Ash Makes Games
Final Boss
Final Boss is a 3D turn-based RPG where you play as Bosse, a lonely knight, who becomes the unlikely guardian of the last baby dragon being hunted down to extinction.
The project recently passed its vertical slice and remains in active development, with release planned for early May.
Concept Overview
Core Loop
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Role
Combat designer with a focus on skills and balancing.
Team Size
Total team size of 41 with 4 designers.
Timeline
June 2026 - May 2027 (In Development)
Tools
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Genre
Turn Based Fantasy Role-Playing Game
My Work
I joined Final Boss as an additional combat designer after the team had already established the foundation of its combat system. Rather than designing the entire system from scratch, my first responsibility was understanding how its existing parts worked together, including stances, timing-ring attacks, parries, posture breaks, enemy classes, Dragon abilities, and three-wave encounters.
From there, I helped revise and expand the system by designing abilities for Bosse and the adventurer classes, establishing clearer identities for Calm, Wrath, and Focus, and building counterplay between them. I created damage ranges, scaling behaviors, drawbacks, interruptions, buffs, and prepared attacks, then tested those ideas inside our P5 combat prototype.
My work also includes evaluating how new abilities interact with posture, parries, enemy type compositions, and the pacing of longer battles. I collaborate with our other combat designer and engineering team to translate these ideas into tunable systems, while communicating ability requirements to UI, VFX, animation, narrative, and cinematics.
Because these mechanics were already connected, I couldn't approach my work as if I were creating an isolated set of attacks. A change to one ability could affect posture generation, parry opportunities, enemy turn order, or the usefulness of another stance.
My first stage of development was to examine our current combat sequences and see how to shake things up with skills that weren't yet developed at this point. I familiarized myself with the combat documentation, played through the prototype, reviewed the available tuning values, and traced how the player’s decisions traveled through the rest of the system in our previous recorded playtests.
When I joined the combat team, the game already had a detailed foundation. Combat consisted of three waves of adventurers, with players selecting a stance and action during Bosse’s turn before defending against each surviving enemy.
The existing system included:
Joining an Existing Combat System
The Process
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Timing-ring attacks and parries
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Enemy HP and posture bars
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Posture breaks that temporarily stun enemies
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Elemental strengths and weaknesses
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Dragon abilities fueled through combat
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Three-wave battles with increasingly larger enemy groups
Revising the Stance System
This relationship gave me a foundation for designing abilities on both enemy and player lines. Each stance plays with the turn economy in a different way and has its own individualized use case, ensuring that players aren't too reliant on one in a singular battle.
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Calm interrupts Focus
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Focus outlasts Wrath
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Wrath overwhelms Calm
One of my primary goals was to give each stance a distinct playstyle instead of treating them as simple elemental advantages.
We developed a counter relationship in which:
Calm provides consistent, reliable output. Its abilities can interrupt prepared Focus attacks, remove buffs, and interfere with enemy setups.
Calm doesn't depend on large bursts or extended scaling, making it useful when the player needs stability. However, that reliability leaves it vulnerable to the immediate pressure created by Wrath and it lacks the fully needed power behind it.
Calm
Wrath delivers its strongest effects immediately but creates consequences afterward. Its abilities may reduce Bosse’s defense, spend health, or become weaker with repeated use.
The goal was to make Wrath feel powerful without making it the correct answer every turn. Players must recognize the right moment to strike and decide whether its immediate output is worth the vulnerability it creates.
Wrath
Focus begins with lower immediate output but becomes stronger through preparation, battle length, enemy count, or successful parries.
Its abilities reward players for reading the encounter and planning ahead. However, because Focus depends on setup, Calm can interrupt its prepared effects before they reach their full payoff and sometimes players will find it's better to do sufficient damage now when its needed than a larger number later when it may be too late.
