In a recent Dungeon Regular episode, the Kappa of Pachee Bridge, I drew a connection between a particular monster in that module, and the boss battles in Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and The Legend of Zelda: Not The Most Recent Two. It reminds me of a 16 HP Dragon, in some senses, but leaning more into making monsters puzzle challenges rather than attrition or resource challenges.

In certain Nintendo games (and yes, other games, obviously), we have boss monsters with big, obvious traits that are obviously unique and obviously tie into a recently-learnt skill or environmental feature. Making monsters dangerous and nigh-unkillable without recognising and solving the puzzle, is what makes these boss battles unique and memorable.

There’s a simple recipe for developing Red Button Monster like this:

1. Take The Cake: Take an iconic monster with a number of iconic features.
2. Add the Toppings: At least one topping, each a twist or addition to the original iconic monster or features.
3. Add the Garnish: At least one signal for each twist you’ve added.
4. Provide Spoons: At least one clear method to take advantage of each twist.
5. Eat: Let the players figure it out.

I don’t know why I chose a dessert metaphor, it’s probably reflective of my state of mind today. Ok, here are some complex examples.

The Kappa

1. A shark-toothed turtle-spirit with a pool of water in its head.
2. Intangible and immune to non-magical weapons. Feeds on flesh.
3. Its eyes glow when it is about to pounce and take a bite out of you, healing itself. Its water-bowl glows when it controls water to drag you to drowning.
4. You can trick it into emptying its head of water (by bowing to you, for example) in order to remove its intangibility and immunity to non-magical weapons.

Witch-owl Cebreus

1. A giant owl, with sharp talons, gusting wings, and big eyes.
2. It wears a witch’s hat, has skeletal wings, shoots rays out of its eyes.
3. When the hat glows, either the wings sprout ectoplasmic wings allowing it to fly and divebomb, or the eyes charge up allowing it to shoot rays out of its eyes.
4. You can remove the hat to take away its flying or eye rays; you can break its wings to take away its flying; you can attack its eyes to prevent the eye rays from working.

Spinning-top Golem

1. A golem; it is immune to normal weapons and it is extremely strong.
2. It has spinning top for legs, a single red eye on its brass head and six arms.
3. The spinning top means that each turn its two attacks are randomised 1. Fire gout; 2. Spinning blade; 3. Lance; 4. Chain lightning; 5. Shield; 6 Recharge.
4. Removing a limb will remove an attack. Damaging the eye will disable it from attacking for 1 round.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on red button monsters.

Addit: More recently, Joseph wrote this, which is an alternate but interesting and slightly easier approach!

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