For the past couple of weeks, pretty much my entire focus has been spent on designing this boss, which will still remain in obscurity for the most part. I've made significant progress though, and it's hit a point where I've pretty much nailed down the basic gameplay loop for the boss fight, and given how it's coded, it'd be very easy for me to add more things like attacks if I wanted to.

I said I was gonna be rather secretive about this boss, but I'll give a few details. The boss, which I believe I mentioned last week, was initially inspired off of Kraid, which is the reason for its size. Due to its size, you can never see the boss in its entirety at once. You can go up higher in the boss arena though to see the head more clearly. Because of this, I've given the boss two different types of attacks: attacks that are done when you are at ground level, and attacks that are done when you are at its eye level. Attacks when you are at ground level consist of mostly different types of stomping. The boss can repeatedly stomp, causing rocks to fall, do a single large stomp, which makes a shockwave in the ground, or attempt to step on you. If you are at eye level, it will shoot fireballs at you, or try to swipe at you. 

The reason I decided to do this is because, given how I wanted this boss to be fought, which involves you going up and down in the arena, I needed a variation of attacks depending on where you were in the arena. Ground attacks would not be very effective if you were high up (well, except maybe falling rocks), and eye level attacks wouldn't work well if you're on the ground. By having the boss change its behavior depending on where you are, it also gives the player some degree of control over what the boss does, which they can use to their advantage.

Also, I've been calling some attacks "eye level" attacks, but that's probably not a super accurate description. While those attacks mostly occur when you're at eye level with the boss, a more accurate description would be "attacks that happen when the boss is actively looking at you" which only on the upper half of the arena when the head is visible, but also on the far left side of the arena. I decided to do this because, since the head is constantly looking at you, when you're on the far left side of the arena, its head looks downwards enough to where it's actually visible from ground level, giving you time to anticipate its attacks. This area also overlaps with the area where the boss performs ground level attacks. It's a small area, but it's also a particularly dangerous one.

The area where both attacks are done actually serves a good purpose as well, as this is the most advantageous position for the player. You may recall in a previous devlog that I designed a cannon that shoots blue boulders that you drop into it (which I've dubbed the Blue Boulder Blaster™). That cannon is also used to fight this boss, specifically to stun it. And Michael's position in the diagram is exactly where the switch would be to trigger the cannon to fire. Given that, I felt that it was appropriate for the boss to do both attacks at you for as long as you're there.

Anyways, I've already given quite a bit of info on this boss, so I'll leave it at that for now. However, I've been working on more than just the fight itself. I've actually gone back into doing some Chiptune, and spent the past week making a boss theme. I've had the idea for the music for a while, so I finally decided to start composing it. I have to say, I was pretty surprised with how well most of it came out. Very rarely does the music that I envision in my head match up with the actual finished product, but it somehow managed to for this!

I have the track separated into three parts (aside from just the intro bit). The first part is an arrangement of the game's ruins theme (also the main theme). The second section is an arrangement of the zone's main theme (the current and only zone in the game in which the boss takes place in is just vanilla caves, more to come though), which is a track made by my friend Aardbei, called Colors (listen to it here). The third section, which I think needs the most work, is its own original melody, but it takes some elements from Cave Story's music, specifically its Miniboss theme, Gravity. It's currently the longest Chiptune track I've made so far, being at around 2 minutes long. You can download and listen to it here. 

Again, the last section I think needs the most work. Feel free to give your thoughts on it though, or the track as a whole.

All-in-all, given how quickly I've been able to design this boss, I may have it finished ahead of schedule, which is by the end of the summer. That'll give me more time to add other things to the game, such as the gauntlet final level leading up to the boss, along with some other general tweaks. What I may start working on this week is more refined controller support since the new input system in Unity should supposedly be a lot better. I'll keep you posted in my next devlog!