Official Characters | Fan Characters | Fan Remixes
The many organisms, automatons, and other beings faced throughout the galaxies.
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Protagonists
Chippy/Chippette
Chippy
- Bottomless Magazines: Its main gun, being essential for defeating bosses, has unlimited ammunition.
- Critical Existence Failure: Justified by the use of Single-Use Shields as Hit Points.
- Cyclops: It has only one eye, which acts as its hitbox.
- Heroic Mime: This player character doesn't speak at all.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: It's this without any Shields.
- Player Character: What'dya expect?
- Use Item: Active powerups are not only triggered with the same control, but no explanation is given for how they are created and activated in-universe.
Chippette
A green version of the player character, controlled by a second player.- Color-Coded Multiplayer: Its body is green, to distinguish it as player two in co-op stages and the Ball Pit.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Downplayed. It has a more feminine design than the standard blue Player Character, and its sclera blinks a pink color.
The Oracle
The Oracle
Why is it so helpful?
A friendly organism that's eager to teach new players.- CAPS LOCK: Like the boss that follows it, its speech consists solely of capital letters.
- Cruelty Is the Only Option: Although it is friendly to you, it must be shot down immediately to complete the Neophyte stage quickly. Downplayed in that it will just float away if you take the time to complete the tutorial.
- Forced Tutorial: Downplayed. It will always show up before Neophyte can at the beginning of the latter's stage, but you can shoot it down to cut to the chase.
- He Knows About Timed Hits: Instructs you of the game's controls.
- Homing Projectile: It can launch a swiftly homing orb to defeat a player in co-op, so their partner can learn how to revive them.
- Launcher Move: It can send out a repelling burst if you get very close to it, in order to dissuade you from hitting pixels.
- Token Heroic Orc: It's the only being in its likeness trying to help you, serving as the game's tutorial.
Campaign Bosses
In general
Many or all bosses in the main menu provide examples of:
- Attack Its Weak Point: You must specifically uncover and shoot each unit's core to destroy it.
- Bond One-Liner: Certain speech lines can only appear once you lose.
- Boss Arena Recovery: Almost every part destroyed will drop at least one powerup to choose from. Some bosses even shoot out damage pickups and/or spawn powerup sets for free on occasion. In most stages, containers with powerups (usually a Shield) also spawn on occasion (though some of them are merely Time Bombs that invert this).
- Boss Banter: In the form of speech bubbles near the cores.
- Broken Armor Boss Battle: Some of the bosses' armors are very tough or even immune to conventional fire, serving to complicate your methods of attack.
- Bullet Hell: They attack by firing around innumerable bullets.
- Collision Damage: On contact, the pixels of all units not only deal damage to you, but also destroy turrets, drones, and Airburst projectiles.
- The Computer Shall Taunt You: Some speech lines that appear once you get hit or defeated are the bosses demoralizing their foe.
- Cores-and-Turrets Boss: The two categories overlap for most parts, with many of them shielding larger ones.
- Counter-Attack: Bombs and stronger cores spawn red bullets (and possibly more for the latter) that fly in your direction while they are taking damage.
- Cyber Cyclops: The function of each core being one eye enforces this on robotic bosses.
- Cyclops: Same goes for all other living units in the game.
- Deflector Shields: Protected parts have these around them, displayed should you try to shoot them.
- Excuse Plot: For the Crusade campaign, "everything must be exterminated", and in the Invasion campaign, "a powerful foe approaches".
- Flat Character: Not much is said about these characters.
- Flavor Text: A small description for each boss.
- Harmless Freezing: Several bosses can freeze you, but this can only harm you by making you hit a bullet or pixel.
- Lead the Target: Many guns, to varying degrees, slightly adjust their aim to the direction you are travelling.
- Meaningful Name: All Crusade and Invasion bosses (Xulgon to a much lesser extent) have names they have for a reason.
- Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: Any attacks that inflict heavy knockback or status ailments cannot directly damage you.
- Opponent Instruction: If you try to shoot a shielded core, the boss will tell you how many guns you must destroy beforehand.
- Sequential Boss: Most of the main bosses have multiple forms for you to fight, with each bigger and more powerful than the previous.
- Shielded Core Boss: Pixels connect parts and act as armor, while most guns double as shielding.
- Shows Damage: Of the color-change variety.
- Starfish Aliens: Most organic units are mollusc-like in shape, and they dwell in extraterrestrial environments that are often implied to be outer space.
- Stationary Boss: Severely downplayed. Many bosses very slowly amble about the center of the stage, but most don't move about enough to largely affect the fight.
- Subsystem Damage: Each individual part and pixel of your enemies.
Crusade Bosses
Neophyte
Neophyte
This creature is looking forward to a fair fight
A being similarly shaped to the Oracle before it, it cheerfully seeks a fun battle.- CAPS LOCK: Like the Oracle, its speech consists solely of capital letters.
- Cavalier Competitor: Unlike most other bosses, it treats the fight more like a game than a life-or-death struggle.
- Combat Compliment: If fought in Co-Op Multiplayer, it can compliment its opponents' teamwork should one of them revive the other.
- Cowardly Lion: It's noticably nervous, but it's still trying its best to defeat you.
- Homing Projectile: The boss's third form fires a rather large and slow-moving one.
- Meaningful Name: Its name means "novice" and has Greek and Latin roots, literally meaning "newly planted". This boss's tentacles branch off in a plantlike fashion in its second and third forms.
- Opponent Instruction: Provides further instruction on the basics of fighting for any players who need them.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Downplayed. The core's iris in its last and strongest form is red near the pupil.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: Downplayed; parts of the background are reddish in the boss's later forms, especially the final one.
