Remember that one boss I suggested long ago? You probably don’t.
This dude wasn’t a boss you had to shoot to death.
He was a boss you had to outlast. You had to wait till his timer ran out.
But here I am, resuggesting this, but with a couple of changes to make him somewhat more bearable.
So here we go:
Boss Appearance: Refer to original idea to get an idea on how he looks. I’m not remastering his appearance.
Boss Details:
He tracks the ship, and tries to go straight for the player. (Speed depends on difficulty.)
He moves sort of like a terminator chicken, but he pauses a little longer, and moves a little faster. (Bomber users will have to misdirect him real good.)
This boss has a minimum of 300,000 health, up to a max of 800,000.
However, his health drops by 1% of his max health every second. (for example, if he has 620,000 health, he takes 6,200 damage every second)
This boss does not award points for dealing damage to him.
Sorry, score milkers.
You can still damage the boss to hurt him, and make him run out of health faster, but your damage against him is reduced by 75%. (Read the original idea to somewhat get the reason behind this. If not, it’s because if you could kill him too fast, it wouldn’t really be much of a “time out” boss if he could die too fast from the hands of the player.)
However, the closer the boss is to death, the faster it gets.
(Alternatively, enrage him when his health reaches 33%.)
Boss Attacks: The boss drops up to 6 dynamite sticks at a time. A minimum of 3. Difficulty does not affect how many sticks he throws. He throws them every 12 seconds or so. Up to every 5 seconds.
This attack has a warning.
The dynamite sticks explode just like Special Forces’ grenades, but they do not bounce when landing on the bottom of the screen. They have a fuse time of 2 seconds after landing.
The boss’ death explosion is as big as a Big Chicken’s. However, the explosion can actually kill you. He will pause for a moment to let the player get to a safe spot before blowing up.
The game will display a zipped circle on the boss, showing how far the explosion can reach. Just like Dr Beaker’s flasks.
Rewards: Drops a firepower on death, along with 5 roasts. He also gives the player as much score as his max health. (If he had 400,000 max health, he awards 400,000 score.)
Original Writer’s Notes: I thought it would be a good idea to add a boss that does not follow the usual “attack the boss until it dies”, so I thought I’d suggest a boss that requires you to avoid them until the time runs out instead.
Writer’s Notes now: A boss that took 0 damage just seemed to make no sense. But a timeout boss that could’ve been killed by the hands of the player would also not make sense… So, I came up with a workaround: He has a large health pool that gradually drains over time, and the player can blast away at him to help time him out faster.
The original suggestion had literally no thought to balance at all. I wanted him to have ridiculous movement speed. Though, to be fair, Bombers did not exist then. But even so, erratic and unpredictable movement with crazy speed was just a recipe for disaster. Especially for bomber users.