History Main / VagueHitPoints

* You can invoke this in ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'', as many basic features such as your and your enemies' HP bar are part of the DiegeticInterface which you can manually remove to make room for upgrades, ergo, you can uninstall chips that tell you how much HP you or your enemies have left or inform how much damage you deal or take. For your player character, the only way to tell about remaining HP without going into the pause menu is that the screen becomes black-and-white upon reaching critical health. For enemies, some of the larger enemies ShowsDamage, but even this is rarely a clear-cut way to tell how close you are to killing them.

* You can invoke this in ''VideoGame/NierAutomata'', as many basic features such as your and your enemies' HP bar are part of the DiegeticInterface which you can manually remove to make room for upgrades, ergo, you can uninstall chips that tell you how much HP you or your enemies have left or inform how much damage you deal or take. For your player character, the only way to tell about remaining HP without going into the pause menu is that the screen becomes black-and-white upon reaching critical health. For enemies, some of the larger enemies ShowDamage, but even this is rarely a clear-cut way to tell how close you are to killing them.

* ''VideoGame/{{Cuphead}}'': The bosses have HitPoints, technically, and if a battle is lost, the screen that's displayed shows the boss's LifeMeter, but since you're supposed to hold down the fire button and focus on dodging attacks, the LifeMeter is more meant as a record of how far the player got instead of acting as a useful in-combat piece of information.

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonLegendsArceus'', your player character can take damage, from environmental hazards (mostly fall damage or sinking into deep water) and attacks from Pokemon outside of regular battles. To determine how much health you have left, the screen's borders will flash black and eventually red when you're reaching critical. Unfortunately there is also such a thing as too high, whereupon your character instantly blacks out with no warning after falling too far down.

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonLegendsArceus'', your player character can take damage, from environmental hazards (mostly fall damage or sinking into deep water) and attacks from Pokemon outside of regular battles. To determine how much health you have left, the screen's borders will flash black and eventually red when you're reaching critical.

Similarly, applying that vagueness to other types of games can make it more realistic and increase the tension a player experiences as real life doesn't have such precise measurements. This, this trope has a higher chance of appearing in fast paced action games that skew more towards realism than other kinds of games. On the flipside, tactical games that require the player to methodically keep track of a myriad of minute details in order to best their opponent are least likely to feature this trope. {{Roguelikes}}, where [[{{Permadeath}} death is permanent]] and requires the player to restart from the beginning, can go either way to either help the player know just how close to death they are or obscure that info for the sake of tension.

* ''VideoGame/{{Okami}}'' and its sequel, ''VideoGame/{{Okamiden}}'', health is represented with orbs of solar energy. You can earn up to 20 orbs in ''Okami'', or 10 in ''Okamiden'', but each orb is worth 300 HitPoints. The orbs progressively deplete themselves when HitPoints are lost, but it's never said the exact amounts that are there.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'': Only Dante and bosses have health bars, but their exact HP is impossible to determine without datamining the game. Regular enemies don't have health bars, but rather displays their health in segments if the player targeted them, but that is only an approximation rather than an accurate amount.

* ''VideoGame/{{Bayonetta}}: The only characters that have health bars are the player, tougher enemies, and bosses, and even then, their exact HP is unknown without datamining the game.