Heroes of Song Devlog Part 13: Bosses & Playtest 3
Blows the dust off of this blog.
In the last post I said something like, “I feel like I got some momentum.” That was February 4th. Life’s been busy, both inside and outside my game design world, so there hasn’t been a lot of active work on Heroes of Song, but there’s also a lot I was planning on talking about but haven’t gotten around to yet.
I actually wrote this the first part of this and meant to post it before the last devlog. It relates pretty directly to the third playtest, though, so wrapping them up together works out.
I’ve added some bosses to the test document! Remember the design principles:
Sometimes you don’t fight. Sometimes you do.
I think this is bringing in mostly principles 3, 4, and 5.
I’ve been working on one of the most Zelda-like aspects of the game, bosses! I’ve been having fun coming up with super specific vulnerabilities that could be acquired in the same dungeon where they’re found. I think these weaknesses are pretty clearly described in the stat blocks for these bosses in the test document, though I do have some unique items I plan to add at some point that would provide more options for unique vulnerabilities to exploit.
Mysterimoth: An illusion-based moth adversary that makes duplicates of itself and shoots beams out of the eye-patterns on its wings. It’s vulnerable to strong winds, such as the Gale song. It also has a larval form that could be faced as a mini-boss.
Mirror Crab: A scuttling, shelled creature with a noticeable vulnerable spot on its belly and some obvious weakness to the Shatter song.
Vault: A hulking tank of a boss that litters the battlefield with bombs and keeps its weak point locked away in a chamber on its chest that just begs to be hit with a Lockpick song.
I think these all feel appropriately Zelda-y. I could picture myself encountering them in any Zelda-like. I also made an attempt to leave them open-ended enough that Songkeepers and Heroes could come up with their own ways of defeating these enemies.
The last playtest I did featured an encounter with Vault.
This was with my usual game night group, so our goal was more about having fun than gathering a lot of information, but I think it was still a useful session. Players were a wide range of different character options, including some that are not in any document out there. It was my first time playing with four heroes so it was the most capable and powerful group I’ve had so far.
The session revolved around a desert town that fell under attack by bandits who stole the magical item that allowed them to grow crops. The bandit leader was a vulture guy and many of the avikin and furrikin were animals you might find in the desert (hares, coyotes, hyenas, hawks). The players had to first run off the lingering bandits in the town and then go after the main group and the stolen artifact.
After handily defeating the bandits in town, the players found the bandit’s hideout in an old fort/bank called the Keyless Keep. There were some creative uses of abilities, such as the bard blowing enemies off the walls of the fort with their Gale song. There was an easy bell puzzle that taught the Lockpick song and unlocked the underground portion of the keep.
Inside was a series of doors that needed to be unlocked while exploring and relocked in a particular configuration so that a the final vault door could be opened. The puzzle… kind of didn’t work based on how I had it written out, but I think has some potential. There were some extra encounters mixed in with navigating the dungeon and some special items to be found.
Finally, the heroes encountered Vault who was holding the special magic item in their chest. Vault maybe went down a little fast, but they did have to make a point to use the song they learned to open up Vault’s weak point. The fact they wracked up as much damage as quickly as they did also had a lot to do with effectively using runes on their weapons and other items and abilities well.
It was a fun session with a few takeaways. One was that giving dungeon design tools to Songkeepers is going to be quite a bit of work. I’m not sure I’m super confident in my personal dungeon design, so helping other people design dungeons is kind of intimidating. My other takeaway was that these bosses could probably be tougher. They don’t need to hit harder, but should be able to take a few more hits, especially tankier examples like Vault.
I’m not sure when I’ll have more to share. It’s been a busy (and, frankly, really stressful) time outside of game design. In my game design life, this has kind of meant that I’ve had more capacity for lower-stakes projects that I can put up on Itch without worrying too much about them making back the money I put into them. So, things are kind of stalled on Heroes of Song until I feel like I have the capacity for it again, but it will get picked up again.
If you want to check out what I’ve been working on most recently, pick up HELLDROPPERS, a game using the system from HELLGUTS inspired by Helldivers. I think it does a pretty good job getting the Helldivers feel without being overly granular.
That’s all I have for you for now!
The world is weird; kindness matters.
