Design of War Ender - Level 5-3 and Final Boss

Showdown.

Infinite Level game discussed: War Ender

WARNING! THIS DEV BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF WAR ENDER!

Well folks, we finally made it to the end. I started this series all the way back in January of 2019. Gosh, given everything that has happened since then, that feels like an incredibly long time ago, doesn't it? By the time this blog goes live, that will be just one month away from four years. I'm a little surprised I kept it going this long. In that time I've released Impressions, and am very far along into my biggest project yet, The Future Project. If you're curious how this series started, that first entry can be found in The Old Blog. But, that's enough reminiscing for now. Let's talk about the final levels of War Ender!

I covered previously how the levels in chapter 5 have an emphasis on verticality, as opposed to the more traditional horizontal layout of most platformer levels. Level 5-3, truthfully, isn't too different. There's a lot of climbing up, then falling down. The twist here is that you have a completely new weapon...the Ultimate Weapon. Yes, for the game's final moments, Red puts away his laser gun he's so effectively used for all other levels and trades it for a glowing cube that shoots lasers directly at the target if you so much as look at them. It ain't called the Ultimate Weapon for nothing! Aiming was never a super important part of War Ender, but you at least needed to be on the same elevation as enemies or be above or below them. The Ultimate Weapon removes that limitation, and now Red can stand below where an enemy is standing and still hit them. Why the sudden simplicity? There's actually a few different reasons. The first is catharsis. By this point, players will have fought their way through several intense levels and boss fights, completing challenge after challenge. It was time to give them a reward for all that effort. And what better reward in a game like this then to be a near indestructible force? Keeping track of your health is almost pointless in a level like this because the enemies are rarely going to get the opportunity to attack.

The second reason is to help give this level a unique identity. The fact is, without the Ultimate Weapon, 5-3 really doesn't have much to set itself apart from the other levels in chapter 5. There's no new enemies or gimmicks to speak of. One could say it's slightly more horizontal in design compared to the other chapter 5 levels, but I don't find that a very strong selling point. Throughout all the levels in War Ender, I've tried my best to do something unique. Most of the time this means introducing a new enemy or obstacle. But by chapter 4 and 5, all the mechanics had been shown, and at that point the only other thing to do was combine them in as many unique ways as possible. Certainly by level 5-3 much of the best, most interesting combinations of enemies and obstacles had been used, so it was time to break out something completely new. My third and final reason is to teach the player something they'll need to know going into the final boss. That's right! This level is as much a tutorial as it is a normal level. The Ultimate Weapon will be in use during the final boss, so having a level beforehand dedicated to its use will help players understand how it works before using it on the big bad himself. It's actually not uncommon for tutorials to appear close to the end of a game, but many games disguise the fact that it's a tutorial. Tutorials can, admittedly, be annoying, but they're a necessary evil to help get the player acquainted with controls and game mechanics. Disguising them as normal levels and making the player think they're naturally intuiting the gameplay is both great for game feel and for the developer to get their points across.

As I replayed the level for this blog, I couldn't help but notice the way the level was built. Strip out the Ultimate Weapon, and the level is very, well...normal. It's nothing you haven't seen before. I like to think there's an amusing story reason for this. Cyrus and his cronies probably didn't think you'd actually find that weapon, so they holed up in this part of Cycorp awaiting Red's arrival and was expecting to decimate him with the overwhelming firepower and large layout. If you think about it, there really are a lot of enemies here, much more than a level would normally have. So it's a bit amusing that Red then comes along and completely steamrolls everyone here with his newfound toy. There's literally sections where you walk into a room filled with turrets, and with the push of a button you just blow past every single one of them with little to no effort. It's an amusing thought to me. But, I'm restating the overall point of this level. In short, it's about giving the player a power fantasy to enjoy before heading off into the final battle. So without further ado, let's talk about that final boss.

Cyrus has taken command of a giant, grim reaper looking robot called the Death Machine, the only thing that can withstand the Ultimate Weapon's extreme power. This entire urban warfare got started because Cyrus needed a way to encourage spending money on the weapons he produced. What better way to do that than to fabricate a war, yes? He doesn't really state this, but the Death Machine was being created exclusively for the purpose of Cyrus brute forcing his way to power over The City, likely in case his twisted political ambitions failed. But now Red knows the truth about the war, and has come with only one objective...defeat Cyrus. When you initially start the level, it's completely quiet. Wanted to get that suspense in, you know? Red hears Cyrus' voice, walks forward a bit, and then above him appear some glowing eyes. Cue the music, reveal the rest of the Death Machine, and let the final battle begin proper. Storytelling was not a major goal of mine when making War Ender, but even I can't help but include little moments like this. Even if we're at the final level, we still gotta make the adventure feel awesome.

