Bump combat
Bump combat is a video game mechanic where battle is performed, not by pressing attack buttons to swing weapons, but by simply bumping into an enemy, often by maneuvering your character so that it bumps into the enemy from a specific direction or offset. The mechanic saw popularity in Japanese fantasy RPGs because of Hydlide and Ys: The Vanished Omens, but it also showed up in some Western games as well. Typically, bump combat refers to real-time combat and not turn-based combat. Bump combat has similarities to a stomp attack, though bump combat is typically used in top-down perspective while stomp attacks are used in side-view perspective. Bump combat has the benefit of being easy to implement by the programmer, since collision will already have to be implemented, and easy to understand by the player, since it just involves moving around. However, it's down side is that it tends to result in rather shallow action sequences.
Contents
Personal
The first game I ever played which had bump combat was Castle Adventure, which I played around 1987, and already found it too primitive. I don't remember seeing another game with bump combat until the late 1990s when I played an emulated copy of Hydlide on the NES. I initially hated it, but, after trying to figure the mechanic out, saw that it had some merit, though I still preferred games where you can make your character swing a sword. Once I learned that bump combat was used in several influential video games, and that later designers made modern homages to them, I decided to look into the mechanic further.
History
Bump combat sees its roots with early fantasy games like Rogue, released in 1980, where, to attack a monster, you simply moved your character into the space where the monster is. However, Rogue uses turn-based combat which is significantly different from live-action combat which is typically what people think of in regards to bump combat.
In the West, Rogue-likes developed into Rogue-lites, some of which use real-time combat. Castle Adventure, released in 1984, is an early example of a Rogue-lite with real-time bump combat. In Japan, bump combat appears to have been thought-up independently in 1984 by Hydlide's designer, Tokihiro Naito.
Ys: The Vanished Omens, released in 1987, added a twist to traditional bump combat by making it dangerous to approach monsters directly. Instead, the player must align their character so they there is a vertical or horizontal offset before bumping into the monster, otherwise they will take damage, not give it. This is referred to as 半キャラずらし [Han kyara zurashi], literally "half-character shift."
Examples
This is a list of games that are important to me which use bump combat, for the full list, see the category.
| Title | Released | Developer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Castle Adventure | 1984-??-?? | Kevin Bales | |
| Frog Fractions 2 | 2016-12-26 | Twinbeard Studios | Your rotate your sword around your body and can damage opponents with it, but your body is vulnerable. |
| Gauntlet | 1985-11-?? | Atari Games | In addition to a ranged weapon. |
| Hydlide | 1984-12-13 | T&E Soft | |
| Mamono Slayer | 2009-10-19 | Skipmore | |
| Rogue | 1980-??-?? | Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman | Turn-based bump combat. |
| Xak: The Art of Visual Stage | 1989-06-?? | Micro Cabin | |
| Ys: The Vanished Omens | 1987-06-21 | Nihon Falcom | Uses offset bumping. |
