4:Loop – designing the ominous cube-shaped Scanner boss – GameGlory

Hello, I’m Mike Sales space, Chief Artistic Officer at Dangerous Robotic Video games, and Recreation Director of 4:Loop. In my final put up, I shared how our core gameplay programs come collectively to create an unpredictable and endlessly replayable expertise. Right now, I’d wish to share extra particulars on certainly one of our co-op shooter’s high-stakes boss fights. 

Particularly, I’d like to speak about how our crew approaches designing these battles, and the way these issues led to certainly one of our most unusual enemies to this point: The Scanner. 

No two bosses are alike

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One in every of our important targets when designing bosses in 4:Loop is making every of them distinctive – not solely of their visible design, however in how they behave. We all know we’re on the proper monitor when a boss requires gamers to undertake new types of cooperation, improvisation, and combos of apparatus and talents. All of this leads to the form of artistic drawback fixing at the coronary heart of 4:Loop. Once we first began exploring the Scanner, or “The Dice,” because it’s known as internally, I needed to do one thing a bit totally different: create a boss battle that wasn’t about direct fight, however navigation, spatial consciousness, and cross-map coordination.

Hold transferring to remain alive

For a few of our boss battles, gamers can succeed by discovering cowl, hunkering down, and doling out heaps of harm. However with the Scanner, that’s a sure-fire method to get your self killed. Fairly than attacking gamers straight, the Scanner emits a Laser Matrix over the whole map. This “Grid of Doom” (to make use of one other inner identify) is an interlocking grid of vivid purple and intensely harmful lasers. One hit is sufficient to knock a participant down. A second hit and you’re out of the battle. 

The grid is sluggish transferring and straightforward to see, making it manageable sufficient at the begin of the encounter – and seemingly protected sufficient to lull you into a way of complacency. However as the battle progresses, the laser grid turns into tighter and tighter, making navigation and survival more and more tough to handle. In fact, it’s not sufficient to simply survive the Scanner. Gamers should destroy it to win.

Your doom is six sided

Being a dice, the Scanner has six faces. On every of those faces, we’ve put 9 destructible tiles, making 54 targets in complete. To truly harm the Scanner, gamers should knock out all 54 panels without delay, forcing the machine to disclose its susceptible Reactor Core. 

Sounds easy sufficient… till the Scanner begins transferring.  We constructed the Scanner to continuously rotate and swap sections like a large Dice Puzzle from Hell. On prime of that, broken panels reset over time. This creates a boss battle that requires gamers to unfold out and assault from a number of angles, whereas navigating the Scanner’s ever-tightening Laser Matrix.  All of this leads to a novel gameplay problem. Keep cellular sufficient to keep away from the Grid of Doom, whereas remaining targeted sufficient to knock out panels and coordinate a team-wide assault on the Reactor Core as soon as it’s uncovered.

Hit the Scanner with every thing you’ve bought

As soon as all 54 tiles have been knocked out, the Scanner reveals its susceptible Reactor Core for a short window. That is the second the place the crew – who could possibly be on reverse ends of the map by this level – strike collectively as a cohesive unit to inflict as a lot harm as doable. The coordination that happens in these transient home windows are intuitive and pure. They emerge from the boss’s core design, fairly than telling gamers what to do. 

Your selections matter

In 4:Loop, we’re continuously attempting to design gameplay moments that ask gamers to make attention-grabbing choices – after which reside with their penalties. The Scanner is not any totally different. 

The sport’s Chance Map makes it clear what boss you’ll be going through at the finish of the Act. This forces gamers to consider what sort of gear and talents to pick main as much as the battle. Certain, shotguns are highly effective… however they gained’t be efficient towards the Scanner’s Reactor Core at vary. Or possibly fairly than taking that absolutely candy Cloaking Backpack, you would possibly need to select tools that will help you navigate the Laser Matrix as an alternative.

Completely different by design

The Scanner is only one of a number of bosses in 4:Loop, every constructed to push on gamers’ coordination, cooperation, and artistic problem-solving abilities. We hope all our bosses will generate loopy moments you’ll be speaking about with your pals for a very long time after you win or lose. 

The Scanner began from a easy picture: An enormous, floating dice puzzle with breakable panels. Over time, it grew into certainly one of our most iconic enemies, and one which touches on virtually each layer of how gamers can improvise to beat overwhelming obstacles collectively. And it does all of this with out firing a single shot at the gamers.

It’s also possible to be a part of our rising neighborhood at discord.gg/4LOOP.