About

This boss fight was designed to test the player's ability to quickly react to environmental hazards and traps, as the chapter that follows incorporates significant environmental hazards interwoven with the platforming and combat elements.

By utilizing mechanics that the player has already learnt throughout the chapter such as the disappearing platforms, laser spikes, and enemy projectlies, and then adding a twist in the way these mechanics are presented, the player instinctively knows what to do in the face of the specific hazards, and at the same time, needs to stay focus and quickly react to the new mechanisms in which these hazards take place.

While the idea of having this boss fight be about environmental hazards and bullet hell-ish mechanics was conceived from the very first iteration of the experience, given that this was the very first boss encounter designed for the game, it unavoidably underwent several redesigns throughout the project's development, always relying in playtest data to steer the direction of the fight and balance its difficulty.

For each redesign that would substantially change the overall experience, I would first pitch the concept to the Direction team with a rough paper design draft, with the main focus of communicating the moment-to-moment gameplay experience.  

Above: Technical document for the development team to implement a solid foundation for the boss fight.

Above: Paper design draft for the pitch of the 7th version of the "Tentacle Tangle" boss fight

Note that for the paper design drafts, nothing was actually implemented, and all images were for illustration purposes only, made by creating a quick setup in-engine, and then adding the necessary elements in Photoshop to make a mock-up screenshot able to illustrate the mechanics, systems, and ideas. 

Once the pitch was approved on paper, I would implement a "sticks and duct tape" playable prototype using the resources already available (such as a scaled-up enemy as a boss proxy), level scripting, and behavior trees. This prototype would then be presented to the development team along with a more technical document describing the implementations needed to craft a boss fight that could be sent to the publisher for play testing. 

After receiving feedback from the team and the play testing report from the publisher for the solid prototype made with the systems and components implemented by the development team, I would create a final design document that included the final changes and adjustments was created to be stored in the Confluence repository and as a reference for the whole team to work in the final implementation of the boss fight.

The design document is designed to work in tandem with the flowcharts that describe in detail each stage of the boss fight, this way, any member of the development, art, VFx or audio teams can follow the flow chart along and directly refer any process described in it to the respective slide, containing a more comprehensive explanation of the process, usually via a chart, graph or similar visual affordances.

Above: Design document for final boss fight implementation.

Above: Miro table with flowcharts describing all three stages of the boss fight, also present in the design document.

Lastly, with the final implementation of the boss fight present in the testing build, its was my responsibility to balance and fine-tune the difficulty across the three stages of the boss fight based on the information provided on the periodic play testing reports, as well as ironing out the design related bugs that the publisher's QA team would find, until a final version with that met the required quality standards and approval ratings was reached.

Playthrough

Gallery