Boss Design Studio: Gruz Mother and Vengefly King

Image splicing by yours truly.

Hello, everyone! Welcome back to Boss Design Studio, my roughly fortnightly essay series wherein I overanalyze videogame bosses and tell you what I think about them.

We have a double feature for this post, because I want to take a look at both of these bosses but neither of them are really complex or important enough to get their own essays. So without further ado, I present Hollow Knight's Gruz Mother and Vengefly King. Gruz Mother is the one on the right, Vengefly King is the one on the left.

If I had to briefly summarize these bossfights, I'd say "Herbivore" and "Carnivore".

They're actually very similar. You have to start both fights: the Gruz Mother is asleep, and the Vengefly King is hanging out on the ceiling chewing on an NPC. They both have very simple movesets, they're both nonsentient animals, and they both have no lore importance.

Gruz Mother fights like an herbivore. Mostly, she tries to faceplant into you, and/or repeatedly slams into the ceiling and the floor while slowly traversing the boss arena. She's large and not very fast, except when she's faceplanting into you. Her attack patterns are quite simple, and they have a vibe of "I shall now tackle you until you stop trying to eat me."

Meanwhile, Vengefly King fights like a carnivore. He mostly hovers out of reach of your attacks, except when he swoops down and tries to bite you. Also he'll occasionally freeze in place and scream for a moment, which summons normal Vengeflies (they're minor, common enemies that aren't much of a threat) to attack you. His attack pattern is also quite simple, even if it's also annoying to deal with as a newer player; the only real window to attack him is when he's swooping at you, which requires jumping over him and attacking him from above, and that can be difficult to time right. Especially for new players, as I know from experience.

Both Gruz Mother and Vengefly King are boss versions of common, decidedly non-difficult enemies that, by this point in the game, you've seen many of. Normal Gruzzers are small flies that just fly around aimlessly bumping into things, and normal Vengeflies are slightly more threatening in that they do actually chase you (albeit very slowly). 

Neither of them has any lore significance in their bossfights; Gruz Mother is blocking a gate to an abandoned village, and Vengefly King will eventually kill the NPC he's chewing on if you put off fighting him for long enough. But unlike almost every other boss in the game, there's not really any backstory as to why they're doing those things. They're just kind of there to provide a challenge to the player. And while that's entirely fine, it also does leave both of them feeling kind of lacking compared to the other bossfights in the game.

Their arenas, similar to False Knight's, are kind of drab. Gruz Mother's arena is... some sort of abandoned building she's taken up residence in; it has chairs, windows, wallpaper, and a sort of fountain thing. Vengefly King's arena is just a cave.

Oddly pointy fountain thing, I choose you!

Behold, stalactites. This one's the Vengefly King arena.

(Actually, that four-points motif on the fountain in Gruz Mother's arena is the symbol of Hallownest's |dead monarch|, the Pale King. But you don't learn about him until much later in the game, so it's not something you'd notice on your first run. Or necessarily the second, third, etc; I only noticed it now when I was writing this essay.)

And now the boss music. Gruz Mother uses "Decisive Battle," the generic bossfight theme also used by a few other minor bosses. It's nice action-y music, and it does give off the feeling of fighting a difficult battle, though its status as a generic fight theme means it can't really be personalized to any of the bosses that use it. Vengefly King uses a track the wiki calls "Greenpath (Action)", which is the music that plays any time you're having a fight in Greenpath. (Greenpath is the area in which Vengefly King is located.)

Gruz Mother and Vengefly King are both rather generic bosses. They're similar, but with a few key differences, and their respective "feels" (herbivore and carnivore, respectively) are done well.

This has been Boss Design Studio. Tune in next time to hear Hornet yell "Shaw!" right before stabbing you.