Combine health station: the cross panel and the grub canister

Half-Life: Alyx · HUD & Gameplay UI

Art style Realistic 3D

Half-Life: Alyx - Combine health station: the cross panel and the grub canister

About this game

Developer: Valve · Publisher: Valve · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Realistic 3D · Screen type: HUD & Gameplay UI

More Half-Life: Alyx screens in the Gallery

What to study

Healing is also a machine, not a menu. The health station announces itself the way real emergency equipment does, one oversized black cross on a white field, readable across a dark room, and everything about using it is physical: a glass canister holding a grub (collected earlier and carried by hand) is docked in the round port on the unit's right side, a teal gauge dial and light strips report the machine's state, and a red pull handle hangs below the panel. There is no 'use' prompt, no health number, no confirmation dialog; the station's interface is its signage, its port and its handle, arranged so a first-time player can work it out by looking. The grub in the glass is the consumable, made literal, health in this game is an object you find, carry, and feed into a wall. Frame at about 2:26 in the Gameplay 1 video (Steam), manually extracted at 146.0s: the scene-change pass emitted no frame for the health-station sequence. Screen type follows the Portal 2 precedent of filing diegetic machines/signage under hud-gameplay; the manifest has no machine bucket.

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

diegetic-controls

Components

Parts on screen.

Vitals bar Gauge

Screen inventory

  • wall-mounted Combine health station, whole unit in frame
  • large black cross on a white field at the panel's head
  • glass canister holding a pale grub docked in the circular port at right
  • teal circular gauge dial below the port
  • teal light strips running along the panel's lower edge
  • red pull handle mounted below the panel
  • heavy cables rising from the top of the unit into the wall

Top 3 colors

#111b1a 24%#152121 22%#0a1515 19%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Valve, Half-Life: Alyx screenshot: Half-Life: Alyx Gameplay 1 and Gameplay 2 videos (Steam), shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Valve.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-20. verified 2026-10-21: frame manually extracted at 146.0s from the pipeline-downloaded Gameplay 1 video (Steam) and inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); genuine in-game frame confirmed settled (cross panel, docked grub canister, gauge dial, light strips and pull handle all legible); no trailer text or watermark overlays the frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-21); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.