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[GhostBomb]

I've seen lots of games where they get the boss design all wrong.  Bosses aren't just enemies with bigger health bars and larger hit-boxes, they're the climax of that particular section of your game.  Everything the player has done up to that point has led to this.

Bosses should put all the things you've learn so far to the test as well as throw in some unexpected twists and surprises.  Bosses don't necessarily have to be very difficult but they should at least make you think.

But enough about what I think, what do you think makes a boss fun and memorable?  Any examples of bosses from certain games you thought were cool?

[iffi]

Test the player while staying away from fake difficulty.

Also:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=12511.0
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17983.0
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=24380.0
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=8711.0 (just the opposite of this thread, but relevant because of that)
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=26339.0 (not the same as this thread, but about bosses)
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=21775.0 (also not the same, but similar)

[TheLastBanana]

There are a few important things I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Have a cool intro and outro. If you want a climactic fight, just having the boss show up and start attacking will feel too abrupt. That said, keep it relatively brief. Watching a boss' diatribe before fighting him is painful if you need to fight him more than once. Bonus points if boss fight restarts immediately AFTER the intro unless absolutely necessary. The outro also needs to be more interesting than the boss just dying, since that involves a very sudden stop in the action. Personally, I prefer bosses that don't go straight into a pre-rendered cutscene, as this feels a bit jarring -- instead, have the boss actually die in the game world.

2. If you're going with a boss fight, you're most likely temporarily breaking the flow of your game. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it keeps things fresh by breaking up chunks of the game. However, that means you need to embrace the fact that you're changing things up. The boss should take what you already know, but twist it around a bit. Maybe turn off gravity. Or, take away one of the player's weapons. Or, make the player use a move in a way they haven't used before. There's another side to this, though: it can't deviate too much from the rest of the gameplay, or it'll just feel out of place, or worse, incomprehensible and unbeatable.

3. The player is going to be locked into this fight for a while. Keep it interesting! The boss should certainly have patterns and tells, but randomizing them a bit can make it feel a lot less like you're memorizing a pattern and a lot more like you're actually fighting something. A bit of randomness is good so long as there's a way to predict attacks -- and the attacks are all balanced well with each other (e.g. there isn't one attack that comes out of nowhere and takes down half the player's health, since that will feel like "luck of the draw" that the player lost and not actually because he/she messed up). The player should only have to die two or three times to figure out the move patterns. Any more deaths than that should be pure player mistakes.

4. Music! There have been a lot of debates about how music should be used in games, but if you're going to have a climactic boss battle, you've already given in to the trope, so it's probably best to go the whole nine yards. This makes things so much more memorable, and really adds to the mood. It goes without saying that powerful sound effects really add to this, too.

A few examples:


is a great example of all of these elements. The intro on this one is fairly short, but the teleportation and flashing literally set the stage for the rest of the fight and quickly establish the boss' theme. A new element is thrown in -- the piano keys -- which take a bit of figuring out. The game tells you where they are, which gives you a hint as to what they do, but the player actually has to figure out how to use it to beat the boss. The initial attacks are randomized, but each have their own patterns (not all of the attacks are shown in that video), and then there's a second "form" of the boss when its health is lower. Lastly, the boss has its own music to go with the orchestral theme, and it ends with a bunch of cool explosions.



also fits my points pretty well (that video is a bit laggy, unfortunately, so it slows it down a lot). The intro and outro are fantastic. The boss itself doesn't change anything up too much from the rest of the gameplay, aside from the fact that you're fighting a much larger enemy than usual. That said, it has plenty of attacks that are completely unseen elsewhere in the game, but are nonetheless understandable and avoidable in context. There are a LOT of different attacks, too, and they become progressively harder to dodge towards the end of the boss -- not because they're just going faster or doing more damage, but because they're actually changing to entirely different sets of attacks. The music sets the mood really well, and the sound effects are very convincing for a huge robot.

Seven Force from Gunstar Heroes is a boss which is... probably not so fondly-remembered by some, because it was really damn hard. Mostly, that was because it was really damn long! However, it's still a great boss, and when people discuss awesome boss fights, this one usually comes up. The intro is largely text, which isn't all that exciting, but certainly tells you that some serious business is about to go down when you have seven different boss descriptions coming through. Then the actual guy comes in, and you think "what, he's not so big!" That is, until he turns into a giant running robot. This whole level already has a twist to it, which is the mine carts, and that's part of what makes it so memorable: the direction of the carts (and thus, gravity) keeps changing throughout the fight, which keeps you on your toes, but is also pretty easy to understand, as the cart always falls toward the track its bottom is facing. Again, the boss has a heck of a lot of different attacks and forms, which keeps it interesting, and again, they all have pretty clear ways of warning you before they attack. Memorable music, and of course, a very explosive outro.

