You can usually tell when a boss fight is coming up in a video game. The level design will start to look subtly different. Enemies will start to thin out. There will be supplies and ammo to collect. Maybe the music will start to change. If the game has save points, there will be one. And then you enter a large area that just has that “boss fight happens here” look.

Presumably most players start to feel excited at this point, looking forward to the challenge. Me, I grit my teeth; resigned to the fact that I probably won’t enjoy the next five/ten/twenty minutes (or maybe more, depending on how mis-calibrated the difficulty is). A boss fight is something I’ll put up with, as long as the rest of the game is fun enough to compensate.

It’s not always as bad as that. But it ususally is.

The problem

The problem is that very often, the gameplay of the boss fight is totally different from the rest of the game: all the parts I found fun are set aside in favour of a frantic button-mashing.

The Deus Ex series and the Dishonored series are good examples of this[1]. In both franchises, you can choose the play-style you prefer—stealth vs. action—and customise your character accordingly. I go for the stealth option, quietly infiltrating hostile areas and methodically taking down enemies. The games support this play-style until the boss fight begins, and then it goes out the window. The boss fights are always about fast-paced action.

It really feels like a betrayal of the players who prefer stealth. We’re told we can play how we want, but then suddenly we have to switch to action if we want to continue the game. The action enjoyers, meanwhile, get to play their preferred way the whole time.

I’ve given up on otherwise-good games because of a boss fight that was too frustrating. Some examples:

  • Medusa in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey (I probably could have beaten her if I kept trying, but the fight was very tedious and by that point I was a bit over the game anyway. It’s just too long and repetitive.)
  • The Bone Hydra in Hades
  • The final battle in Bioshock Infinite (I gave up and watched the ending on YouTube)

I also nearly gave up on Moss due to a boss fight, which would have been a tragedy because that game was magical. In the Quest version of the game there’s an option to skip boss fights, but not in the Steam version for some maddening reason.

A better way

Some games do have boss fights or boss fight-esque challenges that are fun. I don’t think it’s even that hard to do: just create a challenge that keeps the essential qualities of the rest of the game, while introducing some kind of new dimension that requires extra focus. It doesn’t need to be twitchy bullet-hell action.

I recently played Big Walk, and the studio did a great job with this. [Warning: The rest of this paragraph will slightly spoil Big Walk.] At the end of the game the players enter a gigantic, humming black sphere containing a final series of puzzles. As the players approach the sphere, the colour drains from their bodies, making them indistinguishable, and their voices fade away. This means the group has to solve the final puzzles without any verbal communication, and without being able to tell each other apart. Where previously they could talk about how to approach each puzzle, they instead rely on body language, demonstrations, and trial and error. Crucially, the puzzles retain the essential elements from the rest of the game, just with an interesting twist. The way you play the game changes, but not fundamentally so.

I implore more developers to approach boss fights in this way. Think about why the player is playing your game. You’re making a stealth game? Your players are probably going to be people who like slow and methodical play. A puzzle game? They’ll be people who enjoy pondering a brain-teaser. So maybe give them more of that, and don’t throw them into a frantic battle.