Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
More Tips and Tricks for Final Dungeons
While this chapter is as good as done, there are so many more things that you can do with a final dungeon. RPGs have
had all types of final dungeons, ranging from the one-room final dungeon (justified by the difficulty of getting into that
one room; the player usually needs a series of keys or artifacts to open the path) to a sprawling mega-fortress that dwarfs
the Devil's Castle many times over. Here's a list of other things you can add to the final dungeons of your future games.
•
Uncontrollable movement puzzle
: You could either use the ice puzzle we created before or
make a new type of puzzle in which the player is forced in a certain direction, based on where
he/she has stepped. Much like the teleportation puzzle we used on the first floor, this can be
used to force the player to figure out how exactly he/she can get past that particular area.
•
The
escape
: Once the player defeats the final boss, instead of ending the game right then and
there, you can make it so that a countdown begins. (You can use the
Control Timer
event
command for this purpose.) If the player has not escaped the castle when the timer hits zero,
you can either give him/her a Game Over (probably a jerk move, considering that the player
had to defeat the final boss even to get that far and probably has not even saved) or send him/
her back to the throne room to try and escape again. On a related note, you might make it so
that the timer doesn't start until the player starts trying to escape, so that he/she has a chance
to save the game beforehand.
•
An alternate take on the boss rush
: Besides creating a boss rush as we have, you can also
stagger its appearance. For example, if your game has four main bosses and you want them to
reappear in the final dungeon that also has four floors, you can block each floor with a single
boss. The player has to defeat the boss to advance upward (or downward).
•
An alternative to the final boss fight
: Perhaps the final boss gets its power from a crystal nexus
or some other arcane artifact. Destroying the artifact could provide the player another way of
winning the game while avoiding confrontation. It didn't seem appropriate for our game, but
an RPG that wants to reward differing play styles could benefit from such an approach.
•
Make it so that the final boss is weakened according to the number of sidequests the player
has carried out. This is a neat way of rewarding the player for taking the time to explore
beyond the beaten path.
Summary
During the course of this chapter, we created our game's final dungeon and populated it. We used a teleportation
puzzle on the dungeon's first floor that would stop the player from progressing until he/she had destroyed the crystal
powering the traps. On the second floor, chests containing Ebony gear were guarded by Vampires. The third floor
was blocked by an invisible barrier that required our player to defeat stronger versions of bosses already faced. The
treasure room on the same floor revealed that some chests can actually be monsters. Finally, we created a final boss
(with a second alternate form) that, when defeated, triggered the end credits. In the next chapter, we will tackle some
basic scripting exercises in RMVXA.