- Warm-Up Boss: The first and easiest boss in the game, it provides a nice introduction to attacking bosses and protecting yourself from their attacks.
Kraken
Kraken
This undersea giant is just minding its business
A purple cephalopod that doesn't want to do much, but will fight anything that dangerously provokes it.- CAPS LOCK: To reflect its relatively primitive mind, its speech consists solely of capital letters.
- Cognizant Limbs: Its arms count as these.
- Combat Tentacles: Downplayed. Its arms can cause Collision Damage, get torn off, and shoot you, but the boss cannot intentionally strike you with them.
- Flunky Boss: Interestingly, the smaller enemies summoned by its third form are the only separate enemies in the base game that shield the core.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Downplayed. It won't attack (for a dozen seconds) unless you shoot it first.
- Giant Squid: The boss is a gigantic squid.
- Hulk Speak: Its speech lacks complex grammar, as it's a beast of the sea.
- I'll Kill You!: Can angrily say this, albeit without the first word.
- Launcher Move: It blows bubbles that inflict notable knockback should you touch them.
- Martial Pacifist: It's initially more focused on playing with its bubbles, and only when under legitimate attack is it vehement about killing you.
- Pun: "I sea you" and "Water you doing?" are possible introductory wordplay of its.
- Recoil Boost: Its position is noticably affected by the dual streams of bullets it can shoot from its core.
- Roaring Rapids: The boss's arena is aquatic, and while this doesn't slow anything down on its own, it sometimes pushes you, the boss's attacks, and your turrets in a fixed direction.
- Stationary Boss: Fully averted. Its earlier forms are vulnerable to the Repel item and can be moved around by the forces of it firing.
Guardian
Guardian
This mech is guarding something, but you're only interested in destroying it
A robot used to protect something; its speech reflects its simpleminded loyalty to its purpose.- Attack Drone: A cursed powerup brought by it can summon a projectile that alternates between moving towards you and firing a smaller projectile.
- Desperation Attack: The boss summons two stationary minions at the arena's lower corners once its second form finishes flipping over.
- Energy Weapon:
- The first form's lower guns start blocking the area the boss surrounds with laser beams shortly after the fight starts.
- Each main core also fires laser beams, with the second form's doing so near the boss's defeat.
- Flunky Boss: It can summon smaller robots that consistently fire at you.
- Glowing Mechanical Eyes: Each of its main cores has a glowing red eye.
- Heavily Armored Mook: The minions it can spawn are small, but their tough indigo armors shift to periodically span their whole exteriors.
- King Mook: Its second form in its last living moments looks similar to the two minions it may summon at once.
- Mecha-Mooks: Its minions count as these.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: Downplayed; the background alternated between red and its typical blue when the boss's second form is active.
- Roboteching: The large pellets it shoots start moving in a straight line in your direction some time after they are fired.
- Sentry Gun: Its minions are robotic turrets that fire at you in place.
- Single-Task Robot: Its sole purpose is to guard something valuable (although the protagonist has... simpler plans in mind).
- Stationary Boss: Averted once the second form loses all its guns and slowly flips over.
- Stationary Enemy: The small enemies it summons in its second form don't move at all.
- Turns Red: Once the boss starts to flip over, it fires rotating volleys of lasers, and then many quick-moving bullets.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Taking the cursed Slice item causes large vertical laser beams to spawn.
Execution
Execution
This cult will have its martyr with or without your help
A group that seeks to kill one of their own, but will fight whoever intrudes their domain.- Aura Vision: The boss believes it possesses this, possibly regarding Chippy's aura as a dark one.
- Cult: The fight takes place amongst one.
- Energy Weapon:
- The more uncommon minion variant can fire a toggling laser beam in one direction as one of its attack.
- Coincidentally, shooting the outside of the boss's chamber increases the power of two lasers that are being used to kill the boss.
- Flunky Boss: The biggest threat in its fight are the cultists that periodically spawn.
- Homing Projectile: Both the spiral projectiles fired by less common cultists, and damaging projectiles that appear when you take a cursed powerup with eight small cultists present.
- Interface Screw: Getting hit by a spiral-inscribed projectile will temporarily reverse your movement and firing direction.
- No Fair Cheating: If you break through or into the chamber in an attempt to shoot down the boss yourself, the laser gun closer to you will shoot bullets at you if you're too high up.
- Pacifist Run: Because lasers automatically kill the Execution boss (though really slowly without your help), you can get an achievement for beating the boss without firing a single shot.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: When the lasers reach the boss, the background turns a reddish color.
- Sequential Boss: Averted. There's just one form that you need to cut into with the lasers in the stage.
- Swirly Energy Thingy: The stage's signature Trick Bomb's explosion will release a whirlpool that moves enemies and the player around it.
- Turns Red: The boss, upon being hurt by the lasers, will start attacking you itself and will occasionally cause the smaller cultists to pause their attack patterns to furiously chase you.
- Unstoppable Rage: While the boss is being hit by the lasers, it can cause the cultists to pause their attack patterns to charge at you madly.
Overgrowth
Overgrowth
This expanding mass is an experiment gone wrong
A mass of plant matter that grows out of control, seeking to consume anything it comes across.- Aggressive Play Incentive: The scope of this boss's regeneration abilities makes it important to attack the boss faster than in previous stages.
- Alien Kudzu: It wishes to expand and grow, and its Gradual Regeneration somewhat demonstrates its capacity for such. Small plant-based cores also gain minds and voices of their own.
- The Assimilator: It tries to absorb whoever it comes across (namely you) into itself.
- Came Back Strong: Up to a certain limit, plant-made guns have more dangerous attacks every time they grow back.
