Building Alliance - Mini Boss Thumbnail Feedback

I really liked the spider thumbnails I did inspired by Evie's work. This prompted me into beginning some research into underwater spiders in hopes I can somehow combine this idea with the leachate found in landfill. 

A spider that I found quite interesting for this, is the Diving Bell Spider (Wikipedia). I found out that they're mainly mid to dark brown in appearance but their hairs on the abdomen appear to give it a dark grey velvet appearance on it's bell. I plan to conduct more research into these spiders as well as do a small study on their anatomy to help me design the mini boss.

I wanted to create a robot with a hard exterior due to the harsh environment and it will also help with level progression. We plan to have a storm full of plastic, microplastics and leachate behind the Junkyard that stops the player from progressing into the next area without the correct gear. We plan to have the player kill the robot spider mini boss in order to harvest it's parts to then bring to the merchant. The merchant will then enable them to craft the correct gear which will allow them to traverse through the storm.

Here is the feedback I gathered from my thumbnails as well as some ideas for boss mechanics for the fight.

Following this feedback, I experimented more with the diving helmet idea as well as doing some more specific ideation on how the robot functions. For this, I focussed on creating a bulky body with thin legs to allow it to be durable and agile. I wanted the legs to look weaker compared the rest of the design as the boss fight will be focussed on taking out it's weapons by destroying the legs. I experimented with the spiders bell a little bit as I liked the idea of it using waste found in landfill. I experiment with the tank slightly and even thought about making it a light bulb instead of a plastic bottle however, the bottle provided a stronger shape and worked better thematically then the light bulb so I abandoned that idea quickly. The boss mechanics we thought of remind me of Mommy Long Legs (Poppy Playtime, 2021) and Sludge - Like (Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, 2023). I plan to use these as references when I focus on the mechanics more.

I plan to do a style study on diving bell spiders to more accurately capture the anatomy especially when it comes to how the legs connect to the body.

Reference List

Anon, n.d. Diving Bell Spider [online]. Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_bell_spider [Accessed 19 October 2024].

Mob Entertainment, 2021. Poppy Playtime [online]. PC. USA: Mob Entertainment. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1721470/Poppy_Playtime/ [Accessed 19 October 2024].

Nintendo, 2023. Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Cartridge]. Switch. Japan: Nintendo. [Accessed 19 October 2024].