What Makes A Good Secret Boss?

Secret bosses aren't just optional bosses. The secret within every secret boss creates depth in game design and the possibility of even more to find. The path a game takes to create a secret boss is unique, and the huge variety of options will shape the type of experience that players will get out of the hunt for a secret boss. Let's talk about how to build a good secret boss, from the road to the destination.

Featuring:
Cuphead
Persona 4
Golden Sun
Persona 5
A Hat In Time
Final Fantasy IX
Kirby series
Dance Dance Revolution (I snuck it in there)
Deltarune
Street Fighter II
Super Smash Bros Melee
Kingdom Hearts

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[DesignDoc]

Thanks to Geologie for sponsoring today’s video!

[Magic_Ice]

I like secret bosses that kill the final boss

Morpho Knight and Akuma for example.

[grapesoftime]

The best secret bosses are often characters you've seen around the game in some capacity but now you get to see how badass they actually were the whole time

[qyv]

I think Morpho Knight is a really well made secret boss, especially since the creators have been putting him in every game. He was there the whole entire time. He is also important to lore and not “so mysterious literally nothing is known about him. No, I’m serious, I don’t know what colour his clothes are” He’s mentioned a fair amount however just enough to still be mysterious

[sympleton]

By far, I absolutely love Minos Prime from ULTRAKILL as a secret boss. He has everything a secret boss should have. In the level 3-1, you can take an alternate secret path to find a large door with various slabs on it that just have the letter P on them. In order to open the door, you have to get a P rank (perfect rank) on every level in Act 1 to open the door. After it's open, a secret level is revealed, titled "Soul Survivor". You make your way down a long winding path and eventually find yourself face to face with two of the hardest bosses in the game. Yes. Two. You have to defeat the Flesh Prison, the construct made to imprison Minos, before you can even fight him.

[NinjaMan]

Fun fact about the secret bosses in the Kingdom Hearts series. The main game bosses are sort of "dialed down" for a more enjoyable user experience. However, Tetsuya Nomura has stated that the super bosses, such as the Data Organization, Sephiroth, Lingering Will, Yozora, etc. Are all dialed to the max to show how powerful they are in canon. Meaning every time you beat one of those bosses, you are just further proving how powerful Sora is canonically. Of all the headaches those bosses can cause, just absolutely obliterating one is such a rush that you only get to experience once per boss!

[tallowick]

In my first playthrough of Hollow Knight I decided to save Zote, and instantly regretted it.
When I found him the second time, I begrudgingly decided to save him again, because I might as well see where it goes.
Finding him in the Colosseum of Fools and fighting him as the "boss" of the first trail was a very fun conclusion, I thought.
Then I found Grey Prince Zote. And I could physically not contain my laughter. One of the best secret bosses in any game I've played.

[hairtox]

I like how in Deltarune, the secret bosses are actually the most important part of the story, and you miss on the most interesting part of the game by not doing them
It gives you a real reason to search for them

[rfsmaster]

What makes Spamton NEO so cool is what little context we had on the NEO suit. We had just enough bread crumbs to know it was powerful, but not how powerful it was. The sudden feeling of “the WHAT?” mixed with Spamton’s incredible character creates one of the greatest boss fights in video games.

[oscarelieff]

Honestly I love the secret bosses in Pokemon Games. Red in the Johto games, Steven in Emerald, Cynthia in Unova. They always rewarded exploring or gave something to work towards in post game

[flarecoils]

Inner Agent 3 from Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion is my favorite secret bossfight. You have to beat every single stage without Marina's hacking assistance, which is already a very challenging task, only to face what is quite possibly the most unfair, grueling boss in the game. Inner Agent 3 is smaller than almost every other boss, can dodge roll, has autobombs that chase you around the tiny arena, can pull an unbelievable amount of specials out, has amazing aim, and if you die so much as once, you have to start back from the beginning and get through all 5 phases of the fight once again.

[elielful]

As seen but not commented the nameless king is a breathtaking fight that pays off a mayor mystery for the entire dark souls franchise, gwyn's first born son at heir to his name allied with the everlasting dragons, comes to you riding a dragon in an arena made of clouds, is just majestic and one of the most difficult fights when it comes to mechanics, the ost alone sends chills down your body

[bigsammichthoughts]

The poster child for a secret/true final boss is always going to be Ballos for me. It does everything: you have to go out of your way to get to him, which involves furthering various plotlines you may have otherwise left unresolved, he wraps up the story better, he adds to the lore, and he's really hard. Not to mention you have to fight a few other secret bosses to get there. Fantastic stuff, just like the rest of Cave Story

[peppespizzeria]

My favorite secret bossfight is the Shroobs from Bowser’s Inside Story. They aren’t super hard to reach (just a little bit of puzzle solving), but the route to them is at a critical, high-tension point in the game wherein a player might skip past them in their hurry to continue the storyline. They’re challenging, but not unfair, and give the player a powerful reward for taking the time to find and defeat them. Perhaps the best part is that the Shroobs are a callback to the previous Mario and Luigi game. They were the main antagonists in Partners in Time, and fans of the series would recognize them as an old enemy they thought they defeated long ago (the game dialogue alludes to this). Or, for players who don’t know who the Shroobs are, they’re a mysterious, never-before-seen alien species with a unique mystique around them. For me, the Shroobs are the gold standard of secret bosses.

[henryaggerate]

What makes the Spamtom NEO fight so cool is that it changes based on your chosen path (standard vs Snowgrave), and by willfully choosing to ditch your allies and take a darker path, you end up fighting NEO all alone in a much more difficult battle. Though, not to spoil it, you finish the fight in unique ways in each path that highlight the choices you made. Very cool fight!

[mylesedgington]

Team Slacker in Bug Fables is another good one. These are probably the last guys you’d expect to fight due to the team name, but Stratos and Deliah really pack a punch.

[Chochy]

Not secret the same way but the monk in botw is up there for me, the fact it plays on a known formula so well to draw you into a sense of safety and then flips the yiga clans joke aesthetic with similar attacks is just genius

[Luco_TA]

The best things about secret bosses are the difficulty and the music and I've gotta say Kirby consistently has banger secret boss themes

[douglasalionco]

I love how the "Tales of" franchise always puts Cameo Battles, battles where we can fight with the protagonists of previous games. This is a great way to honor them and make the player curious about them, as well as a way to promote them.

[picklenik]

While it’s not exactly a secret “boss”, I’ve always loved the secret end levels of many platformers like the star and rainbow worlds in Super Mario World and New SMB Wii/DS. These are always great ways for developers to create levels with truly unhinged game mechanics or ideas that may not be suitable or fit in well with regular gameplay/general audiences. Most of the time these levels are pretty easy, but you can tell they exist as distilled examples of how video games are meant to be fun before all else.