Codename “Blizzard Wizard”, this miniboss was ultimately my first boss where I really sought to utilize the level itself heavily as part of the gameplay of the fight. The director wanted to see some fights that weren’t big flat arenas and I gladly obliged!

Basically, since minibosses in Remnant are “elites with 2-3 new moves to boss-ify them” and always get their own arenas, using the arena for gameplay let me stretch the boss-ification of the fight beyond what we normally accomplished with minibosses.

I designed the arena with an “outer ring” that the player was regularly pushed to fight in, and made his new moves as follows:

• 2 roaming storm clouds that constantly rained dangerous hail down onto the player if they were caught in it without above-head cover (summoned during his intro cinematic)
  • This provided dynamics to the fight beyond just reacting to what the boss is doing, as these clouds were rotating on their own and often “out of sync” with the boss
  • The supporting level designer helped “level up” my design by making the above-head cover have ramps up onto them, where we then put more vertical cover for the next move. This gave players more interesting pathing options
• A summoned destructible orb that spawned continuous ice spikes that flew at the player at waist-height, allowing half cover to protect the player while they shot the orb… but all such cover was destructible, so it forced the player to maneuver around the battlefield through the fight, and provided a sort of fight timer where the player needed to kill the boss before running out of cover (mostly just a challenge on the higher difficulties)
  • Note: This is what regularly forces players into the outer ring where the storms are, since there’s no cover on the central platform where the boss is
• A massive piercing shot that could destroy cover in a single hit, making the player either bait the shot or be quick to find new cover.

This breakdown/guide shows the fight well.

This fight was very well-received for a miniboss, especially given minibosses are usually less memorable given their limitations and lower presentation ceiling. While I was finding a video to show for it, this reddit post showed up: