Two Nightingale boss arenas for Sylvan's Cradle and Gloriana's Tears.

Role: Worked with the creature team to design boss arenas that complimented their combat mechanics.

Main Tasks: Paper designs, LDDs, greybox blockouts, functional prototypes, testing/feedback cycles, and additional updates after the art, VFX & audio passes

Azazel the Penitent:

• Azazel was turned into a large bear and locked within Sylvan’s Cradle Site of Power for many years.
• He has a close range claw attack, and a longer range formation of bramble walls that the player must break to get through. At set health percentages, Azazel will choose a grove of corrupted trees to attach and heal until the player destroys the corruption covering that grove.
• The arena was designed to focus more on close combat over ranged, and create eerie spaces that are wide enough for the giant bear to traverse, but tight enough that Azazel’s attacks and occasional traps can surprise the player in the dense fog..
• As grapple hooks were introduced, some parts of the ceiling were dropped to provide players with locations to grapple.

Yex the Imprisoned:

• Yex is a Carnute that only recently escaped the chains that held it captive.
• It charges at the player and can destroy any buildings in its path. With every phase change, Yex becomes briefly invulnerable and summons two creatures from the forest biome, followed by swamp and desert biomes.
• The initial plan for the arena was to switch out the vegetation, ground and tilesets to match the phase changes. I also desired to add massive chains players could use for traversal and escape, which were either low enough that Yex would be able to knock players off, or would damage the player by heating up at regular intervals
• Yex needs a lot of space to run, and could sometimes get caught on shorter obstacles it could not destroy. The work needed to implement the biome changes and proper chain traversal was sadly out of scope for the release, so the arena was simplified while still conveying the original intentions.
• Instead of changing biomes, there were parts of the arena that represented each one and spawned the biome’s creatures. I had also replaced most obstacles that Yex could get stuck on with destructible buildings and a bridge.