Hi, this is Julian and David with a mixed post from the Art and Programming departments.
Today we’re going to show you how one of our supersized bosses was made.
He’s also something exclusive on the menu, an evil guest for dinner we haven’t shown before.
Let me introduce to you: Lord Butter!
(Seems like he’s trying to have YOU for dinner!)
It’s always exciting having a world almost finished in development and being able to put the topping on it with adding a boss. A boss is the final test of the mechanics the player has learned so far, but also a test of the development team where everyone needs to add their little important part to the potpourri and make it feel challenging and rewarding.
Here are the ingredients we used in cooking up Lord Butter:
- We looked at what new elements such as enemies and spoons we had introduced in the levels before the boss and then we thought about how we could cook it all together to make a challenging opponent out of it. For this boss we had introduced a lot of new exploding and fire related elements such as bombs, lava, mortars and exploding rabbits (Bombits), so we knew it was going to be HOT.
- The player had also gotten a new weapon, the hand spoon.
It’s good for grabbing out-of-reach kitchen utensils, and even better for hurling a rabbit across the room.
- After some brainstorming, the core idea ended up being a chaotic fight with explosions everywhere caused by the boss shooting bombs at the player. The player would then have to use the hand spoon in smart ways to both dodge the exploding elements and also to fling them back at the boss.
- With a general idea of what we wanted the player to do in the boss fight, we went on about actually creating a graphic for the boss. We knew at that point that we wanted it to be a big evil-looking baddy and since the clash should take place in the boiling depths of a volcano we went with a demonic oversized bunny. Of course.
- We then put the sprite into the scene that had been prepped up with some ground, walls, and lava (also a bit of salt) to start seeing the context the fight will take place in. With the context more clear, we started designing the overall movement and attack patterns for the boss. The outcome was the boss flying around above the lava while shooting bombs and Bombits that the player had to dodge and hit back at it, trying to not get deep fried in the process.
Gotcha, pal! - Finally, we felt that we wanted the player to utilize their hand spoon more during the fight. To solve this we added laser beams that the boss would shoot out of his eyes while moving across the room, the player would then need to use their new weapon to try and avoid them.
After having figured out the overall recipe of the fight, we went back into it over and over again to iron out the nuances we didn’t like until the fight felt equally rewarding and fair to the player. In the end we got everyone on the team to play the boss, as this gave some final feedback on difficulty and fun value. And this sums up how we usually go about cooking up a boss.
It’s now up to you to defeat Lord Butter and save your chef friends. The first step in doing that is by wishlisting Radical Rabbit Stew on Steam and checking out the game at release in two weeks (oh my)!
We hope you’ll like beating this boss and the others we have in store for you.
Have a nice weekend, maybe spice it up by playing the demo? (And don't forget to Wishlist as well!) 😉
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1232010/Radical_Rabbit_Stew/