Make the gameplay meaning visible before adding spectacle.

For every effect define trigger, owner, duration, gameplay meaning, camera-distance silhouette, color hierarchy, spawn cap, cleanup rule, and reduced-motion equivalent. Separate telegraph, contact, success, failure, and lingering status visuals.

Pool short-lived objects, reuse materials/geometry, cap particles, and avoid per-frame allocation. Use additive/transparency sparingly around important UI and targets. Make cleanup idempotent so reset, death, and pause cannot leak effects.

Test overlaps, multiple targets, rapid repetition, pause/resume, lowest quality, reduced motion, and touch viewports. Sample the live encounter for warnings, draw calls, frame time, and visual readability.