The fourth level is done!! Woooop! It’s been a while since I showed off a boss, so let’s do that.

The boss is a drone from the warship that spams chaff everywhere, which it then manipulates to attack you. I call it… the Chaff Spammer. Yeah. These names aren’t final, don’t worry.

I very nearly cut this boss — I really like the idea of its gimmick, but it took a long time for it to come together into something pure and enjoyable. I’m showing before-and-after gifs of its attacks, but they’re numerous so I’ve put them after the break.

Chaff Spawning

The Spammer begins every attack by pumping chaff into the arena. It used to be done all at once, but that left big dead zones in the chaff — now it’s more spread out. On harder difficulties, tougher yellow-coloured chaff will occasionally spawn. Yellow chaff bits draw over the purple ones now — I think it’s important to know when they’re there and where they are.

Spin Attack

One of the moves the Spammer follows up with is a spin that makes the chaff orbit around it. Chaff now rotates slower the farther away from the boss it is, which seems more fair (and more organic looking, too!) Additional chaff is spawned off-screen and rotates into view on harder difficulties, so you can’t just kill all the chaff and leave the Spammer spinning around impotently. The extra chaff spawning is hard to tell in this gif since there’s so much on screen, oops.

Other Poopy Ideas

Finally, some old ideas just weren’t jiving. It was kinda interesting having a laser attack that was blocked by the chaff, but you could easily go above the Spammer to avoid it and it felt a bit dumb. I created a new move to replace it, where the Spammer sucks all the chaff on-screen back in. Again, more chaff is spawned off-screen on harder difficulties (you can see that clearly this time!) and the camera zooms out so you can better see it coming through the floor.

There were also some visual additions, like the glows behind the spammer and trails that indicate the direction the grenades will be launched (as seen in the first gif.) It took a lot of work but I’m happy with where it’s come to!

The more I complete, the more the finish line seems to stretch out ahead of me… but I’m more than halfway done all the levels now, and I’m pushing on to level 5 next week!