I have one boss (a giant robot, too... I guess I have a soft spot for them) which I made as a mod for a game, and it's based on a lot of what I discussed here. That said, I'd need to grab a video of it in action if you want to have a look, and it feels a little self-serving to do all that unless somebody is actually interested. Give me a shout if you are.

[GhostBomb]

I'd be interested in seeing a that video.

[TheLastBanana]

Okay, here's a video of the battle (click the thumbnail):

So, a few things to know first, just for context's sake. The mission is for a game called Cortex Command, and normally, your goal is to destroy the enemy's brain, which sits in a jar. If you look in the robot's chest, you can see the brain case there -- that's what they normally look like, too, so in context, it's pretty clear what you need to shoot at. What really changes things up, though, is the sheer size of this thing. In the base game, the largest moving thing you would see is a dropship:

So, this robot, which is made out of several dropships and rockets, is absolutely massive. As well, the fact that you're restricted to one gun and have to dodge attacks instead of just taking cover makes use of the game's jetpack physics system, but still stays pretty close to how the action usually works in the game (i.e. shoot at the brain and don't die).
Another thing to know is that, in this game, the characters die very easily. As a result, there's a life system in place for this series of missions to make up for the fact that you only have one player character. It's established well in advance of this boss fight that, if you die, you still have a few shots left, so it's not a huge worry. By default, you get 4 lives on this level. They act more like hit points, though, since the boss' attacks are all one-hit kills, so that may be a better way to look at it. It certainly lets the boss feel much more powerful, since it can literally smash you into pieces with one shot, but cuts down on the frustration of dying after one hit.

I actually wrote the music for this battle, so, being somebody with no formal music training, I can't really attest to its quality. That said, I had the intro animation sync up with the intro music, which, combined with the fact that nobody expected something this huge to suddenly smash through the ground, hopefully lends a lot of power to the intro animation. There are a few little touches in there, too -- for instance, the life bar fills as it pulls itself up, which establishes what the bar is (there aren't usually life bars in the game) and also gives a sense just how powerful this thing is.

The next point is how the attacks work. They're randomized, but not entirely: you'll seldom see the same attack twice. The boss has a list of 8 moves it can perform, and it just randomizes the list, performs all the moves, and restarts. That means the player is practically guaranteed to see most, if not all, of the moves in his first attempt at beating the boss. As well, it ensures that the boss doesn't keep coming back with the same annoying attack over and over. Each attack has a clear warm-up period, so as long as you know the tells, you can get out of the way pretty easily.

Lastly, the outro is interactive, which adds to the sense of accomplishment from beating the boss. In my experience, there's nothing more satisfying than having a boss on the ropes, the pulling off some really powerful move (like using a grenade or a rocket launcher) to take him down. It's overkill, but makes victory so much sweeter. So, with this boss, he smashes you straight through the ground, revealing an entirely new section of the playing field. In there, you find an RPC (a rocket-propelled chainsaw launcher -- yes, this is actually a weapon that comes with the game). It's clear what you need to do, and there's still some pressure on you since the robot is trying to suck you out of the underground tunnel, but I think this gives a really satisfying build-up to the final, devastating blow: you know you're about to strike it, and you have time to stand there and savour it. Of course, it ends with a huge explosion, because no boss is complete without one.

So, there you go. I think it makes for a pretty good boss fight. There are probably points on here that people would disagree with, though, so I'd love to hear anybody's thoughts on the matter.

[Graham-]

My favourite bosses require mastery of some sort. I like it when I have to peel back the correct strategy in layers. You start off just trying to stay alive, then you focus on achieving particular things, then you master the basics... then you realize your current strategy won't work at all so you have to evolve it.

My favourite memories with FF6, for example, had that pattern. I'd go through many runs of one boss just to test out particular angles of my strategy. I'd pick a losing strategy specifically to lose, and explore a critical element of my potential setup or the boss's patterns.

I want to be able to play it again and again. My least favourite bosses are the ones that are over in a flash. Dark Souls is interesting because bosses are very fast, but extremely dangerous and overwhelming. Most of your time is spent getting to them, again, and again.

Mega Man makes a critical mistake I think in tying level progress so closely to the boss's difficulty. I mean, you have to beat a level then beat a boss, using the same set of lives. The bosses are an order of magnitude more challenging than the levels, so if you're going to need a few runs to beat it the chip-tune music and smashing the Y-button may get on your nerves, depending on how you feel.

Dark Souls matches the boss difficulty with the level's, so it's okay that way. I'm thinking about Mega Man X (in the series), which was the one I grew up with. I'm not so familiar with the earlier ones, so I can't speak for them.

Kingdom Hearts had some decent bosses, though magic meant nothing. Like in many RPGs, the best strat is to hone-in on mass cure. The whole game after getting cure is about wracking up magic points by dealing damage, and being in the clear when you cure so enemies can't interrupt it.

