You dodge, land, turn back towards the boss. So far, so familiar. Now take away the floor you were about to land on. That is the sort of complication that caught our eye in the new Saros development report.
The Architect fight takes place on a tower that comes apart during the encounter. Using the grapple hook is part of surviving it. A safe route through an attack therefore involves more than recognising the wind-up. You also need to know where you are going.
Who built the encounters?
Housemarque and Nixxes collaborated on the bosses. Housemarque supplied the creative direction and combat identity; Nixxes handled work including animation, environments and implementing attacks. The teams developed prototypes into playable encounters, then kept testing and refining them.
Each boss was designed around three phases. A typical fight lasts around three to eight minutes, according to the report, while Zenith uses a shorter arcade format. The developers also explain what they wanted players to take away from losing: an understanding of the mistake and a reason to have another go.
That seems a fair bargain. You can ask a player to repeat a difficult fight if the last attempt taught them something. It is a lot harder to justify another attempt when all they remember is a bright screen and a sudden death.
Back for a rematch
Saros: Zenith's Overlord Rush revisits the bosses in a faster format with leaderboard competition. The October 23 article looks back at how the encounters were made; it does not announce a new game launch.
We have not played the mode for this report. Before chasing a leaderboard time, though, we would want to spend a run paying attention to the arena. Where can you retreat? Which part disappears next? It is easy to stare at a boss's health bar and miss the much more immediate problem under your feet.