More new bosses and a Ducky's Delivery Service update!
Hello! I’ve been on a non-stop boss-making spree for the past couple of weeks. But first…
A Ducky’s Delivery Service update!
I released an update to Ducky’s Delivery Service! You can now play the first three areas in a world in any order, giving you a bit more freedom. Sometimes I would fail the same Ducky's Delivery Service area a couple of times in a row and I would get disheartened, but now there's the option of trying a later area in the same world instead. It's not the biggest change ever but I like it a lot.
Boss mice
The first new boss fight I added to my next game was a group of powered-up mice. They don’t have any way of attacking you from a distance. Instead, they try to slowly push you into a corner while using their 3×3 lightning attacks to cover each other.
I’m sure a lot of people won’t like this type of defensive boss that slowly tries to checkmate you, but I love it! I’d like to make a couple of edits to the tiny robot mice sprites, but other than that it’s pretty much done.
Ice penguins (miniboss)
The penguin boss from the previous newsletter issue had an attack that made ice fall down from the ceiling. It didn’t add much to the fight so I switched it out for an attack where the penguin stomps twice in a row instead, which is more fun to play against and has less visual noise. I then built a new penguin-themed miniboss around the old falling ice attack.
You fight three penguins at once as they slowly drop more and more permanent ice into the arena. The fight starts out feeling fairly straightforward, but by the end you’re ice-skating across the entire arena to avoid attacks!
Boss boar
I’ve been working through my ideas bosses that slowly fill the arena with hazards, and the last one is a boar-themed boss. It drops more and more breakable rocks into the arena and eventually starts causing them to explode:
This one isn’t quite ready to show off in a video yet because I still need to make it better at running away from the player and make the exploding rocks look prettier. But I already love it! It feels like you’re chasing down a boss in the middle of a randomly generated Chessplosion survival level, except you’re allowed to destroy the bombs by hitting them with a hammer. I’m looking forward to showing off the finished boss next time!
That’s all I’ve been working on. I spent two weeks doing nothing but thinking about bosses, and I don’t plan on stopping soon. I’ll have more bosses to show off next time!
Anything else?
I wrote a short post about how I chose my name (Cassandra). So take a look if you're curious!
I read a lot this week! The first volume of After Journey’s End is a collection of several indie game designers writing about their games' designs. It's so refreshing to read articles about real practical applied game design, instead of general overarching abstract theories of "good game design". I liked Sylvie's recent post Because My Heart Is Illegible too, where she talks about which parts of her games she would or wouldn't want to compromise for the sake of making them understrandable by more people.
I'm a few years late to the party, but I found out about the webcomic what happens next a few days ago and read the entire thing in a single sitting. It deals with very heavy topics and it's certainly not for everyone, but I love it. You might love it too if you have strong feelings about how people seem to treat each other on the internet.
And that’s about it! I’m going to go get some rest after a long day of boss-making. Have a great couple of weeks and I’ll see you next time!