Game feel

Screen shake in game development

one trauma value drives the shake

Interactive example · scroll or point here to play

one trauma value drives the shake

Screen shake moves the camera after a hit, driven by a trauma value from 0 to 1 that each hit raises and that falls back to 0 over about a second. The right view shakes by trauma squared times smooth noise, so the two light hits move a few pixels and the heavy hit moves far. The left view uses raw trauma and a new random offset every frame, so every hit jitters.

prompt bit

Drive screen shake from a trauma value between 0 and 1: each hit adds 0.3 to 0.6, trauma decays by about 1 per second, and each frame the camera x, y and roll offsets equal a max offset times trauma squared times smooth Perlin noise, not fresh random numbers.

When to use it

Use short, decaying shake to communicate impact. Keep it on a visual camera offset so shake does not change gameplay aiming, collision tests, or the camera’s persistent follow position.

Implementation example

Engine-neutral pseudocode. Adapt the functions and coordinate conventions to your engine.

trauma = clamp(trauma + impact, 0, 1)
trauma = max(0, trauma - decay * dt)
amplitude = trauma * trauma
cameraOffset.x = noise(time * frequency) * maxOffset * amplitude

Common mistakes

Do not accumulate random offsets into the base camera position. Apply shake relative to a stable pose, and provide a reduced-motion or shake-strength setting.

Maintained by Nicolas Zullo · Follow on X ↗

When to use it

Implementation example

Common mistakes

Related concepts