Hello you lovely toad person, my name is ceave and welcome back.
Captain Toad Treasure Tracker is a really interesting game.
It's basically a mario game with a twist.
While mario games heavily rely on mario's impressive jumping skills, treasure tracker
needs to use other mechanics to create challenging and interesting gameplay, because toad's backpack
is so heavy that he isn't able to jump.
While Mario is able to jump to most places, even the smallest wall can be a challenging
puzzle to overcome for toad.
While mario can just defeat most enemies by jumping on top of them, toad needs to go for
a wittier approach.
And while Mario is able to ground pound most bosses into the floor toad has to, well how
does toad defeat a boss?
Captain Toad is a game about walking, moving the camera, avoiding combat and interacting
with things.
It's a game about limitations.
But how do you create an epic boss battle in a game that has no fighting, no jumping,
and in general not many mechanics other than walking?
There is a boss fight in the game which recurs three times, Draggadon.
And these three boss fights are a blast to play.
Treasure tracker creates an epic boss fight with almost no mechanics, but how are they
able to pull this off, which tricks do they use to create tension and danger without any
additional mechanics and is there something to learn for creating boss fights in mario
maker?
Well you're ready?
Let's find out!
(INTRO)
The boss fight I want to talk through in detail is the last Draggadon encounter in chapter
three.
We'll first take a look at the fight and then try to deconstruct how it's done.
The fight starts with the fire-snake blasting out of the lava.
Now toad has to react quickly as the dragon starts to shoot fireballs towards him immediately.
In the previous encounters toad was able to dodge the danger by hiding behind walls.
Here no natural safe spot is available for him, but luckily draggadon left these blocks
in the arena which toad can rise and lower by tapping them.
So the in the first part of the fight our mushroom has to make clever use of these blocks
in order to survive.
This door takes toad to a higher area in the stage and a self building platform is reintroduced
here.
Now toad has to go through this pipe and is shot to the other side of the arena, in an
epic way.
Here he has to solve a mini-puzzle using the moving blocks from before.
This time there are doors inside the blocks and our backpacker has to align them in such
a way that he doesn't fall into the lava.
Meanwhile the lava started to rise and toad has to be quick because mushrooms can't
exist in fire.
Luckily another pipe shoots him to a higher place once again.
Here another puzzle awaits toad, which is solved by moving the camera and then the last
part of the fight starts.
Suddenly fireballs are dropping from the ceiling and toad has to make his way on another self
building platform while dodging fireballs from above and shot by the dragon.
At the end of this platform the ladder awaits which takes him to the goal-star.
Or so he thought but as it turns out the fight has damaged the pillar on which the star awaits
toad, and this happens.
Hooray!
Toad made it through the fight, collected the star and knocked the dragon out!
So the boss is a chasing sequence.
Toad basically needs to make his way through the stage until he reaches the star at the
top of the vulcano.
There are three main dangers to his health which are introduced during the fight in three
stages.
The first third of the boss introduces Draggadon himself who constantly shoots fireballs towards
our brave mushroom.
The moment toad goes through this door the second threat kicks in.
Now toad not only has to dodge the magma balls, but the lava tide starts to rise as well and
he has to be faster than the lava or he'll take a lethal lava bath.
This basically adds a timer for toad to beat the stage.
The third major threat are the fireballs which start to drop from the ceiling in the last
third of the fight.
Toad now has to be faster than the lava, avoiding Draggadons fireballs and dodging the fire
from above.
So the fight escalates the further our mushroom progresses.
At first he is relatively safe, and allowed to understand the basic mechanics of this
boss fight until everything starts to escalate and leads to one final epic chase up this
ladder while the whole stage starts to collapse and toad makes it just in time.
So this are the basic threats the stage itself represents.
But there is obviously more to the stage.
Every element used in this boss battle is already established.
These shifting blocks have appeared in a couple of stages before, the green platforms have
been used before as well and it's our third encounter with Draggadon, so we already know
his behaviour as well.
Treasure tracker introduces something new in almost every level, but here they don't,
only already known mechanics are used.
This totally makes sense as this stage is constructed to be a rapidly escalating chase
through a volcano and there isn't really time to teach you new mechanics.
But not only are the elements already known to toad, the way in which they are used is
as well.
The boss fight in this stage is structured in the same way most levels in this game are.
There are the classic rotate the camera secrets with which this game is filled.
There are coins to collect and things to pluck out of the ground, there are additional challenges
for better players, there are the three hidden diamonds, there is the typical enemy dodging
which most threats in treasure tracker are built around and the stage even ends by collecting
a star like all non boss levels do as well.
