Game Design: “Shadows on Deck” - The Game Maker's Companion: Game Development - page 175

Figure 7-6. Some of the many booby traps Flynn could encounter in the harder part of the game
Boss Fights
Bosses are traditionally extra bad monsters that wait for the player at the end of a level; a big
challenge to finish off and make the player feel like they've really achieved something. And
besides, bosses are fun.
Bosses are usually set up so that they have their own unique kind of game play to really
challenge the player. But here's the important bit: they usually test if you've mastered an ability
you've been given in this level. Say we let the player learn the climb ability in the ship level. Well,
then we've got to come up with a way to fight the boss that uses that ability. The Zelda games are
very clever at doing this. We don't always have to stick with this pattern, but it's a nice idea. The
rules for boss fights are a bit different, then, and we'll consider these once we know the levels and
their challenges a bit better.
Challenges
In a story-driven game, the challenges and objectives are usually set up through the storyline.
Therefore, the flow of the story that we've already outlined will help to determine the flow of the
objectives in the game. Not all games are made this way, and sometimes the story isn't actually
written until the game play is already well formed. It's not ideal from the perspective of the story,
but it is not uncommon for games to reverse-engineer their storylines to fit.
In our case, we have a story structure that we will use as inspiration for the game play. First,
let's see if we can sort out the levels of the game and what theme they will have. It's good to try to
think of levels that are very different from each other, to add spice and variety to the game, and