- Cyborg: Despite being organic at its core, it has robotic guns and appendages that it uses to its aid.
- Destructible Projectiles: The boss can spawn large multiplying orbs that split into several tiny bullets when shot enough.
- Expository Pronoun: It refers to itself with we/us, because it consists of several obviously separate minds having been assimilated into one mass.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Has arguably the most unusual eye placement in the game, with plant-based guns each both consisting of an actual eye and appearing far on branches and vines. Though considering what this thing is...
- Gradual Regeneration: Its plant-based guns and pixels occasionally grow back.
- Grapple Move: It shoots and spawns tethers that can temporarily anchor your movement. It can also anchor two players to each other if they're close to one another.
- Green and Mean: A plant-colored mass that consumes all in its path.
- Healing Boss: Certain pixels of this boss can grow back.
- Homing Projectile:
- The large, expanding bullets that can multiply if you don't shoot them move very slowly towards you.
- The orb that fires more bullets at you slowly moves towards you.
- Certain projectiles that tether you also home in on you. While the ones from the second form's largest guns are easy to dodge, the ones from bursted time bombs cannot be outmaneuvered.
- Informed Ability:
- It's stated to be The Assimilator, but outright death is the worst it visibly inflicts on the Player Character.
- Downplayed where it's said to constantly expand, yet its foliage's Gradual Regeneration is capped at the full shape it's encountered in.
- Recursive Ammo: The boss can shoot a spinning homing orb that fires volleys of three bullets all around it.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Downplayed. The core of its second and stronger form is red on the inside of the pupil.
- Reviving Enemy: Even after being destroyed or severed, plant-made guns can grow back.
- Roboteching: Its second form can launch a bullet that lays tethers and smaller projectiles and repeatedly turns to you.
- Testing Range Mishap: This being is a scientific experiment gone awry.
- Villains Want Mercy: When nearing defeat, it can panickedly scream at you to stop.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: The Gradual Regeneration of its organic pixels (including some parts that prevent you from hurting the main core) pressures you to go on the offensive — even with relatively numerous and relentless attacks from the boss — making you confront the difficulty of keeping fights from dragging out.
Anomaly
Anomaly
This entity is a complete mystery, but you know it needs to be exterminated
A vaguely digital entity, about which virtually nothing is known.- Desperation Attack:
- Its alternating diamond tile and electrical ring attacks occur once its first form's core is vulnerable to attack.
- It fires short-lived laser beams all around it right after its second form's guns are all lost.
- Destructible Projectiles: Hitting the blue halves of certain bullets (derived from the ones fired by the red-eyed Quartet boss) destroy them without damaging you.
- Digital Abomination: It seems a lot like some sort of Living Program, and its very nature isn't something others have managed to comprehend.
- Energy Weapon: Its second form's main core can sweep a wide spread of laser beams around.
- Homing Projectile: Its co-op-exclusive Swap Teleportation orb homes in on a player.
- Matryoshka Object:
- At the start of its second form, it spawns a few projectiles that split four times in a pattern.
- Said second form can create chains of single-bullet-shooting bullets.
- Pictorial Speech-Bubble: Uniquely, this is how it tries to communicate to you.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: Downplayed. The stage's background alternates between warm and cool colors, but it doesn't regularly become red until the boss's second form is active.
- Shock and Awe: It can launch a ring of diamonds partially enclosed by electricity.
- The Spook: Even compared to the flat descriptions of the other bosses, practically any question about this being can only be answered with "no clue".
- Swap Teleportation: In co-op, the boss can shoot a bullet that forces its foes to switch places with each other.
- Turns Red: Once only its second form's core remains, it shoots short-lived lasers all around it and eventually swings huge thin diamonds up and down.
Phobia
Phobia
This beast hides in an asteroid belt and ambushes its victims
A huge spider that derives joy from killing and eating its prey.- All Webbed Up: It can flash a beam that tethers you to its core. In co-op, if a player is Webbed, their partner will be anchored to them as well.
- Artificial Stupidity: Its web beams are locked to its orientation, so if it fires a beam and then suddenly turns to you, the beam may miss by a huge angle.
- Asteroid Thicket: The fight takes place amongst a downplayed example, though it's more dangerous to you than it is to the boss.
- Ax-Crazy: It's overtly giddy about trying to kill and eat you.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The boss sends out spider-shapes bullets, and have a couple of these attacks that are more vermiform.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: In Real Life, spider pre-larvae start off as "eggs with legs"
that feed off their stored energy until they are grown enough to fend for themselves. This asteroid-belt-dwelling Metamorphosis Monster, however, grows quite differently from them. - Blackout Basement: When its final form has no guns protecting its core, your vision is reduced to a sizable spotlight area that surrounds you.
- Cognizant Limbs: Its spider legs count as these.
- Extra Eyes: Its core has two sockets near each side. In its second form, these develop additional eyes, and in the third, they look at you with the main eye.
- Final Boss: Of the Crusade campaign.
- Giant Spider: Its second and third forms.
- Grapple Move: It can spawn a grid of tethers that can temporarily anchor your movement.
- Homing Projectile: All of the Big Creepy-Crawlies the boss can spawn count.
- I'll Kill You!: Can say this practially verbatim.
- Lead the Target: Its worm-like projectiles slightly accelerate with your motion.
- Metamorphosis Monster: Its first form looks like some sort of egg or cocoon, the next one shows the spider's fangs, legs, and abdomen sticking out of it, and the last form is a fully grown spider.
- Pun: "Am I bugging you?" is something it can say when you get hit.
- Purple Is Powerful: It's largely purple and the hardest boss in the Crusade campaign.
