Boss Blueprint

A two-phase boss encounter — its transition trigger, its narrative justification, and the new attack phase two introduces

Due: 22 March 2027 · Weight: 25%

The brief

Design a two-phase boss: the trigger, the narrative justification, and the attack phase two introduces.

Build on the boss you started in Week 2 and workshopped in Week 5. A transition earns its narrative justification before it earns its mechanical one — this brief is marked on whether that justification is specific to your boss, not a generic “the boss gets angrier at half health.”

What you submit

A one-to-two page blueprint: the trigger condition, one sentence justifying it in-world, a description of phase two’s new attack and its telegraph, and one arena or staging change that signals the transition has happened. Sketches are welcome but not required — the writing has to carry the argument on its own.

Alongside the blueprint, a 150-word reflection: the moment during drafting or workshopping where you weren’t sure the telegraph was actually learnable, and what you changed once you noticed. The blueprint shows what you landed on; the reflection is the only place that shows you noticed the problem before a playtester had to tell you.

Where this goes next

The blueprint’s boss and its transition logic are fair material for the Final Project’s opening level — reusing it there is expected, not penalised.

The spec

The brief poses the problem and leaves room for a response. The spec is the fixed part: what a marker checks. Some lines can be checked mechanically; the rest call for judgement.

names a phase-transition trigger and states, in one sentence, why this specific boss would change that way
phase two's new attack has a stated, learnable telegraph, not just a faster or harder version of a phase-one attack
describes one staging change to the arena that signals the transition alongside the rule change

Reflection

Name the moment while drafting or workshopping this blueprint where you were not sure the phase-two telegraph was actually learnable, and what you changed about it once you noticed. (150 words.)

How it is marked

Criterion	Weight
Fairness of the new attack	50%
Narrative justification of the transition	50%

Fairness of the new attack — what each tier looks like
Tier	Descriptor
Full-health clear	The telegraph is readable on a first encounter — a player who has never seen this boss can react to the wind-up in time, no prior knowledge required.
Clean kill	The telegraph is readable, but only for a player already watching for the specific tell named; the wind-up needs one more clarifying beat before a first-timer catches it.
Died once, adapted	A telegraph is named, but it reads as a reskin of a phase-one attack — same tell, faster or harder — rather than a distinct, learnable pattern.
You died	No learnable telegraph is described, or the "new attack" is a phase-one attack with a bigger number attached to it.

Narrative justification of the transition — what each tier looks like
Tier	Descriptor
Full-health clear	The justification is specific to this boss's fiction and could not be copy-pasted onto a different boss without rewriting it.
Clean kill	The justification is specific, but stated rather than staged — it would land harder with one concrete arena or animation detail carrying it, not just the sentence explaining it.
Died once, adapted	The justification is present but generic — a variant of "the boss gets angrier at half health" that would fit almost any boss in the brief.
You died	No justification is given, or it contradicts something already established about the boss.