Even with the Ultimate Weapon on your side, the battle against the Death Machine is truly a chaotic, difficult battle. Constant movement is very much the idea with this boss battle, with the dodge perhaps seeing the most use it ever has for a boss battle. Seriously, you'll be using that dodge maneuver a lot, but the nice thing about that is that brief slowdown does give you a chance to see what the Death Machine is currently doing and give you a chance to react. Not using the dodge is a sure way to both get overwhelmed and straight up lose the battle. Of course, like all the other bosses in the game, the Death Machine doesn't throw everything at you at once. Each phase brings one or two new attacks, and the overall pace of the battle gets quicker and quicker. In the final phase, because Cyrus doesn't have enough going on apparently, there will even be a giant energy ball that bounces along the room. This creates a constant threat that makes Cyrus' attacks that much harder to avoid. That's the other philosophy of this battle – you don't need to aim and position yourself like you did with all the other bosses. Seriously, imagine fighting the Outsider Leader or RAWM with the Ultimate Weapon. They'd be absolute cakewalks! Cyrus and his Death Machine realize that you can't approach Red with the Ultimate Weapon the same way you approach him normally, so he opts to throw a lot at you, essentially making you dance across the battlefield as you avoid attack after attack.

The Death Machine fires a ton of energy bullets from its eyes, uses its scythes to crush you, spawns a wave of grenades, and brings in projectiles from the different edges of the screen. It eventually even fires a giant death laser! But perhaps its most unique attack may honestly be the stealth rockets. A faint red circle will appear around Red, and after a moment, an explosion will occur in that position. If Red doesn't move, he gets blasted. Period. It may honestly be my favorite attack in the whole game, as it encourages movement in a way no other boss quite does. There's something intimidating about seeing a red circle appear and realizing "oh snap, I gotta move now or I'll be blown to bits!" But really, Death Machine has a lot of great attacks that feed into the chaotic nature of the battle. I particularly like when he takes the ends of his scythes and rapidly jabs them into the ground. Something about that raw brutality just feels cool. There's also the attack where a stream of rockets pour in from the top-middle of the screen. That one that just looks kinda cool, honestly, and can also be kinda scary if you're not prepared for it.

I know I've spent almost the entire last paragraph gushing about my own creation, but I can't help it. I genuinely had a lot of fun replaying this battle. I can't speak for all creatives out there, but I know for me it can be difficult to go back to your previous works. You know all the flaws in it, and you see all the things that you know you could have done better. Throughout this blog series, I was often reminding myself of those regrets, and sometimes I'd even share those regrets in the blog. But that's part of learning and becoming better. Perhaps, deep down, that's why I started this blog series almost four years ago. I wanted to learn as much as I could from my previous work, and take that knowledge into my future games. It's worth noting that, by July of next year, War Ender will be five years old. Unless it was a huge hit, you would expect most developers to have long since moved on from any game of theirs that old. But I guess that's just not how I operate. You don't want to live in the past, but at the same time there's a reason history is taught in schools. Learning from the past is important, both for learning what worked and learning what did not.

Well, we can't talk about the final boss without discussing its final moments. The player has brought the boss' health down to zero but instead of a dramatic explosion and credits, the player is told that they'll be defeated here. But Cyrus hears something...Red gets healed up (you're welcome), and enters the next room to find several members of the Outsiders all attacking Cyrus. The very people Red spent so much of the game fighting has come in to help save the day! They all recognize the real threat here, and work together to defeat Cyrus and the Death Machine. Mechanically, there isn't much difference between this and the rest of the boss battle. The Death Machine doesn't get any new attacks or techniques. If anything, it's been simplified since that yellow energy ball is no longer present. Though the player will be doing the bulk of the damage here, you will notice that the Outsiders projectiles do in fact damage Cyrus. It's theoretically possible to let the Outsiders do all the work here and let them defeat Cyrus, but that would certainly take a while. Additionally, the basic robot enemies you've defeated hundreds, if not thousands, of times before occasionally come walking in from the left or right to provide healing items to the player. With this, I suspect very few players will actually die here, but I suppose it's not completely impossible. Obviously I wanted this to be a cathartic moment for the player. For all intents and purposes, you've defeated the boss battle and won the game. Now, enjoy this bit of interactive storytelling where Red works with what he thought was his enemies, now turned into key allies. Keep firing at the Death Machine, and eventually you'll be treated to that nice, big explosion and seeing the Death Machine completely shatter. You get an epilogue showing what happened after the battle, and then...credits. Congratulations, you have finished War Ender.

And with this, we not only finish this blog series, but we indeed finish 2022 as a whole. It's certainly been a busy year in regards to game development, and next year will likely be even busier. I suppose, if I'm struggling to come up with something to write, there is the option of covering War Ender's bonus levels, as well as the extra levels released after the game's initial launch. But we'll think of those as bonus blog entries, the kind of thing that will pop up if I'm feeling like dipping into the War Ender well again. For the foreseeable future, we should really bring our attention back on The Future Project. To kick off 2023, I will have a new progress report for that game to talk about what all has been completed over the last few months. I think you'll be pleased with report overall. I know I'm looking forward to it!

Until next time!

-Lance T.