- Recursive Ammo:
- One of the worm-like attacks it can launch is a projectile that leaves behind a trail of stationary bullets.
- A projectile that shoots up and down while chasing you can also be spawned.
- Segmented Serpent: Three different worm-like attacks can be launched: a short, wide, and slowly crawling one, and two more that give chase quickly, slightly accelerate to mimic your motion, and have long trails or bodies of circles behind them.
- Smug Snake: It acts as a devious ambush predator, dwelling amongst valuable asteroids and even trying to bait you with a powerup set. Unbeknownst to it, your intent is actually to hunt and kill it.
- Spiders Are Scary: It's a powerful and dangerous spider.
- Stationary Boss: Fully averted. It spins and charges at you during the fight.
- Turns Red: It doesn't darken your surroundings until it loses all its third form's guns.
- Weaponized Offspring: When its core is attacked or its parts in its later forms are lost, it spawns small skittering spiders that act as bullets.
Invasion Bosses
Medusa
Medusa
This monster does not deserve to exist
A gorgon-like creature that's extremely disdainful to everything around it.- Destructible Projectiles: The smallest snakes spawned can be destroying by hitting their tails.
- Energy Weapon: Its third form can sweep a petrifying beam all around it.
- Flunky Boss: Xulgon's minions can occasionally appear if Medusa's third form is active for long enough.
- Gem Tissue: It has green crystalline structure protruding from its second and third forms' cores.
- Green and Mean: Partially green-colored, and relentlessly mean to you.
- Homing Projectile: The thinner snakes it can spawn.
- I'm Not Here to Make Friends: It can emphasize this attitude with the exact stock phrase.
- Jerkass: It's more insufferable than any other boss in the game.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: In-Universe; it's extremely rude with no other characterization, and unlike the lawlessly destructive Storm or Evil Overlord Xulgon, its description urges that it should not exist.
- Just Toying with Them: On rare occasion, the boss can insist it's toying with you.
- Medusa: Designed after the gorgons the name's associated with.
- Recursive Ammo: Its last form can shoot projectiles that periodically launch star-shapes volleys of bullet streams.
- Roboteching: Its counterattack bullets move slowly and repeatedly turn to face you.
- Segmented Serpent: It spawns segmented snakes that chase you around. The smaller ones each have a blue tail segment that you can touch to destroy them, but both the larger ones spawned from breaking its third form's bigger guns and a long one spawned from a bursting bomb lack this vulnerability.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: It curses at you frequently.
- Taken for Granite: The hollow red bullets momentarily encase you in stone and prevent you from doing anything.
- You Monster!: Uniquely amongst the bosses, it's described as a monster in the menu.
Hermit
Hermit
This ancient philosopher is meditating in deep space
An old one in a shell that gives out various sayings.- all lowercase letters: Aside from being italicized, its hodgepodge sayings stylistically consist solely of lowercase letters.
- The Atoner: Incensed at the two large units that appear with its third form, it can insist that it wishes to make up for certain unstated wrongdoings.
- Aura Vision: The boss believes it possesses this, possibly regarding Chippy's aura as a dark one.
- Blue Is Calm: Has blue-colored flesh, and just wants to meditate in peace.
- Bribe Backfire: It gives you a set of powerups that help you fight it, in vain hope of getting you to leave it alone.
- A Dog Named "Dog": It remains in solitude, hence its name.
- Energy Weapon: There are a variety of laser beams fired from the bosses' first two forms, namely blinking ones fired outward, as well as a rotating one that forces you to either fly around the boss or teleport through the beam.
- Flunky Boss: It has two Invincible Minor Minions in its third form, and Xulgon's most basic minions periodically appear as well.
- Hermit Guru: It's an old sage that dwells in the far reaches of space, and it's willing to hand out words of wisdom.
- Homing Projectile: Many parts spawn one upon destruction, and each one both accelerates towards you and slightly accelerates in the direction you move.
- Ice-Cream Koan: The sayings it rambles are randomly generated, and the majority of them are shallower or more nonsensical than they seem.
- Laser-Guided Karma: It can regard a hit it gets on you as this.
- Lead the Target: All of its homing bullets accelerate with your motion, hitting you should you move too predictably to dodge them.
- The Philosopher: Even when fought by you, it tries its hardest to act as this.
- Proverbial Wisdom: Its ideas of wisdom only emerge through various proverbs it thinks up.
- Recoil Boost: It's rotated by the forces undergone when shooting or being shot.
- Reluctant Warrior: It's reluctant to fight you and most likely isn't affiliated with the forces of Xulgon, despite typically being the first Invasion boss to be noticeably accompanied by Xulgon's minions.
- Stationary Boss: Fully averted. It can rotate on the center of the stage.
- Wave-Motion Gun:
- Taking the first cursed damage pickups causes four right-angle ones to appear one by one. The boss's second form can also spawn them on its own.
- In the boss's third form, it can summon a volley of vertical beams.
Goliath
Goliath
This warrior requests an honorable duel
A large fighter that's quite serious about combat.- Apologetic Attacker: On its last legs, it can be such for trying to spoil your attempt on it.
- Blood Knight: It really, really likes fighting.
- Crosshair Aware: It uses an onscreen indicator to aim its Turns Red attack below it.
- Deadly Disc: Can summon sawblades while moving downwards. The ones in its first form are stationary, but the ones in the second form track you.
- Desperation Attack: Near the end of its second form, the boss summons lines of bullets that move downward and have alternatingly-tangible orbs between them.
- Fair-Play Villain: It can hand out powerups just to give you a chance and itself a real challenge, and to compensate for its final attacks, a fragile Slowmo powerup container is spawned at the center.
