After lots of judging and criteria-quantization we have decided upon winners of the Sipho Boss Design Contest!
Judging was not easy. To reach the decision we have tried to imagine how your creations will work in various game scenarios. Less violent boss fights, based on boss behaviour and its "decision making" were evaluated more highly. Some entries even felt like they have been mind-read out of our design ideas list and that gave a lot of confidence in both ideas and entries. We also looked at additional mechanics we would have to implement for some of entries to work and how well we could re-use them in the rest of the game. More re-usable game mechanics were rated more highly. Let's get to the business.
First place winner is:
Untitled Maze boss by skipydog
You are in a maze with 4 - 6 boss Siphos. Each one aimlessly wander around until you are in their line of sight, where the one that sees you would chase after you. You have to maneuver the maze and not be seen by them, they can only see from their front side. You can safely attack them from the sides and easily kill them that way, but doing so will make all others seek to where the kill was, so you have to be careful. When you wither it down to around 3 or 2 left, the rest will flee into a whirl pool and you win the fight. You should not attack form the front side of them.
This kind of boss behaviour which is also arena-layout dependant should encourage players to take more cautious fights. Sneaking up on the boss and hiding from other bosses after a kill should make a nice pace-changing challenge. Congratulations!
The runner-ups are:
The Gemini by Popcorn dust
Twin boss idea was something that we kept in our backlog and this entry illustrates it very nicely. It also encourages us to expand Sipho screech vocabulary with "your turn" and "maybe I'll take a little break".
Maze of the Gatekeeper: Vagorian Boss by z0mbiesrock
A boss slithering through small cracks and acting as a whack-a-mole, but the mole is pretty dangerous and lays exploding eggs is something we haven't thought of! It would be as if fighting an invisible enemy that can only be seen with "sonar" indicator. Very creative entry and hopefully won't be as hard to implement as it sounds.
Murderswarm by TIC
Many small enemies instead of big boss? Yes please! Implementing boids-like behaviour which would flock the player or even try to open their own whirlpool? This should be fun.
Leviathan's Maw: Cra'Than Boss by z0mbiesrock
Another award-worthy entry by z0mbiesrock. Potentially technically challenging, but absolutely awesome big boss idea of inter-connected Cra'Thancipede
Winners listed above will be getting Steam keys for each winning entry! We will contact you personally.
Thanks to all participants for your support!
skipydog, Popcorn dust, z0mbiesrock, TIC, Salreix Von Otsuu, Max77, Camille, DrakonyxX, your entries have been great and inspiring in many ways. We hope to use this inspiration to push Sipho further than it has been before. Stay tuned for new content and let us know what you thought of this contest!