sure a lot of people might look at and say: "oh, that would take 15 minutes to add", and if you're just talking about shaking the screen a bit, absolutely! But if you want to make the screenshake _really_ communicate a feeling and an emotion, there's so much more you can do.
Strong rec abetusk · 2024-03 · on “How do you make an addictive video game?”
Ultimately pretty shallow. This is more an exploration of how it feels to make a "sticky" game rather than how to actually make a sticky game. I certainly don't have any expertise or deep insight but I will say that one of the best videos I've seen on this is "The art of screenshake" by J. Nijman of Vlambeer [0]. There, he walks through what's a very basic 2d sidescroller shooter and adds in effects until it looks like an actual fun game. The idea being that layering feedback and effects so that every aspect of the game becomes more fun to play. It sounds like this podcast was focusing more on Hearthstone and Marvel Snap, both games which I haven't played but are more strategy and luck orien
Strong rec abetusk · 2025-08 · on “Starting game development in JavaScript with no experience”
For me, the "owl" was all the polish and game feel. "The art of screenshake" by Jan Nijman of Vlambeer [0] was what helped fill in the steps to "making the owl". I think most people with reasonable know-how can make a basic game, whether it's asteroids, flappy bird, breakout, etc. For me, I never understood how to get past the "finished the tutorial" to "looks like an actual game". Screenshake, aka game feel/polish/production effects, was what made it gel. [0] [this video]
Strong rec auto · 2025-09 · on “DOOMscrolling: The Game”
Once I gave this sometime I actually enjoyed the concept quite a bit. I think it's a novel twist on the bullet hell genre, and I'm a sucker for single button/input style games. I'm playing on a mouse, specifically a Logitech G502 that I can "unlock" the screen wheel to be almost frictionless, which to me feels like the right meta for a game like this. Couple constructive criticisms: - Is there a pause button that I'm missing? If not, add one, I want to actually play this more but I need to be able to take breaks - The beginning is too easy. I'm biased as I like difficult games that encourage mastery, but I found myself dying early on runs because I was getting impatient with how slow the ear
Recommends drhayes9 · 2014-01 · on “Ask HN: I'm building one HTML5 game per week, need feedback”
Great games! Great start! Here's a talk you might be interested in from one of the guys who made "Ridiculous Fishing" on the Art of Screenshake: [this video] Basically, it's a bunch of interesting points on how to make action games feel more responsive and fun.
Recommends Vermeulen · 2014-04 · on “Game Mechanic Explorer – examples for game mechanics, algorithms, and effects”
I love these interactive demos of game dev techniques. Another great one is this Aztez post on fighting game effects - [LINK] - and Vlambeer's demo in their 'art of screenshake' talk [this video]
Recommends polm23 · 2016-05 · on “I Have Created 50 Games in 2014”
Here's Ryan Clark (Crypt of the NecroDancer) writing about what makes a game commercially viable: [LINK] Here's Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer discussing a large number of small improvements that make games feel good: [this video] Here's Rami Ismail, also of Vlambeer, explaining how making a game a week helps you develop an intuition for some parts of game making: [LINK] Here's a talk by Sid Meier (Civilization) about Interesting Decisions: [LINK]
Recommends jean_claude · 2016-08 · on “How to Prototype a Game in Under 7 Days (2005)”
The core essence of a video game is the game feel (which not everyone likes, because it's ill-defined). How does a player interact with a game? Via game mechanics. No amount of polish is going to make up for horrible game mechanics. Jan Willem (of Vlambeer), who hates the phrase "game feel", talks about it through a simple iterative process of improving game mechanics. See: [this video]