- Godzilla Threshold: Can lampshade the unexpected need for one of its final attacks.
- Homing Projectile: The large orbs that block your bullets and the sawblades in the boss's second form move towards you.
- Recursive Ammo: The core can fire an orb that leaves smaller projectiles to linger behind it.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: The background temporarily becomes red when the boss starts moving downwards and summoning sawblades.
- Spirited Competitor: It genuinely seeks out a Worthy Opponent to battle.
- Stationary Boss: Fully averted. It slightly tracks your motion, and at certain gun loss increments, it slowly descends near the bottoms of the stage and then returns to its previous position.
- Turns Red: When all of its second form's guns are lost, it halts its normal attack patterns in lieu of new ones, such as small grids of bullets and expanding partial rings of projectiles from a certain point.
- Unbreakable Bones: Its toughest armor, which can only be penetrated by piercing items, looks like external and internal skeletal structure.
Monarch
Monarch
This celestial body radiates a comforting warmth
A partly-metallic fractal of frames that sees the player as a subject to play around with.- Authority in Name Only: Despite being a regal-looking, otherworldly being, it is not known to rule over anyone or anything.
- Desperation Attack: Once its second form's core is vulnerable, a trail of diamond tiles that manifest shortly after you touch them will appear.
- Energy Weapon: Occasionally, the main core shoots a laser beam straight at you.
- Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Its indestructible armor is golden.
- Homing Projectile: It can fire two kinds: one that moves at you rather quickly, and one that leaves small trails of stationary bullets behind it.
- Turns Red: Once its second form's core is vulnerable, all the endlessly bouncing projectiles that previously appeared are repeatedly redirected at you, and the boss fires many fast-moving projectiles all over the arena.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Its second form can summon giant horizontal beams that span the arena's length.
- You Fool!: It can call you an imbecile, typically if you need to be reminded how many guns are protecting it.
Prospector
Prospector
This autonomous mining unit has a quota to meet
A dour robot that, despite its full sapience, is completely dedicated to the job.- Asteroid Miners: It exists to act as one of these.
- Asteroid Thicket: The fight takes place amongst a downplayed example, though it's more dangerous to you than it is to the boss. Justified by the boss being an Asteroid Miner.
- CAPS LOCK: Its robotic speech consists solely of capital letters.
- Consummate Professional: Its effort and pride put into mining in space are how it was programmed.
- Crosshair Aware: Displayed for certain attacks and a curse brought by Cannon powerups the boss can spawn.
- The Cynic: Some of its quotes indicate a firm adherence to structural realism.
- Energy Weapon: Many of its cores emit beams (the non-main ones toggle) that slowly rotate around the boss, presumably to mine the nearby asteroids.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": "Prospector" is all it's known to be called.
- Flunky Boss: Xulgon's most basic minions periodically appear in the fight.
- Glowing Mechanical Eye: Its third form's eye has a glowing red pupil surrounded by a black iris.
- Homing Projectile: The orbs that explode into kite-shaped projectiles home in towards you greatly. The fast-moving arcs of bullets the boss fires also do this.
- I Work Alone: Can mention that its works best alone.
- Lead the Target: One of the crosshairs it can send after you accelerates with your motion.
- Meat-Sack Robot: Downplayed. The eye at its core is somewhat pulpous and resembles a human eyeball.
- Nothing Personal: It insists that its actions towards you are mere business.
- Prospector: Profits directly off the resources it mines from asteroids.
- Red Eye, Take Warning: Its third and strongest form's eye has a red glow to it.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: The stage's background is reddish-orange, and becomes redder with the boss's later and stronger forms.
- Stationary Boss: Averted with the third form, which periodically rotates.
- Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids: It's meant to be a mining unit, but it can more than readily defend itself from you.
- Tractor Beam: It can use these in an attempt to suck you towards it.
- Trap Master: It can create squares and rings of pixels to temporarily contain you in.
Storm
Storm
This chaotic machine is powered by solar storms
A strong automaton that pulls out all manner of moves to duel whoever it comes across.- Attack Drone: The boss can shoot a kite-shaped projectile that slowly moves towards you and fires a stream of bullets at an oscillating frequency.
- Blood Knight: It seems to enjoy battling an opponent as cool and collected under pressure as it is.
- Boomerang Comeback: Certain bullets fired travel forwards a bit, then quickly move backwards to hit the boss.
- Counter-Attack: This trope extends to an orb spawned from this stage's Time Bomb. It launches smaller projectiles at you whenever it is shot.
- Energy Weapon: Some of its guns can fire short-lived laser beams at you.
- Flunky Boss: Xulgon's most basic minions appear in the fight.
- The Hedonist: It indulges in battle while gleefully admitting its lack of forethought of any negative impact it brings on others and itself.
- Homing Projectile: Can shoot one that's orbited by several smaller projectiles.
- How Would You Like to Die?: Can say this at the start of the fight.
- I Like Those Odds: Can say "I like these odds" at the beginning of the stage, regarding such to be in its favor.
- Launcher Move: Certain expanding rings of purple bullets cause very strong knockback should you touch said bullets.
- Playing with Fire: Its second from can rotate four flame-like jets around.
- Recursive Ammo:
- Can launch a large projectile that slowly bounces around and fires two streams of innumerable bullets.
- The orb with its own Counter-Attack fires bullets at you.
- Reverse Shrapnel: Inverted. Late in each form, the boss is surrounded by missiles that fly towards it to damage it should you touch them.
- Shock and Awe: It can shoot lightning bolts at you.
- Starfish Robots: A strange machine with an unexplained inclination to discord.
- Troll: "Are you getting angry?" is something it can say when you get hit.
