The Duel - A Boss Fight
The focus of this project was to make an interesting boss fight with multiple mechanics and smooth player movement.
Designing the boss
The design came from inspiration I took in learning about shape psychology. I knew almost immediately that I did not want to build a normal bipedal or quadrupedal foe and wanted to focus on something inhuman and unreal in our conception of reality. With that in mind, I created this enemy that would be unfamiliar and unsettling in its physical makeup. The spheres give a player and unsettled feeling and that this being is not of this world. Cubes taken from parts of the level give a familiarity to what’s real and safe, but attached to this foe it becomes sinister and foreboding. Finally, making it float seemed the most logical thing to do considering the direction of the boss, giving it something that no human can do.
Fight mechanics
The boss follows a similar structure to other fights in having multiple attacks on intervals and phases. The basic attack from the boss, the line of orbs, was modified after testing to counter the circle strafing strategy that became too effective early on. The slam is telegraphed to give the player enough time to respond with a well-timed jump or a dash. Finally, once the player gets the boss’s health down to 25%, it triggers an explosion event, which raises barriers to block said explosion, otherwise the player takes massive damage.
From the player side of things, resource management is the main thing to keep track of with both the health and ammo in the balance. There is also a stim item in the level which gives a buffer of damage that can take a few hits and decays over time. Other than that, movement had been tweaked to be more responsive and a dash ability was added for extra mobility.
HUD animations
Keeping it minimal was the goal with eye catching animations to draw attention to the events happening to the player. Everything was timed to match actions/reactions in the game and kept information retention simple. I have always been inspired by simplistic animations that effectively communicate to the player without distracting from the main goal. I think that I achieved this fine line fairly well with these animations
