Hi everyone and welcome to the first article covering player-created content in games! The format for these is still not set in stone, so the next one may have some significant changes to it, but for now the plan is to keep these primarily video-focused with a very brief synopsis of each creation. Today I’ll be looking at three rather different bosses made by the community in Fraxy so let’s get started!
Atomic Vault SP3Ct3R by Aquamancia
Download Page: http://fraxyhq.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1532
Fight Music: Galvanized Boss by Standby and WhoAmI? of OCRemix – http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00723
This boss is a bit simplistic compared to the other two, but it may be my favorite of the three. Though it’s immobile, its constant barrage of lasers and homing missiles makes it difficult to hit its well-shielded core. I particularly like the focus on homing attacks as most of them are not actually all that hard to dodge, but they add a real sense of excitement to the fight and they look cool too. The only issue I had here was with the fact that there aren’t multiple phases to this fight and the attack cycle is short enough that you’ll probably see it a few times, unless you have perfect aim, so it does drag on a bit near the end.
Astronomical Symbol by VortexReaper
Download Page: https://www.youtube.com/user/vortexreaper/videos
Fight Music: L.V.N. from the free GigaDeep Soundtrack – http://www.peposoft.com/
This boss is definitely more more of a bullet hell fight than Atomic Vault SP3CT3R. These types of fights in Fraxy often look cool while being poorly balanced, but this one remembers to take into account the actual size of the player’s ship and always leaves a gap or two to weave through. There are three phases to this fight, but the general focus is on keeping the player locked down with fast-moving waves of small projectiles while larger, slower projectiles are periodically launched. This is probably the flashiest boss of the lot with fancy teleportations in its second phase and a background change for its final attack. Astronomical Symbol is an all-around solid fight.
Armageddon Core by Ex-Rumia
Download Page: http://fraxyhq.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=124&t=1528
I wanted to include at least one Try boss in this set and there is certainly a lot to like here, but this is also definitely the most flawed of the fights. As a Try fight the background, music, and resolution are all locked in and your ship is set to have standard bullets as well as an invulnerability shield and a bullet-destroying blast. Both the boss and the stage itself look great and fit well together too. Attacks are plentiful and varied with lasers, homing shots, and even a charge across the screen; which attacks are used actually change when you destroy one or both of the boss’s ‘arms’ too! Unfortunately, as cool as this all sounds, there are some major balance issues here. To start with, the arms frequently move to outside of your attack range and there is no real incentive to go after them in the first place – the main core is painfully easy to defeat even without taking into account your two defensive abilities and the only reason I bothered to go after the arms at all in the video was to avoid the alternatives of just not attacking at all or of killing the boss before it got to even go through a full attack cycle. On top of this, destroying an arm results in the boss using what is by far its strongest, and most annoying, attack, a laser ability which jumps to the player periodically to reduce the play area, making it even harder to hit the remaining arm than it already would be and making the main core completely shielded in the process. It’s a neat fight, but the difficulty just never quite hits the right mark.