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[FK in the Coffee]

To be frank, there are a fair share of lame bosses in games today.  What do you think really makes a boss challenging and fun to face?  Here's some of my personal preferences:

- A boss should always make good use of its environment if it can.  God of War III has some excellent examples of this, with the first boss crawling all around Gaia and constantly changing the playing field.  It makes the fight more interesting, as you learn how to use your environment to take the boss down

- Methods of attacking other than "fire projectiles at player."  This is something I'd especially like to see in some shmups.  It really makes a boss more interesting when their combat isn't exclusively limited to ranged.

- Patterns that are fairly easy to figure out, but hard to use against the boss.  There have been to many times when I've been facing a boss, I figure out the pattern, and basically don't even try the rest of the fight.  A good boss should recognize after a couple hits that a player has figured out their pattern, and change it up accordingly.  This can be something as simple as changing the speed of an attack, or blocking the player at a spot where the player was previously able to hit them so the player has to change their tactics.

Those are my three little contributions.  I would love it if you guys would contribute some boss design tips here.

[Theophilus]

A good boss should be challenging. I want to play a boss that makes me have to battle it 15 times before I get one single attack in.

I too agree with your attacking methods. 'Shootum dead' is not cuttin' it for me, I want a boss that cracks his whip at you while spitting on you and crapping on your head. I want a boss that tears your limbs apart while putting soap on your pee-pee hole (That stings!). I want a boss that screams, "I'm a badass, and if you don't like it, F*** YOU!"

[iffi]

Variety is critical in my opinion. It gets kind of boring to be able to kill the boss by repeating the same pattern of attacks and dodges for 15 minutes. One way to add variety is to change the attacks as the boss's health becomes lower.

[Dustin Smith]

I know I say this entirely too much, but play Mr. Gimmick and scope out their bosses. Yoshi's Island also stands out. As iffi mentioned, variety is definitely a factor. Use the game mechanics in an interesting way, but don't rely on straight-up gimmicks. Natural variation combined with good difficulty scaling* make for a good time.

This doesn't have much to do with design, but scope and visual design go a long way as well (Shadow of the Colossus).

*check out nes should-be-classics Shatterhand and Vice: Project Doom to see what I'm talking about. The bosses are nicely designed, but they're entirely too difficult for their own good.

[DavidCaruso]

One of the most important things is scale - the player should feel intimidated when he first sees the boss, that it's much more powerful than his character is, and definitely moreso than the regular enemies he's faced up to that point. That makes it so that, when the player finally defeats the boss, the reward seems that much greater; it's the feeling of "I took down a god damn battleship" as opposed to "I took down uh...a little UFO." This doesn't necessarily mean all bosses have to be HUGE (sure, it helps, but it's also possible to intimidate the player with bosses his own size, sometimes even smaller). And, of course, make the boss challenging enough that the player will actually feel like he accomplished something when he beats it.

Variety, as other people mentioned, is also pretty key. Multi-stage bosses are awesome, but you could also just have the boss react to the player's behavior (e.g. changing the location of the boss's 'weak spot' over time in a shmup). Also, great music adds a lot to a boss encounter. Ever notice how the most epic game bosses always have the most epic music? :D

This thread seems to go hand-in-hand with the recent Epic 2D Boss Fights thread -  the best examples in that thread are probably

and

(the two best 2D action games ever made IMO). Also look at Treasure's games in general for some great examples - boss battles were really their strongest point.

[paste]

Personality.  Usually the best bosses have some level of attitude to them that helps contribute to their fight.  I think Psycho Mantis is a perfect example of this.  Until you know how to beat him, he can really grate on you.  Even Mega Man bosses have their little flair they do to show you they mean business before you lay waste to them.

[FK in the Coffee]

One of the most important things is scale - the player should feel intimidated when he first sees the boss, that it's much more powerful than his character is, and definitely moreso than the regular enemies he's faced up to that point.

This is one of the things I felt like mentioning, but decided not to.  Thought something that all designers should keep in mind is that scale doesn't have to necessarily be in size.  You can have a boss the size of the player and still make it an intense experience.  One player sized boss I especially enjoyed was the "mirror self" in Legend of Princess.  You really have to have to change your tactics up a hell of a lot to be able to take him down, but there's an immense level of satisfaction when you finally beat him.

Same with Julius Belmont and the Doppelganger in the Castlevania series.  There's really something great about a boss that is near-equal to your skill in a game.

[William Broom]

I think a good boss should take the player out of their comfort zone. If the player takes something for granted in the game, the boss should take it away from them. For example, in Okami it's one of the basic elements of the game that you can pause at any time, for as long as you want, to perform brush techniques. But about halfway through the game you encounter a boss who can also use brush techniques, and who will attack you while the game is paused for 'brush mode'.

The boss isn't actually challenging at all. But by subverting the player's expectations about the game, it creates a really intense 'holy shit' moment the first time you play it.

[pixhead]

^^That was what I was thinking. A boss has to be distinctive from the game. If it had no health bar or boss music and still made me believe it was a boss then it's a success in my book.

[eclectocrat]

Bosses with a sense of self preservation.

I love it when a Boss decides to heal themselves or hide behind something or generally act in a way that shows them to be agents which want to win and live another day. I can't stand the big hunks of meat that just go directly at you even when clinging to a tiny sliver of life.

Yeah, who's scared now? What, you don't wanna play anymore? Whose the boss now asshat!?

[Saint]

Recommended reading:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6132/boss_battle_design_and_structure.php?print=1

Anyway, I agree with Mike in that a good boss (at least a standard good boss) is a Test and a Story. A test in the sense that it demonstrates to the player that she has actually learned something that will save her from being defeated and a story in the sense that there is progression within the context of the fight.

[HyperNexus]

Bosses are really a means to challenge the player on recently learnt mechanics. They shouldn't teach any new mechanics but can be used to test newly learnt mechanics in a slightly different but familiair context. Boss battles should be harder than the problems overcome previously, in order to represent a significance point of progression and mastery of mechanics.

Good boss battles tend to layer mechanics in order to produce interesting scenarios that provides a more sophisticated sort of challenge. The chances of failure should increase along with the reward provided by the experience. This will create hopefully create higher levels of concentration and skill testing that will result deeper flow.

Enemy size, graphical splendor and heighten audio can all be used to signify the importance of this challenge.

[eva]

i have rules on how you should make a boss. i am the boss of you

[knight]

Some large tie in with the game's story. The final boss of Aquaria is a good example of this.

[McMutton]

Not necessarily a large one, but at least some story justification for its presence, as to avoid giant space fleas from nowhere.

[s0]

Enemy size, graphical splendor and heighten audio can all be used to signify the importance of this challenge.

Yeah, I think it's a good idea to save your best art and music for boss battles if you're going to have them.

On the other hand, I don't like games where the actual levels are neglected in favor of the bosses, where the level just feels like a chore I have to go through to get to the next "epic" boss battle. So it's kind of a balancing act between making the bosses significant but not giving them a disproportionate amount of room at the same time.

[X3N]

i have rules on how you should make a boss. i am the boss of you

I think rumour is eva's a troll account, but this is actually kind of insightful/funny.
Would we be better or worse designers if we didn't listen to any advice.. ?

[SundownKid]

i have rules on how you should make a boss. i am the boss of you

I think rumour is eva's a troll account, but this is actually kind of insightful/funny.
Would we be better or worse designers if we didn't listen to any advice.. ?

Overall, probably worse. But as far as this topic is concerned, there should not be any set rules on how bosses should be designed. The "massive grandiose monster" idea is not necessarily how ALL bosses should be structured. There is perfect merit in a boss that is similar to or even smaller than a regular enemy, or a boss that is not an enemy at all. I think the one qualifier of a boss is simply "more difficult than the rest of the game up to that point".

[tsameti]

A boss doesn't always have to be embodied by a difficulty spike though.

A boss could be an emotional climax too, or a moment of catharsis. A 'steamroll' boss fight can be just as fun as a tough one, as long as the player feels like they earned it.

Did anyone else play Earthworm Jim and find Bob the Killer Goldfish to be a great encounter? Yea. That's right.

[:^)]

Something I was just thinking about,

Maybe bosses don't really have to be humanoid characters s long as you have a definite spike in excitement, difficulty, energy, whatever; this could be considered a boss-ish part of the game.

For instance,

Oh no! The train you're on top of has fallen off the track and you're falling down the mountainside! You're platforming like a crazy person and there's heavy debris coming at you! Ah omg! This is hard and intense and not typical gameplay! I could pass out! 

And then when you beat that part you settle back into your seat, breath a sigh of relief, and pat yourself on the back.

Do you think that can count as a boss?