In a game, your character has a bar. It goes down when you take damage. It goes up when you heal. That is HP. It stands for "hit points" or "health points." It is the most basic stat in gaming. When HP reaches zero, you die. Or you respawn. Or you restart the level. The bar is a life meter.

HP comes from tabletop role-playing games. Dungeons & Dragons used hit points in the 1970s. Video games adopted it. Now it is universal. A platformer has HP. A shooter has HP. An RPG has HP. The number varies. A character might have 100 HP or 10,000. The concept is the same.

Related terms

• MP: magic points or mana points.
• XP: experience points.
• DPS: damage per second.
• Healer: a character who restores HP.

HP is a simple idea. It is a number that represents life. It is also a design tool. A game with too much HP is slow. A game with too little is punishing. The best games balance it. The bar on the screen is a promise. It says, "You can survive this." Or it says, "You are about to die." Either way, you watch it.