I like boss fights. The ones that are just clever and fun. And these that are frustrating and you have such a huge relief afterwards. There's this huge relief afterwards, the sense of achievement and "I don't want to repeat that". And this is also the reason that I am not a fun of hard boss fights in roguelites.
Because if they are hard, there's no "I don't want to do it again". Sure they could get easier in 20 tries but they could be a blocker and the reason I just give up. Many boss fights are about an idea "how to defeat the boss" but many times it is not enough. You need to be skilled, to make that plan happen. And that's good. Unless the difficulty level is way too high. I mean, hard boss is fine, but not if you get to start all over again and every time you have to fight it. In the same way. Getting that life bar slowly down.
While roguelites are many times about dying and repeating, there's many things going on that you can try in every approach. Bosses usualy have one way to get them down. A few steps that you repeat over and over and try not to make a costy mistake.
This was in my head when I was adding the centipede.
I didn't want that fight to be hard. It is a bit demanding and I may nerf it a bit but right now I am able to kill it without many issues, I consider it easy but I am playing Tea For God for quite a long time now.
I wanted the centipede to be something different from the usual enemies. I wanted it to be a fair fight, that's why most of the projectiles are shot in front of the player. Of course, there's also a distinct sound and visual effect to mark which segment is about to shoot.
I also wanted to add a bit of a strategy there. There are two extremely different paths there and anything inbetween. On one side of the spectrum you can just blast your guns at everything that moves and then deal with multiple smaller centipedes crawling around. On the other side, you can slowly take down the centipede segment by segment starting with the tail and going towards the head.
Depending on your game style, the centipede may take much longer but be much safer and easier fight or could be a chaotic dance where you look around you all the time to dodge the projectile and shoot in different directions.
When the players meet the centipede for the first time, I expect many of them to shoot at anything only to learn that this makes more centipedes. On the next try they should play it safe. After a few tries they could try a bolder approach to make it quicker.
But it should be a manageable experience, something to be handled. It is not the final boss.
Playing it on my own, I think that I did what I wanted to have. But it's up to the players to tell if they actually feel the same and I can't wait to hear what they have to say (try preview builds!).
What are my plans now?
To finish the game, the story mode. I want to add a new game mode, that could be used to showcase impossible spaces to people. It is going to have a simplified game loop and be completely linear. It is also going to be just a subset of the final game.
I will be most likely cutting some segments of the game to finish it in a few months. These parts will be added later, extending the story mode, enhancing the experience, adding some insight into the story.
And while I will be cutting some parts, I am also going to add something else. A mode with a truly open world. Haven't yet decided on the details but they should be filled in upcoming months.
This will be less hand-made than the story mode. Will have fewer cutscenes. They are still coming and there are still going to be unique rooms, but they will be a bit different to what is in the game right now. There should be a greater variety of levels, starting at completely different places (not as it is now, linear story telling where we start and where we're going). Working with a linear story, I have to do all specific bits of it, to make them work with what is going to be told. With such "extended play mode" I am going to work on anything that comes up to my mind or people suggest. As it can fit (almost) anywhere.
Long term, it is going to be a way to tell more stories, expose lore, have varied quests/missions. In the end, the story mode may feel just like a long introduction to that mode.