Focus
Designing Bosse’s Abilities
I designed Bosse’s abilities to express each stance’s identity while giving players options on how to approach the moves laid out by adventurer's
Composed Counter deals reliable damage and interrupts an enemy preparing a Focus move, placing that move on cooldown.
Mediating Mind deals lower damage but removes active buffs, damage stacks, or prepared effects. It gains additional damage when it successfully removes something.
These abilities allow Calm to control the battlefield without relying on burst damage.
Ruinous Brawl deals heavy immediate damage but lowers Bosse’s defense until the following turn.
Rampant Reign begins as an extremely powerful attack at the cost of Bosse’s health. Each repeated use becomes weaker and demands a greater health sacrifice.
These abilities create the aggressive but self-destructive rhythm I wanted Wrath to embody.
Wrath Abilities
Evened Odds increases Bosse’s damage based on the number of enemies and the length of the battle.
End’s Call requires one turn of preparation before dealing increased damage, with an additional payoff against vulnerable enemies.
These abilities make Focus most effective when the player understands the encounter’s trajectory and prepares for the right future turn.
Focus Abilities
Calm Abilities
I also developed prospective abilities for the Mage, Cleric, Ranger, and Knight. Each class can express Calm, Wrath, or Focus differently while remaining readable through its larger combat role.
Calm attacks provide reliable pressure or support. Wrath attacks begin with high output but weaken with repeated use. Focus attacks stack damage, prepare stronger future turns, or create effects that players must interrupt before they become overwhelming.
The goal is for enemy groups to create memorable combat situations through how their abilities interact, not only through having more health or dealing more damage. If we are playing as the "big boss" and the adventurers represent the "average rpg player party", than enemies should behave like they have an actual strategy in mind to take you down and act on the best way to do it
Designing the Adventurers
Integrating Posture Into Skills
This process helped connect the new stance abilities back to the foundation of the existing combat system.
During my early prototype passes, I realized that posture was being overlooked in several of our proposed abilities. This was important because posture is one of the combat system’s main paths toward controlling enemies.
Damaging an enemy builds posture, and breaking their posture stuns them. Because stun duration increases as an enemy’s health decreases, damage and posture are connected: weakening an enemy makes them easier to break, while a well-timed break can prevent their next action.
I began revising the abilities so they would meaningfully contribute to this loop rather than existing as a separate layer of damage numbers. This meant considering:
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How much posture each ability generates
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How posture affects the ability’s availability or payoff
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What is the relationship between each individual skill and parrying
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How quickly enemies can be stunned across different health ranges
Parrying is one of Bosse’s most dependable defensive and offensive tools. A successful parry prevents damage and builds posture on the attacker, while a Perfect Parry also deals counter-damage.
As we iterate, I am evaluating how each stance supports the parry system without replacing its purpose. Focus can reward consistent parries, but Calm should still offer meaningful interruption, and Wrath should provide a faster option for players willing to accept more risk.
The goal is for stance selection and timing skill to support one another rather than compete for the same design space.
Balancing Parries and Abilities
Final Boss recently passed its vertical slice, proving that the game’s central experience can work as a complete playable sequence. Combat is still being implemented, tested, and revised as we move toward our planned early-May release.
My next steps include continuing to balance the stance abilities, testing posture and parry interactions, evaluating which stances players prefer, and refining enemy type combinations across the full game.
Because the project remains in development, the current abilities and values are not final. The purpose of this process is to keep testing whether each mechanic creates the intended decision.
Current Development
Takeaways
Being part of an already existing combat system has helped me realize that iteration begins with comprehension. I first need to understand why these systems were made, what decisions they are supposed to make, and how changing one value affects the entire fight. I'm not here to replace the system that existed before I became part of the team. Instead, I'm meant to provide clarity to the existing system, better counter-play options, and abilities that give meaning to its mechanics.
This process has given me experience in working within an existing design, identifying where the goals are failing to connect with the players, prototyping new solutions, and working with the original creators of the game.