I have yet to see a single RPG that uses a wide-array of spells in real-time for deep tactical variety. Smash Bros has some depth. Fighters have depth. Where's my deep, real-time, RPG combat? I haven't played Witcher 2. Maybe that's a partial answer, I don't know.

[EdgeOfProphecy]

My favourite bosses require mastery of some sort. I like it when I have to peel back the correct strategy in layers. You start off just trying to stay alive, then you focus on achieving particular things, then you master the basics... then you realize your current strategy won't work at all so you have to evolve it.

My favourite memories with FF6, for example, had that pattern. I'd go through many runs of one boss just to test out particular angles of my strategy. I'd pick a losing strategy specifically to lose, and explore a critical element of my potential setup or the boss's patterns.

I want to be able to play it again and again. My least favourite bosses are the ones that are over in a flash. Dark Souls is interesting because bosses are very fast, but extremely dangerous and overwhelming. Most of your time is spent getting to them, again, and again.

Mega Man makes a critical mistake I think in tying level progress so closely to the boss's difficulty. I mean, you have to beat a level then beat a boss, using the same set of lives. The bosses are an order of magnitude more challenging than the levels, so if you're going to need a few runs to beat it the chip-tune music and smashing the Y-button may get on your nerves, depending on how you feel.

Dark Souls matches the boss difficulty with the level's, so it's okay that way. I'm thinking about Mega Man X (in the series), which was the one I grew up with. I'm not so familiar with the earlier ones, so I can't speak for them.

Kingdom Hearts had some decent bosses, though magic meant nothing. Like in many RPGs, the best strat is to hone-in on mass cure. The whole game after getting cure is about wracking up magic points by dealing damage, and being in the clear when you cure so enemies can't interrupt it.

I have yet to see a single RPG that uses a wide-array of spells in real-time for deep tactical variety. Smash Bros has some depth. Fighters have depth. Where's my deep, real-time, RPG combat? I haven't played Witcher 2. Maybe that's a partial answer, I don't know.

I don't understand your gripe with Mega Man.  All the games design the vast majority of the bosses to have an exploitable strategy, or horrendous weakness, that can be used against them.  Usually both.  They might throw a couple bosses that are just plain hard into the game (Yellow Devil springs to mind), but for the most part if you figure out the right strategy a boss can be trivial.

[Graham-]

Right. You probably have to drop a few deaths to find the exploit. Using the weakness weapon is cheesy. It's less satisfying. And even still, the level is much easier. A boss requires a constant outpouring of attention. This is not so with the levels. If you're playing just well enough to beat the level with full health you'll have to step it up for the boss, suddenly, sharply. In X the level is more like a dawdle. The challenge is in the bosses.

This isn't true for the newer retro Mega Mans that have been released. The levels in those are hard. Maybe the X series is the odd man out.

I don't have a gripe with Mega Man. I'm just pointing out a flaw that if removed would have made the game better. Small mistakes are still mistakes.

It's okay to criticize things. It doesn't mean I hate them.

[melos]

I think bosses are memorable when they are the climax to a story, where a story happens to be that particular level. As a fictional example, say you are traveling through a forest, and then you see broken trees occasionally. What caused those? Why, nothing other than a violent flamingo, you find, when you reach the clearing and fight the boss. Cool. Maybe.

As a more serious example, Nightmare from Metroid Fusion really was incredible, because you started the section of the game with a warning that something in one part of the space station was seriously wrong. It was a part of the space station you visited before, and I don't remember if at that time or the first time you visited, you could see the boss's silhouette flying by in the background - spooky! Wonder what that could be. Anyways, when you come in the second time, everything is destroyed, so you need to figure out what caused it! Eventually, through following the destruction, you find your way to the boss room and kill the thing! And, it was a tough fight that tested a lot of the mechanics up to that point (climbing and shooting, jumping to dodge, dealing with gravity changes, etc...)



Obviously it depends on the specific game and genre. But I think if bosses are strongly tied into the mood or narrative of the game, even if the player doesn't actively realize that it is so, it makes for a much more memorable experience.

[Graham-]

I love Bosses that make me grow in order to beat them.

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

The bosses attacks should be synced to the music playing (not technically, but it should make sense that he's using his ultimate attack at the fast portion of whatever song.) , and in combination, should also not be the same attacks and the same attack sequences.

bosses have personalities too right, most games increase a bosses speed and attack power when it gets angry

but this is cliche

give your boss the ultimate personality, such as healing when low on health, changing attack strategies

and most certainly

do not have a boss

thats too stupid enough to realize

that you've jumped behind him

not much of a rule, it just prevents people from saying "lol @ this boss AI"

[Graham-]

Hello Joe and Mac.

