Boss brainstorming thread

#1
Jetrel: Actually catfish as a visual-design idea is something that I've completely overlooked, thanks for making me think of that... since I expect several good base enemy ideas could come from that. [12:34am] Jetrel: ActionJackalope: np, I'm busy for quite a while, and there's no rush. [12:35am] Krista^: Actually it could work as a boss. [12:36am] Jetrel: Yeah, I quite imagine it could work as a boss too. [12:37am] Jetrel: I'm just glad you mentioned that since I think it'll bust up a bit of a mental block on fish designs I've had. [12:45am] ActionJackalope (~ActionJac@205.178.39.125) left the chat room. (Quit: ActionJackalope) [12:50am] VivienHayazaki (~vivien@189.32.220.66) joined the chat room. [01:17am] ActionJackalope (~ActionJac@205.178.39.125) joined the chat room. [01:18am] ActionJackalope: Right then! What's all this about boss talk? [01:18am] Jetrel: ActionJackalope: not a lot to it yet. We need a third forest boss for the next update, and I'm kinda blanking. [01:18am] ActionJackalope: How about a very angry tree? [01:18am] Jetrel: Mostly interested in mechanics over flavor, but flavor can help inspire mechanics. [01:18am] ActionJackalope: Attacks can include all the traditional tree-based hazards. [01:19am] ActionJackalope: Like beehives. And falling branches. [01:19am] ActionJackalope: And maybe the tree attacks you while you climb it. [01:19am] ActionJackalope: And there can be squirrels. [01:19am] ? Jetrel nods. [01:20am] ActionJackalope: And you can become entangled by leaves. [01:20am] Jetrel: I had been thinking of something like that, on and off. [01:21am] ActionJackalope: Or? vines. Vines might be a better entangler than leaves :/ [01:22am] ActionJackalope: Hey, we don't have a Black Knight-style boss yet. [01:22am] ActionJackalope: Something that's invincible, but killed by attacking something else in the room. [01:23am] ActionJackalope: What if there's a big monster jumping/flying around a big arena attacking you while you try to take out four or five little hives? [01:23am] Jetrel: hmm [01:24am] Jetrel: (/me points out he's hoping to get lots of ideas besides just what we actually directly use here; gonna tuck them in that thread for future mining) [01:24am] ActionJackalope: By the way, what are the two bosses we're definitely using? Mushroom? Rock? Moth? [01:24am] Jetrel: Mushroom and moth [01:25am] Jetrel: Rock could potentially turn into that tree enemy; he was just a sketch [01:26am] Krista^: Worm boss, attacking him gradually cuts off bits of body, till dead. [01:27am] ? Jetrel nods. [01:27am] ActionJackalope: What about a misunderstanding with a native tribe? Story-wise, it would be another chance to enforce our theme of somebody's egregious personality flaw being the cause of most problems. [01:28am] ActionJackalope: Like, you think the natives have just gone apeshit and started murdering people, but it turns out they're mad because somebody in a forest village was being a dipshit. [01:29am] Jetrel: Yeah, the forest is getting a little crowded, besides which I mostly consider the Tempo Villagers to -be- the natives. [01:30am] ActionJackalope: Okay then, BEARS. [01:30am] Jetrel: hmm [01:31am] ActionJackalope: What if there's a bear that instead of killing, you have to avoid its attacks while you knock honey out of beehives until it eats enough that it goes to sleep? [01:32am] ActionJackalope: But each time you do it, you get another swarm of bees chasing you... [01:33am] ActionJackalope: Or what about a giant logging machine? [01:33am] shirish (~quassel@unaffiliated/shirish) joined the chat room. [01:33am] ActionJackalope: Like, some lumber company is fixing to deforest Tempo Village and it's up to you to stick up for them. [01:34am] Jetrel: hm [01:37am] ActionJackalope: Creeping horror! Something lurking beneath the swampy waters! [01:37am] ActionJackalope: Tentacles pop out of the water to attack. [01:38am] ActionJackalope: You can only hit it if you spit rancid fruit into the water to force it to stick its head out to catch its breath. [01:38am] Jetrel: hmm [01:40am] Jetrel: That one's nice because it's liable to be cheap to draw. [01:40am] Jetrel: At least definitely if we cook up some kind of opaque-liquid, which I'd like to. [01:42am] ActionJackalope: However, it would be helped greatly with a few custom sprites for Frogatto being snatched up and dragged to a murky death... [01:42am] Jetrel: Yeah. [01:44am] Jetrel: hmm [01:44am] Jetrel: A few mechanical ideas: [01:45am] Jetrel: 1] an enemy that can't directly be harmed, but which has to have something environmental changed to harm it (c.f. black knight) [01:46am] Jetrel: 2] an enemy that can't directly be harmed, and has to have its shots reflected back at it (c.f. agnahim, from zelda). Note that I don't mean by frogatto snacking up the shots and spitting them back, I mean something - anything - else. [01:47am] Jetrel: So one idea could include a ramming enemy which you have to trick into ramming a wall. Maybe it hurts itself via just slamming its head really hard, but what might be better is knocking-loose huge chunks of debris that hurt it. [01:48am] Jetrel: (since IRL all such creatures are wholly designed to suffer obscene abuse to their ramming-parts not not care) [01:49am] Jetrel: To the point where you could take a ram, have a baseball player line up and grand-slam his bat right against the ramming point, and the creature wouldn't really be injured. It'd be pissed, though. :P [01:50am] Jetrel: Another idea is some creature you have to trick into falling - again probably exploiting the tick-it-off-and-make-it-charge [01:52am] ActionJackalope: Hm. If only there was a way to set up an area that'd be deadly to charge into... [01:52am] Jetrel: over a cliff [01:52am] Jetrel: into the acid [01:52am] ActionJackalope: Like? set up a line of pikes or something ;) [01:52am] Jetrel: Or collapse away bricks to reveal a pit? [01:53am] Jetrel: Like the airplane boss with the roles reversed. [01:53am] ActionJackalope: Over a cliff might be odd pacing for a boss. You can only do that once. [01:53am] Jetrel: Not necessarily; I could see a medium cliff not killing something, and then having it crawl back out. [01:54am] Jetrel: I could also see a boss with multiple combatants (think 'the three billy goats gruff'). [01:55am] ActionJackalope: In any case, I've never personally had all that fun fighting charging bosses. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I find them very annoying. [01:56am] ActionJackalope: Either because they don't charge often enough, or because you have to line up the charge *perfectly* or they go off in the wrong direction and you've gotta spend a few more minutes maneuvering back aroudn to try again. [01:58am] ActionJackalope: I like where you're going with multiple combatants, though. It'd be cool to have a boss that was made up of several independently-moving entities.