CHAIN/BOUNCING ATTACKS
Attacks that propagate between targets — lightning that arcs to nearby enemies, projectiles that ricochet, effects that jump on kill — making enemy density a damage multiplier and positioning a shared vulnerability.
- SOLO-DEV COST LOW
- TIMING REAL-TIME
- COMMON IN ACTION · ROGUELIKE · ARPG · SHOOTER
Vampire Survivors fills the screen with hundreds of enemies precisely so bouncing and piercing weapons can cascade spectacularly, and Risk of Rain 2's ukulele item arcs chain lightning off every hit, turning item stacking into visible storms of propagation. Designers use chaining to make crowd-clearing feel earned rather than granted — the player who herds enemies into clumps gets exponential payoff — and to create satisfying visual feedback loops: a chain is legible cause-and-effect fireworks. Chains also differentiate weapon roles cleanly: single-target versus chain damage is one of the most intuitive loadout axes in action games. Key decisions: chain rules (how many jumps, range per jump, damage falloff per bounce, can it revisit a target), whether chains are innate to weapons or granted by upgrades — chain-on-hit as a modifier is a beloved upgrade archetype — and performance budgeting, since chains multiply hit events fast. Pitfall: chains that trivialize the density they feed on; if one chain weapon clears every crowd, enemy count stops being a threat and the horde becomes a fuse waiting for the player's match.
SEEN IN
- VAMPIRE SURVIVORS
- RISK OF RAIN 2