Hero Shot

The Loose End.

Very clear video game boss weak spot.

Exoder's enemy slowly pushes its way up the screen, hitting it pushes it back down.

So you get to fight back against the thing you've been running from through the whole game. Yay!

Exoder is de-hooded and ready to brawl! After spending the entire game with nothing more than a deflector you can now enjoy the catharsis of being able to outright attack with a projectile.

The fight with Ygsmyre is essentialy a shmup boss, you fire at his newly revealed cyber eye to damage him.

Only when he is at the bottom of the screen though, since you can only shoot down.

Stay out of the target to stop the homing attack from zeroing in.

Both boss and player have very high health pools in this fight. Destroying enough small bullets will eventually spawn a health item which replenishes you fully.

So, beating this boss ends the game right? Not quite, there is still one loose end left.

So what happens when you finally beat the final boss...

Uh oh...

Like a Phoenix!

So this sets things up for the final battle.

Back to the beginning, this phase of the fight starts with Ygsmyre forming an instant death barrier on the sides of the screen, ready to deliver punishment onto the cornered Exoder.

You remain unarmed so all you can do is dodge the dead king's mortar shots...

...and eye lazers...

...and green...orb, hand blast... thingys.

Survive the attacks long enough and you will stumble upon your lost orb and staff, reclaiming your ability to reflect back Ygsmyre's main attack and damage him.

Upon reducing his health to 0, the third and final act of this final confrontation will begin...

The end of the game is broken up into three acts.

Act one is a chase, mirroring the rest of the game, the difference is that it is a chase downward.

Light at the end of the journey

Gosh Darn It!

This is probably the most horrific creature in the game; Ygsmyre, Keeper of the God Blood. Exoder and him have some history.

Quickly breaking these blocks while trying to outrun Ygsmyre is the big challenge here. If he catches up you're toast. You've also lost both staff and orb so you have no means of attack (or deflecting) but that won't mean much in this first act, outside of a few straggler enemies near the end of the chase. But wait! Certain blocks contain the minds of those who have fallen into the Adit, if you spot them and break the right blocks they will delay Ygsmyre's descent!

Alas, cornered.

All that progress, all that hard work, only to be smacked back down to the bottom.

Up next, Act two, Exoder strikes back!...sort of.

If you've played the demo or followed the Dev Log you know that one of the key gimmicks of the game is that you are constantly being chased through each level by this mass of noise.

It looked like this.

Well I've fixed it up a bit and made it reflect something closer to what I originally had in mind, it also has a thematic relationship with the 6th boss so the black and white effect carries that motif.

This is what it looks like now.

And what it looks like to be "eaten".

More Music

https://soundcloud.com/vincent-guff/exo ... erra-firma

https://soundcloud.com/vincent-guff/exoder-ost-atlas

Boss Seven

So, this is the final boss... before the final boss.

It calls back to the previous Bosses and mimics their attacks, with a few twists.

It's a tough fight and a bit of an endurance run, but fun fact, there's a way to skip the Boss entirely!

In level seven there are 9 glowing flies (Lumen flies) hidden around the stage, each one you collect will take off a peg of health from the boss before the fight even starts. What happens if you collect all nine? Welp.

Boss is donzo

Now, onto the crescendo.

Level Seven gifs with assets in place.

Metroid elevator

Level Seven, the final Level! Well, the final "proper" level. The final Boss is planned to be a pretty big extravaganza with multiple stages in different places which will effectively be its own level.

The first unique thing about level seven that you'll notice is that the FOV is much smaller, giving the level a more cramped, claustrophobic feel. Its a level filled with dead-ends, tunnels, bugs that grab onto you and stifle your jumping and secrets...secrets which will tie into the second final Boss at the end of the level.