Mushroom Men (Wii)

Mushroom Men: The Spore Wars is an original platforming IP coming to Wii later this year. With the game due out soon we'll be brining you a series of development diaries from key members of the Red Fly Studio dev team, highlighting certain areas of the game and some of the techniques that have been used. In this fourth diary, by interactions design lead James Clarendon, you'll learn more about the Wii game's boss battles.

When I came onto revising the boss fights in Mushroom Men, we had some basic mechanics in place but they needed a lot of iteration to make them truly interesting. We didn't exactly have a lot of time, so I looked back on some of the fun boss moments I'd experienced in the past. I'm a huge retro-game fanatic, with a big collection of old systems, so I spent an afternoon or two with some of my favourite old games to find out what made those bosses fun.

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Bosses as Mechanic Reinforcement
Several of the bosses and mini-bosses were included to reinforce a specific mechanic, such as the Telekinesis-Throw (whereby Pax uses his Telekinesis ability on an object and tosses it back at the enemy). Players had the option to use this ability during the game to get the upper hand on an opponent, or could let Player 2 perform this to help them out in the midst of battle. But it was never enforced, as we didn't want to force the player to use them. However, with bosses we had a chance to make a puzzle and to encourage the player to use those mechanics. Several of the bosses require this Telekinesis-Throw attack to dispatch. One of the mini-bosses actually acts as a tutorial for the Spore Punisher manoeuvre, flying out the player's reach until they can successfully execute it.

Boss as Action/Puzzle
Some of the bosses had to be stand-alone encounters, and that allowed us to borrow a trope from the Zelda series: the boss as an action/puzzle exercise. In some of these encounters, the player wasn't strong enough to hurt the boss directly, or couldn't get at them, and had to use environment components and specific game mechanics to take them out. This framed the whole boss fights as puzzles to be solved, not simply a skill exercise (although there is some of that, surely!).

Bosses as the Level
In the Parking Lot, the player will face not one but FIVE bosses to deal with. The entire area is centred on these encounters, and I'm willing to wager it will be one of the most well-received experiences of the game. I won't spoil it, but each of the bosses will use their environment in interesting and unique ways closely tied to them.

Mushroom Men - Rise of the Fungi for the DS will be available across North America & Europe from November, 2008. Mushroom Men - The Spore Wars for Wii will be available across North America & Europe from November 2008.