Design Making boss fight more interesting

B

BlueCat6123

Guest
I've got a prototype for a boss fight made but It's not really that exciting.


There are 3 attacks

1. a large spike comes up through the ground

2. Spikes cover the ground and you are forced to go to a higher platform

3. Boss flies from either side and player can crouch or jump over

Anything I could do (not by adding more attacks) to make it more of a challenge/fun?
 
W

Widget

Guest
Kinda hard to make a boss more challenging by not adding more attacks. But how about...

1. Make the attacks faster/bigger
2. When the boss flies, player has to jump or crouch, depending on its elevation
3. The platform the player jumps on breaks and they have to jump to another until it's safe

How about make these alterations on the 2nd phase of the boss, which begins when 50% of its HP is depleted?
 

sylvain_l

Member
Anything I could do (not by adding more attacks) to make it more of a challenge/fun?
instead of having a repetitive pattern ATK 1, ATK2, ATK 3 and start again the same pattern.
just have more random pattern or at least varied.

then if your attacks suck... well you need to fix those first. You won't make any boss fight exciting with 💩💩💩💩ty attacks.
What make a boss fight exciting is the rythm, the challenge.
That means the boss attacks have to challenge the player and its reflex/timing/strategy

for example, if the flight attack is too slow as it takes 2 secondes or even more and all the player has to do is crounch by pressing the down key and wait until the end of the attack.... well thats not very challenging. So better design the boss attack carefully if you only want 3 of them.

slow attack can work, for example in sonic like game, where you had only a one spot to attack the ennemy that required to synchronize your jump with the attack and movement of the boss. And most important because if the boss was touching you only one time you'd lose all the rings. So you'd prefer beating the boss with a perfect ;) that what made the tension rise and the boss fight more entertaining.
 
Here's a different approach:
Every boss has a story and every boss fight tells a story.

So write a biography on that boss. How was he created or in what familiy/society was he/she born into?
How was the bosses childhood; how did the boss grow up?
What happened that this character or creature became a boss and not just some regular oponent?
How did that boss become something special?
How did that boss learn to fight? Who is his mentor or teacher?
What happened that this boss actually became something evil or something that needs to be defeated?
What did the boss do just before the game started or while the games story was told so far?

With a bio created you can now think about the personality of this boss.
Is the boss about raw strength? about speed? about cunning? about cheating?
Is he fighting alone or do other creatures help out?
Does he use his body as a weapon or does he carry weapons?
Where does this fight take place and why there? Does the boss use the environment to fight, to hide, to shield?

In what way is he vulnerable?
Did he never learn to cover his face? Is he physically not able to? Is he just too arrogant or to much a brute to cover?
Does he wear protection? What kind of protection?

My point is: the boss is not just a random enemy. The boss has a story which determines how the boss is fighting and how he can be defeated. And if you figure out the story about the boss you should be able to figure out how to make the fight interesting and believable.
 

11clock

Member
How I am currently designing a parkour boss rush game is that each boss is themed around a specific gimmick. On the first phase, the boss isn’t much of a threat to give you time to learn how to use the gimmick to damage him. Once you damage the boss for the first time, the boss starts to fight for real, remixing and iterating on its gimmick on each phase. On the final phase, the boss changes the battle in a dramatic way, but maintains its core gimmick. You just have to think a bit differently on how to use the gimmick on the final blow.
 

HighlandCoo

Member
Make boss fights rewarding! I personally think its great when a player says "f**k YEAH I cant wait to fight this guy", evne if he is the toughest boss in the game.

I dont think you get that from making him HARDER, or TOUGHER, I think you get that by rewarding the player for the encounter. Depends on the game I suppose, but I always give the player a new gun or something after a significant fight.
 
Make the timing of dodging the boss's attacks strict, but make the boss give you a bit of notice when he is about to perform said attack.
The idea is to make something difficult but not cheap. You want to figure out quickly what you have to do and how to dodge the attacks, but make said attacks difficult (but fair of course) to dodge.
 
Top