- Unrealistic Black Hole: It sometimes spawns a field of energy that sucks you and its bullets towards it should such get close enough. Luckily, you can easily escape its center.
Xulgon
Xulgon
Xulgon desperately demands your respect
The final antagonist of the main game, and an imposing conqueror of the galaxy.- Attack Drone:
- A cursed powerup brought by him can summon a projectile that alternates between moving towards you and firing a smaller projectile.
- Some of his Counter-Attack projectiles are small drones that home towards you.
- Big Bad: Implied. He's the protagonist's biggest motive for fighting in the Invasion campaign, and his army pesters you in a few of the campaign's earlier stages.
- Bigger Is Better: Xulgon takes immense pride in the size of his physical body. Even after you destroy all of his guns, he can brag that he's still larger than you.
- The Chosen One: It's one of the things he proclaims himself, and he states his conquest to have been "foretold by the prophecies".
- Destructible Projectiles: Xulgon can fire pink pixel projectiles that can be shot into, but block your bullets in the process.
- Energy Ring Attack: He can trap you in a large energy ring. The ring slowly moves its center to you, especially fast if you teleport out of the ring before it expires.
- Energy Weapon: His lower parts can fire these on occasion, and his main core can shoot out rotating volleys of laser blasts.
- Evil Overlord: He fits this archetype well from the Excuse Plot offered.
- Evil Sounds Deep: His soundbites are deeper than those of his subordinates and other bosses in the game.
- Expecting Someone Taller: When the stage starts, Xulgon can regard Chippy as smaller than he anticipated.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Downplayed. The second largest core of his is at his center, and such eye is spoken through until it is revealed that the true core of the boss is even larger and near the top of his body.
- Final Boss: Of the Invasion campaign.
- Flunky Boss: He leads the minions that fought you in many previous stages, not to mention a couple of stronger types.
- A God Am I: "I am your god!"
- God-Emperor: The above quote implies that his own followers hail him as one.
- Homing Projectile: Most of this boss's homing bullets move very slowly, and one kind of them are also really large.
- Large and in Charge: His body, even in comparison to those of other bosses, is enormous.
- Law of Alien Names: His name starting with an X bodes well to his tyrannical disposition.
- The Magnificent: Gives himself many names like this. He can even parody his attitude by dubbing himself "the Extremely Large".
- Odd Name Out: Xulgon, unlike the names of Crusade and other Invasion stages, is not a defined word.
- Or My Name Isn't...: "I'll destroy you, or my name isn't Xulgon!"
- Red Is Violent: Much of Xulgon's body is red, and he's the big bad final boss.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: The background is dark red, fitting how climactic the stage is.
- Sequential Boss: Averted. While destroying one of his larger guns will make him teleport away temporarily to leave you to his army, there's still only one form for you to beat.
- Third-Person Person: How he often addresses himself.
- Villains Want Mercy: When nearing defeat, he can panickedly scream at you to stop.
- Villain Teleportation: He can teleport much farther than you can, and he does this whenever at least one of his three larger guns is destroyed.
- Wave-Motion Gun: He fires one large beam from above at a time when far offscreen.
- "X" Makes Anything Cool: Considering what his name starts with, Xulgon's bound to think the part.
Other Campaign Characters
Hermit's Apprehenders
Hermit's Apprehenders
Two units that appear with Hermit's third form, accusing it of wrongdoing unknown.- CAPS LOCK: Their speech bubbles each have a different font, but all have capital letters.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: They wish to destroy Hermit for unstated crimes, but their lasers barely damage the boss's flesh, mainly serving to restrict your movement around the arena.
- Invincible Minor Minion: Two units appear with the third form, and they shoot laser beams that restrict your movement around the arena. Only the outer pixels of these two units are indestructible, so it's possible to Blink inside one and destroy it (albeit at the cost of a Shield, as well as taking unnecessary amounts of time).
- Speak in Unison: The two always say the same thing at once upon spawning.
Xulgon's Minions
Xulgon's Minions
Various fighters that loyally act as Xulgon's forces. The green-eyed ones occasionally appear alongside Medusa, Hermit, Prospector, and Storm; but all three types appear in Xulgon's fight.- Boss in Mook Clothing: The red-eyed minion has a variety of advanced attacks, and its core is shielded by three additional guns. It only appears if Xulgon teleported away twice as a result of his moderately size guns being destroyed on their own two separate times.
- Dash Attack: The yellow-eyed minions can try to ram you by boosting themselves downwards.
- Destructible Projectiles: The red-eyed minion can fire pink pixel projectiles that can be shot into, but block your bullets in the process.
- Mighty Glacier: The red-eyed minion uniquely has three small guns protecting its core, and it launches many bullets to attack, but it's sluggish enough for you to take out before it leaves the screen.
- My Master, Right or Wrong: The red-eyed minion insistently states its interests to lie with its obedience of Xulgon.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Downplayed with the single strongest minion having a red eye.
Extra Content
Easy Mode
- Adaptational Nice Guy: The Easy version of Kraken actively wants others to get along, and while Medusa's still pretty mean, it's implied to be more feasible for its Easy counterpart to make friends.
- Adaptational Wimp: These bosses being easier to defeat is reflected in many of their menu descriptions.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Chippy sports a red bow in this mode, and cursed powerups, Drone items, and time bombs are absent.
- Hard Mode Perks: Inverted; the time-slowing effects brought by several items are stronger in this difficulty, causing them to drag out time-attack stages more.
- Informed Attribute: Qualities exclusive to Easy bosses aren't accurately displayed by any new speech lines.
- Lighter and Softer: Some Easy boss descriptions lighten up story circumstances, such as Easy Medusa being someone who struggles to make friends, Easy Goliath seeking a sparring partner, and Easy Xulgon genuinely wanting to impress you.
- Shout-Out: Chippy wearing a red bow in this difficulty mirrors the Kid from I Wanna Be the Guy wearing one in his game's easiest difficulty.
Nightmare Mode in general
- Adaptational Badass: Most Nightmare bosses have descriptions that emphasize how much stronger they are.
- Adaptational Villainy: Many of these bosses are characterized as more evil than their typical counterparts.
- Brutal Bonus Level: The Nightmare versions of the main campaigns house ridiculously tough extra stages, with attacks being fasternote and more varied, you having no Shield to start with, and your gun dealing slightly less damage.
- Darker and Edgier: The Nightmare bosses' descriptions often depict them as more dangerous and/or malevolent than their normal counterparts.
- Hard Mode Perks:
- Certain items' time-slowing effects being weaker in this difficulty causes their use to drag out the respective stages to a smaller degree.
- Cursed powerups moving towards you makes gaining their benefits almost guaranteed once they show up.
- Informed Attribute: Qualities exclusive to Nightmare bosses aren't accurately displayed by any new speech lines.
- Palette Swap: Each boss gets a new color scheme in the Nightmare campaigns.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Nightmare versions of Neophyte, the most common Execution cultists, Overgrowth, Hermit, Goliath, Prospector, and Storm have much more prevalent redness to their eyes, indicating the danger they pose.
- Upgraded Boss: Every single boss not only is faster and stronger, but has a variety of attacks from other Nightmare stages, in an effort to make the fights feel brand-new.
Nightmare Crusade
The Oracle
- Ordered Apology: One of its lines upon being attacked is this.
- Psycho Pink: It's pink and it tries to kill you on sight.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Exaggerated with this incarnation, whose idea of teaching you is to fight alongside Neophyte. Luckily, it still goes down rather quickly.
Neophyte
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: It pesters you with all the bullets in this likeness used by Phobia.
- Combat Pragmatist: Described as one to do anything to win, it allows the Oracle to fight alongside it, sends out homing bug projectiles, and eventually forces its secret curse on you.
- Flunky Boss: As the Oracle is no longer on your side, Nightmare Neophyte counts as one.
- Grapple Move: Like Phobia, this boss can spawn a grid of tethers that can anchor your movement should you touch them.
- Lead the Target: The worm-like projectiles borrowed from Phobia slightly accelerate with your motion.
- Purple Is Powerful: It has purple armor, and it's substantially deadlier than its normal counterpart.
- Secondary Color Nemesis: It has dull orange tentacles, as well as green and purple armor, befitting its sinister nature as the game's first Upgraded Boss.
Kraken
- Attack Drone: It can launch a cursed powerup that sends a projectile-firing drone originating form Xulgon's fight.
- Destructible Projectiles: A curse from this boss spawns several of the shootable, multiplying orbs originating from Nightmare Overgrowth.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Unlike its normal counterpart, it likes to kill and is thus as swift to attack without provocation as any other boss you approach.
- Green and Mean: This boss is green, and it kills for the thrill of it.
- An Ice Person: Like the blue-eyed Quartet boss, it can launch chunks of ice that can freeze you.
- Launcher Move: The rings of knockback-inflicting purple orbs are borrowed from Nightmare Storm.
- Recursive Ammo: This boss borrows Storm's orb-firing projectile.
Guardian
- Attack Drone: This boss uses Storm's lightning orb and kite drone.
- Counter-Attack: This trope extends to this boss's invulnerable armor, which fires directly at you wherever your bullets hit it.
- Crosshair Aware: It gains the crosshair-aimed attacks used by Prospector.
- Shock and Awe: The boss and its minions have access to lightning strikes.
- Underdogs Never Lose: It's said to have killed many intruders stronger than the Player Character that is expected to defeat it.
Execution
- Apocalypse Cult: The stage is housed amongst a cult that "welcomes doomsday".
- Dark Is Evil: The cultists have darker flesh and cores, and the inside of the boss's core is pitch-black.
- Launcher Move: The arena has knockback-inflicting bubbles (borrowed from Nightmare Kraken) that rise from the bottom of the arena at times.
Overgrowth
- Assimilation Plot: According to the boss's description, the plant mass is trying to spread itself to all corners of the galaxy.
- Desperation Attack: This boss keeps pre-redux Overgrowth's large spinning diamond bullet that appears once the second form's core is under attack.
- Segmented Serpent: Two of the boss's second form's guns will, upon breaking, spawn one of the large snakes found in Medusa's fight.
Anomaly
- Cyber Green: This Digital Abomination is lime green and dark gray, with its cores' irises being closer to a spectral green.
- Homing Projectile: Nightmare Anomaly borrows the homing bullets that accelerate with your motion from Hermit.
- Lead the Target: Said homing bullets accelerate with your motion.
- Turns Red: Nightmare Anomaly keeps the second spinning bullet line hazard found in the pre-redux version of Anomaly's second form.
Phobia
- Boomerang Comeback: This boss borrows Storm's bullets that return to hit the boss.
- Energy Weapon: It borrows the rotating volley of beams from Anomaly, and a spinning blinking one from Execution.
- Green and Mean: Quite some of it is green, and like Nightmare Kraken, it derives joy from others' pain.
- Homing Projectile: It borrows both varieties of homing Recursive Ammo from Nightmare Goliath.
- Just Toying with Them: It enjoys playing around with its food.
- Sadist: It's outright confirmed to be sadistic.
Nightmare Invasion
Medusa
- Counter-Attack: This trope extends to an orb borrowed from Storm. It launches smaller projectiles at you whenever it is shot.