Let's ignore the additional boss threats for a moment, because if we do, the gameplay
of this boss fight is almost similar to a lot of other toad stages.
Let's take stage 2-16 for comparison.
In this stage our mushroom has to solve small tap-puzzles with bullet blasters on top of
moving blocks.
He has to dodge the blasters, and the additional option to pluck stuff out of the ground or
to collect the three diamonds.
If we take a look at the actions toad performs in both stages we can see that they aren't
that different at all.
In fact the whole gameplay during the boss stage is structured in a similar way as stages
were before.
Just as a quick clarification I'm not trying to say that every captain toad stage is build
around exactly these gameplay actions.
Sometimes the stages are a single huge puzzle, sometimes you have to cleverly navigate clones,
sometimes they are all about exploring and sometimes you shoot carrots out of a minecart.
The point I'm trying to make is that the Bossfight is structured in a similar way compared
to already established stages.
But additionally to the standard gameplay the boss threats are added on top of it.
And this is where things become really interesting.
Let's talk about these additional threats in detail because they aren't as dangerous
as they may appear at first glance.
First let's take a look at the fireballs Draggadon shoots towards the player.
They are a real threat but they always appear on set moments and are heavily scripted.
There are only a few places in the level where they can actually hit you, but draggadon shoots
fire even if you are in a safe place.
If you just run from shelter to shelter they will never hit you.
If you get hit by them it's probably because you left your shelter too early or were too
greedy.
And there is a reason to be greedy or impatient in this stage.
The lava which tries to burn you.
Which leads us to our next threat: the rising lava.
There is a big design problem with the rising lava in combination with the fireballs.
Whenever draggadon spits, there is a timing window to reach the next area.
If you were to slow you have to wait for him to spit fire again until you are able to reach
the next part of the stage or you take a hit for sure.
But once the lava tide is rising this leads to a problem.
If a player missed a shot-cycle from the boss he has to wait, but while he waits the lava
can kill him.
In extreme cases this could lead to the decision whether toad wants to die by a shot from the
boss or by taking a lava bath (I'd take the lava-bath) but our mushroom is already
dead but still walking.
So how did the designers solve this problem?
Well, the rising lava is fake.
It can't hit you.
There are set triggers in the stage when the lava tide starts to rise, and then it rises
to a certain point and stops.
The big waves which go through the lava help to hide that it's actually not moving anymore
and if a player plays through the stage in a normal speed he probably won't notice
it because the triggers are set in really clever positions.
But we can wait here for hours and the lava wave won't hit us.
Period.
The concept behind this is called perceived danger, and a lot of games use something like
this.
The lava adds nothing gameplay-wise to the stage in theory, it could just as well not
be there and the boss fight would be exactly the same mechanically wise (vielleicht eher:
concerning the difficulty?).
But it changes the way toad and the player experience the stage.
It gives you a feeling of time pressure while there is none, it gives you the feeling you
could die if you missed a shot cycle and adds pressure, while it doesn't matter at all.
And it gives you the feeling of an escalating boss fight you barely survived while the level
is basically a standard stage, not a boss fight.
And then there is the third escalation stage in the fight, these fireballs which toad has
to dodge, and as you may have already guessed by now, they are mainly fake as well.
There are six fixed positions where they drop down.
Five of them are absolutely no danger to our adventurous mushroom and one always drops
in this position.
There could be no floor at this point and it would be the same stage.
But the fireballs add another piece of fake escalation to the boss fight, and make the
final chasing sequence up this staircase feel really epic.
And then there is one last small trick the game pulls to make this stage feel like a
real bossfight.
The final pillar breaks in a cutscene and drops on top of the boss knocking him out.
This gives toad the feeling that he defeated the boss.
That he on his own managed to beat this huge fire snake, while in fact he played a standard
stage which was spiced up with fake dangers and the platform on which the star waits collapsed
in a cutscene.
But it's really important that the platform knocks the boss out, because this defeats
the boss, instead of just escaping him.
It gives you the feeling of accomplishment and changes the feeling of the level from
a standard stage to feel like a heroic boss fight you just won.
I think good boss fights need to stay true to the core gameplay.
Captain toad treasure tracker is no game about fighting, it's a game about solving small
puzzles, dodging things, turning the camera and interacting with stuff.
And this boss fight stays true to this gameplay and doesn't try to transform the game into
something it is not, and I think that's the reason why this fight feels really great
and the tricks the designers added make it feel even more dangerous and epic.
Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed this little video, if you enjoyed it don't forget
to leave me a thumbs up and maybe you feel especially draggadon today and want to hit
the subscribe button as well.
The next video might take a little bit longer as usual, but I hope you have a wonderful
day and to see you soon, goodbye.
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