Boss Battle Research

For my boss battle, I'm taking inspiration from Gemesaur from LOZ: Link Between Worlds.

Gemesaur is a boss that uses darkness to its advantage when it reaches the last stage of battle. The creatures in my dungeon/adventure game are also made from darkness, as they're supposed to represent nightmares.

The boss itself doesn't really appear to match the design of the level until it's in complete darkness, when its eyes are glowing yellow and it's surrounded by a protective wall of dark energy. My boss is already dark like the other enemies in my level, and it itself has glowing yellow eyes, so it should fit right in.

Gemesaur has a protective mask to cover the weak spot on its head. My boss won't have it on its head, but rather on its tail, and will become vulnerable when the player turns on all the lights, temporarily blinding/stunning it until it shuts the lights off again. The player won't be able to reach the tail without using the lights.

It shouldn't be too hard to make the lights turn off and on again in unreal. Simply using an array to reference all the lights in the boss's room should give me the result I want.

Adding a veil of dark energy to protect the boss would just be a particle effect and a trigger to signal there to be no collision when the boss reaches a certain amount of HP, and the only way to turn off that effect would be to turn on the lights via a button located in the room

TECHNICAL PLAN:

Stage 1: Boss is in its first stage; weak to hits by player so long as player turns on lights. Player will be signaled to this hint by the boss turning the lights off at the beginning of the game with a roar, similar to how Genesaur's roar in the battle puts them out in the video above.

Stage 2: Boss will shut off the lights and a protective wall of dark energy will form around its entire body instead of just the head like Genesaur. The boss will pick up speed and player must evade and press button again to turn on lights. When lights are turned back on, boss will lose its protective energy shield and become temporarily stunned, giving the player a small window to attack its tail

Stage 3: Boss will shut off lights once more, gain energy shield and dash around again, but this time only some of the lights will turn on and player must time it right to catch enemy in light areas to stun it properly. If player manages to do this and hits the tail enough times, the boss will be defeated

Visual feedback that player is hitting boss: boss will flash red, then back to black, and do this every time the player hits it. If player is not able to hurt it, it will not flash red.

Audio feedback: There will be noises that indicate player is hitting enemy that parallels the color change. If player is not hurting enemy, I'm thinking of putting a deep, distorted and creepy laugh to tell the player that their attempts aren't working.

Boss's Attack: The boss itself is going to rush the player, and if the player tries to get close to its tail, I'm going to have the boss spin around and hurt the player when its tail comes in to contact with them. If I can figure out how to get the Pawn Sensing component to work, I'll replace the rushing with the boss swiping its claws at the player instead, and leave the rushing for when its dashing around in stages 2/3.

Displaying Health/Stage changes: In the beginning I want the boss to have glowing yellow eyes. In stage two, the eyes will flash red before going back just before the dark energy shield goes up and it runs around. In stage three, the eyes will turn completely red and flash back and forth to try and tell the player it's ready to be killed.

Battle Arena Research

For my battle arena I had the idea to use a cuckoo clock design:

The visual style I'd like to emulate, or take inspiration from, is Kingdom Hearts. I felt the style of art from the series would best fit my map's layout and idea.

For my color palette, I wanted to go with a similar one to KH II's, so I picked a muted prismatic palette with brighter versions for the pickups/focal points

Theme:

Cuckoo clock (obviously)

Location: On/in a cuckoo clock

Time of Day: Middle/afternoon

VISUAL TRADEMARK(S):

-Giant cuckoo clock

        -moving pawns

        -giant bird will pop out

        -shape of map

STORYBOARDS:

Some questions the audience might be thinking about as they play the level would be:

Where am I?

Is this a giant cuckoo clock?

Can I go through those doors?

Will a bird or something like it pop out eventually?

Can I go inside the clock?

Can I reach the upper balcony?

7 sentence story:

Intro: Begin level on lower balcony with pickups in the center. Mainly Player vs. Player

Rising conflict: Pawns will emerge from the doors that players cannot enter. Player vs. Player and Player vs. Environment (moving hazards)

           --pawns will eventually move hammers, providing another form of moving hazards

Climax: Bird will shoot out from large double doors on lower half after a few minutes of play, and is an unavoidable hazard if close enough to it.

Denouement (end) : Last player standing wins game

USP SKETCHES: