#gamedesign
Toward the end of 2024, i began developing a framework around boss-centered game design. I revisited notes of mine about how to vary combat encounters in both the specific and abstract.
I wanted to actually PLAY Dark Souls as part of my research for the framework since it was the basis for my hypothesis: that good game world-building and "lore" might be built on a foundation of boss fights.
I had never cared much for boss fights--not like, actively disliked, but literally "didn't care." They were more of a means to an end for me, designwise, i was a lot more interested in moment-to-moment gameplay and the core "game loop."
Success of the "Soulsborne" subgenre of ARPGs has shifted my perspective.
I will concede that when i researched level design, it was more toward the functional, "crunchy" side of things, and i will admit that a thing my dungeons and other level designs were really lacking was in dramatic tension and theming.
When i designed bosses, it was more for the "what makes sense in the moment" and "what can i use to build with in the future." I didn't plan very far ahead.
But knowing the intended boss fight for a level gives you a TON of direction for how to decorate & theme an area: right off the bat you can go "with the grain" or "against the grain."
Does the necromancer lair in a crypt full of crumbling coffins deep within a cursed cemetery, or do they have a booby-trapped library in a decadent mansion in the remote countryside?
Moreover, if you create a cadre of related villains, they can have related or complementary themes & powers, and you can give each of them some notable minions that contrast to being out the individual villains' personality & style.
You make the level about the boss instead of making the boss about the level.
I mean, maybe it seems obvious to some, but i have SELDOM seen any real deep connection between bosses and their environments in video games: the rare exceptions honestly seemed mysterious and like "lightning in a bottle."
But there IS a "simple answer." You can define a game's protagonist(s) with the villains they face, and you can use your levels to accentuate your villains' personalities. You can fabricate an entire rogues' gallery.
Furthermore, if you determine the villains FIRST and how you want to differentiate them, you can design the levels AROUND the boss fights, you can decide your game's mechanics FOR the boss fights.
And your moment-to-moment game loop becomes a function of preparing the player for each boss encounter, then contrasting the rising tension for each boss fight. And your story emerges from the characters and interactions with the environment rather than whatever gameplay you might have instead contrived from a script.
The experience of playing the game is far more immediate and visceral means of conveying story than any amount of dialogue or exposition.