[Derek]

I know what I definitely don't like, and it's when a boss fight goes like this:

1. Boss is totally impervious to all attacks

2. Bait boss into doing something stupid (e.g. ram into wall, get tentacle stuck in grate, etc.)

3. Weak point opens up

4. Hit weak point until it closes (modern games: do quick-time event first)

5. Start over

It's totally artificial and repetitive.

I like the bosses in Dark Souls because there are all kinds of ways to hurt them all the time (even if it's not for a lot of damage). You can also take advantage of the environment... but unlike most games where they have some obvious setup for you it's usually much more free form.

They do have weak spots sometimes, but it's a bonus if you can manage to get them, rather than being the only way to kill them.

[Inane]

I know what I definitely don't like, and it's when a boss fight goes like this:

1. Boss is totally impervious to all attacks

2. Bait boss into doing something stupid (e.g. ram into wall, get tentacle stuck in grate, etc.)

3. Weak point opens up

4. Hit weak point until it closes (modern games: do quick-time event first)

5. Start over

It's totally artificial and repetitive.

I take it your standards have changed in the last 5 years?

such as healing when low on health,

This is absolutely horrible unless it's relatively slow healing and just there to force the player in to being more aggressive. Healing bosses are goddamn annoying.

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

I know what I definitely don't like, and it's when a boss fight goes like this:

1. Boss is totally impervious to all attacks

2. Bait boss into doing something stupid (e.g. ram into wall, get tentacle stuck in grate, etc.)

3. Weak point opens up

4. Hit weak point until it closes (modern games: do quick-time event first)

5. Start over

It's totally artificial and repetitive.

I take it your standards have changed in the last 5 years?

such as healing when low on health,

This is absolutely horrible unless it's relatively slow healing and just there to force the player in to being more aggressive. Healing bosses are goddamn annoying.

bosses in video games and bosses IRL are supposed to be annoying I'm sure annoying is somewhere in the definition of boss, right

paper mario 64

crystal king

annoying healing boss, but the healing actually extended the boss fight-not to mention most pmario fans consider him to be one of their favorites in that game

[gggfhfdh]

paper mario 64

crystal king

annoying healing boss, but the healing actually extended the boss fight-not to mention most pmario fans consider him to be one of their favorites in that game

yeah
in fact i liked him BECAUSE of the healing

[Razz]

I know what I definitely don't like, and it's when a boss fight goes like this:

1. Boss is totally impervious to all attacks

2. Bait boss into doing something stupid (e.g. ram into wall, get tentacle stuck in grate, etc.)

3. Weak point opens up

4. Hit weak point until it closes (modern games: do quick-time event first)

5. Start over

It's totally artificial and repetitive.

Huh ... Shadow of the Colossus does the first 3 steps, and it is one of my favorite games to mention whenever talking about boss design.

Boss 1, you have to hit a weak point on the leg to get higher up.
Boss 2, you have to hit the weak points under his feet to get higher up.
Boss 3, you have to damage his "sword" to get to his weak point.

I think what makes SoTC different though, is that once you figure out how to "bait" the boss, you can continue hurting the Colossus if you're good. That's part of what makes it fun, because falling down may have severe implications with certain bosses (Like the last one). It may also be that there's always some alternative way to reach the weak point, and the weak points are always out in the open, so even if you have to do something to the boss to reach the weak point it doesn't feel artificial.

Now take modern Zelda into the equation, that's almost exactly the design you explained and I hate it. It's artificial and annoying, Nintendo needs to drop that design, or take a cue from games that have used the formula more interestingly. (SoTC?)

[Bandages]

A good boss fight features QTEs and at least three arbitrary form changes

[Sharkoss]

I like really big, cool-looking monsters that are fun to fight and don't go down too easy.  Some sort of cool hook like a rotating room or a tilting floor walls that close in or or a spinning helicopter blade you gotta balance on or whatever can be cool.  Beyond that, there's no simple dogma, though I expect there are a long list of don'ts.  Here are a few I thought of:

* Weak-point, or 'puzzle' bosses are fine - there are way too many great boss battles that follow the formula to just dismiss it - as long as they don't go on forever.  Once I've figured it out, let's not pretend it's still interesting no matter how much precision is demanded (in fact, demanding precision usually makes it worse).  If your game is designed for multiple playthroughs/speedruns, a trick for taking these guys down quickly is appreciated.

* If it's a multi-part boss, don't make the earlier parts a total pushover and the last one brutally difficult.  That's just boring and frustrating.

* If your boss is just a dude, you probably should have a good explanation if he takes way more hits than other dudes in the game.

* Bullet sponge bosses are shit.

* Fight the Butcher in the first Diablo, and take notes on how it works.  Then do the exact opposite and you will probably make a good boss battle, because that is the absolute worst thing.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think the real question is 'who' rather than 'what' and the answer is konjak