Shards of Hope’s final boss, The Dread, started off as a mid-boss the player would face before getting the 2nd weapon.
However, in order to ease out the difficulty curve we scrapped the idea of a
mid-boss and The Dread became the final boss.
I had to make sure it was memorable enough.
You can't have a great game if the final boss doesn't live up to its expectations.
From the values of his HP and the attack's damage to the different music tracks…
Everything was tailored so this encounter was one to remember.
Initial Development
As a hardcore game, it’s not a problem if the player ends up dying several times before mastering the trick to beat the enemy.
Yet, it’s essential that the player can learn from every attempt, making progress little by little.
You can see both of his attacks in the GIFs.
I took an approach in which the player was rewarded for successfully evading the attacks, instead of punished for not avoiding them.
It’s possible to run way from the enemy to avoid the attacks, but by taking them head on the attack window is larger so they can take out more of his HP.
Keep Iterating
After the attack patterns were decided, the time for polishing came.
The first implementation of the attacks only allowed me to modify a couple of numbers, which wasn’t enough to make them feel as good as I wanted.
I reworked them all from scratch, making it so I could change every parameter that affected their behaviour.
First iteration of the control parameters
Newly added parameters after the rework
The iteration of the adjustments roughly lasted for 2 months: from the moment the attacks were decided until the game was finished.
Controlling the pacing
Our enemies have different HP sections, each with their own colour.
The Dread has 3 different phases, each one increasing the fight's difficulty.
After several days of testing, I realized there was something wrong with the encounter's pacing.
The fight kept the level of tension too high during most of the encounter.
This led to the 2nd and 3rd phase feeling too stressful, instead of exciting.
The solution I came up with was a phase change,in which The Dread would stop attacking to scream.
After a couple ideas, it came to be as a scream that erases all of his projectiles, giving the player a break.
This pause also helps raising the player's morale, as a proof of the progress in the encounter.
The pacing of the fight was drastically reduced, allowing the following phases to have more breathing room, feeling much more engaging and satisfying.
The scream marks the change of phase, lowering the pacing for a moment