gamedesign.dev: Boss battles

Nothing gets the heart pounding and the blood rushing like a good challenge, and what could be more challenging than fighting tooth and nail for your own life against incredible odds? Since the earliest of games, it's been almost tradition to have the final hurdle in a given level be a fight against a bad guy bigger, tougher, and meaner than anything else in the level. The word "boss", which is a short and direct word that carries a clear meaning of ruling, fits these encounters aptly. Boss battles are so pervasive that they even manage to sneak their way into games that really don't need them at all.

The first thing to be considered for whether a game needs boss battles is the game's genre. Some of these, like fighting games, RPGs, and action-adventure titles were tailor-made for boss fights. Others, like puzzle games, survival horror, and story-based adventure games, are really better off without. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is a great example. Throughout the game, it's impressed that you're dealing with forces beyond the understanding of mortal humans (hence the whole Sanity meter bit). So naturally, when a giant godbeast instantly kills one of your characters without a second of consideration, the next character to encounter it gets a long, drawn-out boss battle.

Similarly, if the game's control setup isn't inclined towards boss encounters, you should reconsider. Case in point: an otherwise charming Flash game by the name of Level Up! features a boss battle after every in-game day. Fair enough, except your character can't actually attack, instead having running and jumping as her only moves. You have to rely on getting the boss to hit itself with its own attacks. The boss moves fast and is unpredictable, and a lot of its attacks are very difficult to dodge, making positioning it for the four or five hits needed to win an absolute nightmare.

Lastly, there's the issue of concluding the game. It's generally expected that a game goes out with a bang, with an amazing climax that brings all the elements of the game up to that point into one incredible conclusion. There's no need to muck that up with a boss fight in all cases, though. One example is with Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. The final case is a pretty hefty one on its own, where you end up cornering a character from your past and it's dramatic and exciting. And then the game remembers a plot point from early on in the game and attempts to tie it into place with an initially minor character who then drags out the final case for what feels like twice the length, especially considering all the "clever escapes" he attempts. The other games all had their major antagonists who defined the events of the game, but this one just feels dull and uninteresting compared to the person just before them.

Also, even if you have a boss battle that works well in the game, please please PLEASE don't give it multiple forms. Once a player defeats a boss, it should stay defeated. If the boss is going to have multiple phases, that's another thing, because it means changing the existing strategy you have rather than setting up anew after what the player may have already regarded as a very final fight. One amusing example is with Tales of Symphonia. The final boss has two forms, and the second one is literally made up just for that scene and has no relevance to the game or plot at all. It's also significantly weaker than the already challenging first form of the boss. Actually, that's another thing: making a boss have multiple forms means making them disproportionately challenging since the player may be ill-equipped for marathon fights with tough foes.

This is actually a pretty common problem, not really specific to any given genre. It's kind of weird how this idea of an intense one-on-one showdown is locked into the minds of so many gamers regardless of how much practicality such an encounter would have. I'd personally be just as happy with sabotaging the final boss' plans out from under their feet, but maybe that's just me.