What it is. Hold an input to accumulate power over time; release to spend it in one committed strike. The hold is public — a windup the world can see, so the enemy gets to react before you land.

Player fantasy / why it’s fun. The slow-burn threat. You feel the shot getting heavier under your thumb, and every extra frame of charge is a bet: more damage, more exposure. Peak charge is a dare thrown at the whole room.

The verb. Press-and-hold to wind up, release to fire — the longer the hold, the bigger the payload and the deeper the commitment.

How it feels / why it’s fun.

• Tension you author yourself. Unlike a cooldown, the timer is your finger. You choose how far to lean over the ledge before you jump.
• A body you can’t hide. Charging is a telegraph — glow, hum, tremble. The enemy reads it as clearly as you do, which turns a damage move into a mind game. See system-telegraphs, pattern-readability.
• The release is the payoff. All that stored tension discharges in one frame of screen-shake and light. This is textbook pattern-juice-choreography — anticipation, then impact.

Tuning levers.

Default the curve nonlinear — a full charge should feel like a decision, not a tax. If tap and full differ by 20%, nobody waits.

The two-way telegraph. This is the load-bearing idea. Charging must cost legibility: the same signal that tells you “almost full” tells the enemy “dodge now.” Design the windup so a smart opponent can punish a greedy hold — that’s the risk half of pattern-risk-reward. Pair it with a movement penalty so the player can’t safely charge mid-scramble; commitment means planting your feet. See pattern-fairness-and-trust: the tell must be honest both directions.

Slots into.

• Genres: genre-soulslike, genre-fighting-game, genre-action-adventure, genre-precision-platformer, genre-bullet-hell, genre-metroidvania, genre-tactics (charge as a spent action).
• Anchors: anchor-dark-souls (charged R2, the whole risk grammar), anchor-street-fighter (charge motions — hold back, then punch), anchor-cuphead (the charged shot as boss-DPS tool), anchor-hades (Bull Rush / special charges), anchor-celeste (dash-as-commitment cousin).

Twist seams.

• Charge but releasing early is a feint that baits their dodge (mechanic-swap). Swap the payload for information: a half-charge flash makes the enemy burn their dodge, and now you land the real hit. The move stops being about damage and becomes about reading their read. Give feints a real cancel cost or they dominate — see mechanic-parry, mechanic-dodge-roll.
• Charge but it charges from ambient sound, not a button (theme). No hold input — your weapon fills from the world’s volume: nearby combat, a beating drum, a storm. Loud rooms arm you; silence disarms you, and the enemy learns to fight quiet. Reframes charge as environmental resource. See world-soundscape, system-hazards-and-environment.
• Charge but every tier is a different move (mechanic-swap). Tap fires, half sweeps, full launches — one input, three verbs gated by hold time. Depth from timing, not extra buttons. Watch readability: distinct tier tells or it becomes antipattern-guess-the-designer.

How it wires to Hayao.

• The charge value is state that advances with elapsed time each tick — hold it in the sim, off the view, so it lives in the world hash. Keep timing deterministic; drive any variance (crit rolls on release) through a deterministic RNG, never wall-clock.
• The windup is view: glow, particles, a swelling ring. Mark it cosmetic so it stays out of hash() — pure feedback, no logic. The split is the examples/sokoban/ convention.
• For the release burst — screen-shake, particle spray, hitstop — study a particles/camera sandbox in isolation (sandboxes/) before wiring it into a whole game, per the doctrine. Don’t survey full examples for the effect.
• If the design is turn-based (charge = an action spent across turns), the charge tier belongs in the pure Puzzle<State, Move> rules, and the solver proves the encounter is winnable.

Fails when…

• The tap and the full charge feel the same → nobody holds → dead lever. Fix the antipattern-false-depth: make the curve steep.
• Charging is free (no move penalty, no legible tell) → always charge, no decision → antipattern-boring-optimal.
• The windup and the release read alike, or the tier tells blur together → the player can’t tell what they cast → antipattern-unreadable-juice.
• Enemies can’t actually punish a greedy hold → the “risk” is fiction → it’s just a slow attack button.
• Full-charge damage climbs faster than encounter HP over a run → antipattern-power-creep / antipattern-stat-inflation.
• The input holds but the strike lags or the tier snaps wrong → antipattern-input-lie; commitment demands the crispest possible release frame.

See also. mechanic-ground-pound · mechanic-parry · mechanic-deflect · mechanic-dash · mechanic-block · system-telegraphs · system-combat-model · system-counter-systems · pattern-risk-reward · pattern-juice-choreography · pattern-readability · recipe-one-button-boss-rush