How To Fail At Boss Fights

They are in every game, and if they are not they should be! So might as well learn how to be really bad at adding a boss fight to your game. It's a must.

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Music:
Doh De Oh by Kevin MacLeod

[jonathanjohnjohnson]

When doing a doppelganger boss fight, make sure they not only use the weapons and moves the player has, but also the overpowered DLC/Donator weapons too, just to show that your evil self resorts to pay-to-win

[jonathanjohnjohnson]

And obviously, when the boss is defeated, they become a playable character!
Except without the cool movesets and the same health

[drzombie]

remember folks: a harder difficulty should increase the boss damage by about x2 and the boss health by x10, with no other modifications made to the fight at all

[doot]

that moment when you beat a boss into the dirt during the fight but then during the cutscene you get absolutely ran over buy the boss

[flashtirade]

The best boss fights are those that are so tilted against you that you don't know whether or not you're scripted to lose it

[gttswiafr]

don't forget about the 5 minute walk from the bonfire to the actual fight

[maxwell]

You forgot the part where you spend all the budget on one singular attack, that both destroys the player, and their computer.

[MyCentsOpinion]

Bosses can be some of the most memorable moment in a game, so you should reuse them as much as possible to make sure there is no way your player can forget about your boss.

[sassygallop]

Also, remember to give your boss a bunch of attacks that all look nearly identical, but have to be avoided or countered in completely different ways. That way, you can simply say "skill issue".

[Matt]

It’s a bad boss fight when your fighting the urge to stop playing the game more than your fighting the boss

[THExRISER]

Genuine tip: Consider adding a boss rush mode, if you think it can work in your game.
That will allow you to re-use existing content in an interesting way.

[doob.]

Make the boss summons waves of minions to attack players so they won’t do any damage to the actual boss!

[FoxNamedLuke]

A few additional points:
- Don't telegraph attacks, have them come out of nowhere. Those are especially popular among no-hitters
- Don't have the boss shoot projectiles, have him spawn them at random places on the arena. Don't worry about stupid stuff like the player's position though. Everyone loves telefrags
- For flying bosses let them just fly off screen where you can not see or attack him, but HE sure can
- Have a phase where the boss just spawns minions while he becomes invincible. That won't feel like filler
- Give the boss a move that messes with your controls. The most classic one is completely inverting them. Have him be able to do this without warning from any place on screen so you can just run into whatever who cares bullshit
- Have insta kill traps peppered throughout the arena. It's the best test of your skills if you're not even dying to the boss. Works best with the last point and KNOCKBACK MY BELOVED
- Ah, yes, knockback. Have the boss just knock you around. Give him combos that can just ragdoll you across the arena, so long they just feel like an insta-kill

[DarkinBladeGaming]

I love how the first piece of advice is immediately contradicted by the instructions to keep adding more phases and mechanics, instead of just being a stronger version of a normal enemy

[fearlesswee]

Before I even watch the video:

1 - Make them just a common soldier (maybe retextured at most) who can inexplicably take x100 times more damage. Bullet sponges are fun!
2 - Make sure the place you fight them in isn't designed around their moveset whatsoever. Or if you do point 1, make it a really big interesting arena you don't use because it's just a common mook with a health bar!
3 - Have your NPCs throughout the game hype the boss up as some legendary, powerful killer who's very name carries an air of danger and destruction, but they get absolutely bodied by the high-level player with their end-game gear and abundance of consumables! Level-scaling is for chumps!
4 - Have absolutely no buildup to the boss fight, just let the player sorta stumble into their arena and get a healthbar and wonder what's going on!
5 - Or, buildup the boss fight WAY too much with a super-long cutscene and dramatic music, maybe even a dialogue tree before the battle; this is especially good for failure if you follow point 3!
6 - Have either way too few bosses to the point where they feel out of place in your game's design and tacked-on last minute, or way too many to the point where they lose any impact as a special, dangerous encounter!
7 - Completely forget your game has a mechanic that can instakill enemies when meleeing them from behind, and forget to provide the boss with any special immunity to this attack, allowing them to be unceremoniously dropped in an instant! Again, especially great for failure when combined with point 3!

[thepotatoportal]

And before the fight, make sure to add incredibly precise obstacles that don't kill the player, but weaken them a bit before the fight. If/when the player becomes impatient from dying several times, they will get more hurt on these obstacles and probably die again in the fight, to teach your player that patience is a virtue or something.

[CheshireCad]

Also remember that the amount of time that the player is fighting the boss is a very important divergence from regular gameplay. Whereas almost every other enemy in your game will die within several seconds of the player attacking them, the boss fight will last several minutes at minimum.
Therefore, you need to deliberately ensure that every boss is completely immune to all status effects, especially any that deal a moderate amount of damage over a long period of time. Otherwise, you run the risk of giving your player meaningful build choices and strategic tradeoffs, and therefore feel smugly superior for "outsmarting" you.
Instead, the player is only allowed to use those skills on enemies that die in two hits anyway, as well as a handful of minibosses(because you forgot to change the status-immunity parameters when you copy-pasted a lategame enemy).

[benjaminhome]

This seems like a personal attack on Dark Souls

[darkowl]

My favourite boss fight mechanic is when you defeat the boss, but then they're okay in the immediate following cutscene and they either knock you out or run away, undefeated. Making your fight with them utterly a waste of time.

[TheGachaDilby]

Make sure to include the part where the boss inexplicably regenerates its health and thereby removes all the work done by the player in the first place!