How to design telegraphs in action games

written 2026-03-03

In most PvE action games, the player is meant to avoid damage, and taking damage is supposed to mean they made a mistake. The player's hp is a mistake buffer so one mistake doesn't instantly fail them, and it's often only enough for a few hits, so having damage that can't be reliably avoided is unacceptable. To accomplish this, every enemy attack must have a fair *telegraph*.

A telegraph is a sign that an enemy is about to do a certain attack. When the player sees the telegraph, they're supposed to react by moving out of the way or preparing to block.

Speed

Telegraphs need to be long enough for humans to react to. One might think making them shorter is a fair way to make the game harder, but there's a limit to how fast humans can react, even with practice and preparation. Also account for how long it takes for the player to actually get out of the danger zone once they react. For example, if dodging an attack requires jumping over it, and the player's jump takes 0.3 seconds to get enough height, then the telegraph needs to be at least 0.3 seconds longer than the player's reaction time.

As for how fast humans can react, it's affected by a lot of things, so playtesting is the only real way to find out if a telegraph is long enough. If someone with a lot of practice can't reliably avoid it, it's unfair. Also a big factor is whether you can prepare just one reaction or you need to see *which* telegraph it is to know how to react. If you need to process which thing is happening instead of just that something is, you will be slower.

In games with untelegraphed enemy attacks, it's usually still technically possible to reliably avoid them, but it requires foreknowledge and specific strategies that may take out-of-game analysis to figure out, and usually aren't fun to play. For example, if an enemy can hit the area in front of them with no telegraph, playing safely might mean never being in front of the enemy and relying entirely on ranged attacks.

There's also such a thing as a telegraph too *slow*, at least if it's a fixed image. If an attack requires the player to jump over it, but the telegraph comes 3 seconds before the attack and the player can only stay in the air for 3 seconds, then the player can't actually react to the telegraph or they will be hit as they fall. They have to wait a certain amount after they see it, and learning how long that is takes trial and error and can be very annoying. If the telegraph is an animation that shows how close the attack is to starting, that can fix this.

Difference

Telegraphs also need to be distinguishable. Two attacks that require different responses from the player shouldn't have similar-looking telegraphs. During action, the player likely can't notice subtle visual differences that are only on screen for a fraction of a second, especially if they need to pay attention to other things at the same time (like other enemies or lingering projectiles). Like untelegraphed attacks, it's usually still possible to avoid them by playing around all the possibilities at once, but it's usually bad design.

Intuition

Ideally, a telegraph should also intuitively suggest what's going to happen, so that it's fair even for players who are seeing it for the first time. This is hard and won't always work since different things are intuitive to different players, but some games I think do it well are Hollow Knight, Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, Islets, Last Command, and Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story.

For example, in Hollow Knight many enemies have an attack where they dash across the ground, and this is usually telegraphed by a pose where they crouch while pointing their weapon forward. Attacks that hit just right in front of them are usually telegraphed by a pose where they pull their weapon behind them and/or lean back. This is pretty intuitive to me, and even if it's not intuitive to you, because the game uses this language pretty consistently, you'll get used to it after the first few enemies like this you see, and then you'll expect it on future enemies.

But if you can't design telegraphs so that the player can interpret them without having seen them before, at least design them so that the player can interpret them after seeing them once. The worst kind of attack is one you have to get hit by several times to figure out what its telegraph is. Guidelines for this are to make them exaggerated, very different from each other, and make them obviously look like *something* is going to happen, even if it's not clear what. An attack telegraph should not look like an idle animation.

False telegraphs

A problem I've seen in some games is that an enemy has what looks like a telegraph for a certain attack, but it's too fast to react to. I keep failing to react in time, but it turns out there's an earlier telegraph that does give enough time, but it doesn't seem related to the attack, and the existence of the later telegraph makes me not realize it because I think I already know what the telegraph is. For example in TEVI there's a boss (Caprice) who can stab in front of her, and before it she gets out her stabby weapon, but it's too late to react once you see that. After a lot of trial and error I realized she always jumps before it, so the jump is the real telegraph for this attack.

Movement with contact damage

I've also seen some game designers seemingly not realize that if an enemy has contact damage, then any sudden movement from them is an attack, and needs to be telegraphed.

In general, a good way to telegraph sudden movement is to have the enemy lurch in the opposite direction, like a windup. But they should be looking in the direction they're going to move. For example, if they're going to jump, they could crouch while looking upward.

Audio

Audio cues can supplement visual ones, like having a sound effect or a combat shout before a certain attack, but you shouldn't rely entirely on them because people might play with no sound or low volume for lots of reasons, or have impaired hearing. Also, if an enemy has multiple of these sounds, they should be mapped consistently to which attack, otherwise you'll just mislead players and waste their effort trying to find a pattern where there's none.