Jumping/vaulting
Contextual traversal moves that let characters leap gaps, hop obstacles, or vault over low barriers, often automated or semi-automated to keep movement fluid. Assassin's Creed's parkour system reads the environment and auto-selects the appropriate vault or leap, and Mirror's Edge builds its entire momentum-focused traversal around chained vaults and jumps. Designers use jumping and vaulting to make traversal feel fast and cinematic without demanding precise manual input for every obstacle, to open up verticality in level design, and to create a distinct movement-skill expression separate from combat. Key decisions: automation level (context-sensitive auto-vault versus manual precision jumping), how obstacles are visually signposted as vaultable, momentum preservation through chained moves, and camera behavior during fast traversal. Pitfall: over-automated traversal can remove player agency and turn movement into watching an animation play rather than actively performing it — the best systems keep the player making real-time decisions (when to jump, which route) even while individual moves are assisted.
- Dev effort: Medium
- Timing: Real-time
- Common in: action-adventure, platformer
Seen in
- Assassin's Creed
- Mirror's Edge