- Energy Weapon: Unlike the boss's easier versions, it can shoot damaging laser beams at you from its guns.
- Grapple Move: The boss borrows the projectile that lays tethers from Overgrowth.
- Recursive Ammo: Both kinds of bullets mentioned right above create these.
- Roboteching: The projectile that this boss borrows form Overgrowth repeatedly turns its movement direction towards you.
Hermit
- Destructible Projectiles: The blue-halved bullets that can be hit without damaging you are borrowed directly from Anomaly.
- Hard Mode Perks: The boss gives a couple of free powerup pairs in its first two forms, unlike in easier difficulties.
- Matryoshka Object: Like Anomaly, it can also shoot a chain of single-bullet-shooting bullets.
- Reluctant Psycho: It's described as struggling to abstain from committing murder.
- Roboteching: It borrows the pellets that turn towards you from Guardian's fight.
- Sickly Green Glow: A neon green color is visible from certain grooves in the first two forms' shells.
- Wrap Around: The boss can summon the large, side-wrapping kite projectiles from Crossfire, though they're less dangerous due to how much larger Hermit's arena is.
Goliath
- All Webbed Up: The boss borrows Phobia's web beam.
- Dark Is Evil: Downplayed. This boss has rocket-metallic-colored bone armor, its whitish armor is more of a dull jade, its flesh is dark red, and its guns have dark cyan shadows on them... and it's described as a merciless executioner.
- Homing Projectile: Both of its kinds of Recursive Ammo home in on you (unlike their normal counterparts).
- White and Red and Eerie All Over: The boss has red flesh and pale outer skin.
Monarch
- Energy Weapon: A repeatedly toggling laser is borrowed from the uncommon Execution cultists.
- Homing Projectile: Rings of spinning projectiles fired by this boss slowly and constantly move towards you.
- Interface Screw: Like Nightmare Execution, it can launch bullets that can temporarily invert your controls.
Prospector
- Desperation Attack: This version of Prospector keeps the vertical lines of diamonds found upon destroying enough guns of the third form of pre-redux Prospector.
Storm
- Dark Is Evil: The boss has dark gray armor, in contrast to its normal counterpart's light blue.
- Homing Projectile: The Unrealistic Black Holes this boss fires move towards you, making them much more dangerous.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The goal that Nightmare Storm holds is regarded as "unspeakable".
- Purple Is Powerful: It has parts and armor of a vivid violet color.
Xulgon
- Anti-Frustration Features: After Xulgon's middle gun is destroyed, the bouncing orbs clutter up the arena so badly that four Blink items float through the arena, giving you a chance to teleport should you grab some.
- Black Eyes of Evil: His parts' sclerae are now black, and he's said to relish his opponent's tears.
- Deadly Disc: This boss gains Goliath's homing sawblade attack.
- Glowing Gem: His core is adorned with eight luminescent gemstones that pulsate between colored and black.
- Gold and White Are Divine: Inverted; his flesh and armor are white and gold, respectively; yet he's anything but benevolent.
- Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Similarly to non-Nightmare Monarch, Nightmare Xulgon's indestructible armor is golden.
- Homing Projectile: The Unrealistic Black Holes borrowed from Nightmare Storm slowly and constantly move towards you. The bullet-blocking orbs from Goliath also count.
- Interface Screw: Like Nightmare Execution, he can launch bullets that can temporarily invert your controls.
- Launcher Move: The arena has knockback-inflicting bubbles borrowed from Nightmare Kraken, both from the bottom of the arena and from a cursed powerup.
- Palette Swap: Curiously, Xulgon's minions avert this trope, and only the green-eyed and normally weakest kind is made discernibly stronger.
- Roboteching: The boss borrows the sharply turning bullets that compose Crossfire's main threat.
- Unrealistic Black Hole: Nightmare Xulgon gains Storm's ability to fire one that can't trap the player at its center.
Bonus Stages
Quartet
Quartet
These four lunatics howl at one another from their asylum cells
Four one-form entities that are imprisoned for their presumed insanity, and eventually picked off one by one.- Awesome, but Impractical: This stage starts with the official game's only Factory pickup near the bottom-left corner. The powerup allows you to slowly generate an infinite supply of Cannon items and sometimes other offensive powerups, making it the game's strongest powerup in the long run. However, it is cursed and will cause a lengthy and damaging trail to be constantly emitted by you.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Downplayed. The blue- and red-eyed bosses aren't bombastic or self-absorbed, but they still attack you when approached (knowing your intent) and can state their surprisingly fierce sides.
- Boss Bonanza: Four separate bosses that must be fought and defeated one at a time.
- Energy Weapon: The blue-eyed boss can fire two laser beams to trap you between them for one of its attacks, and the green-eyed boss can scan a laser around it while moving walls of projectiles around it in the opposite direction.
- Homing Projectile: A variant of an attack from each boss homes towards you, except for the red-eyed one, which leaves behind a homing, unusually-shaped projectile upon death.
- Kill One, Others Get Stronger: Each boss you fight is invariably tougher than the one you previously defeated.
- Last Ditch Move: Upon death, each boss leaves behind an attack that serves as a hazard for the remainder of the stage.
- Might as Well Not Be in Prison at All: Even with their cores stuck in cells, they are competent at attacking those away from the cells.
- No Fair Cheating: To mitigate the possibility of players destroying the bosses' guns before their cores, every time a boss is defeated, any outer units of other bosses will grow back if they were completely destroyed.
- Reluctant Warrior: The red-eyed and blue-eyes bosses wish they never had to fight you.
Blue-Eyed Boss
- Diagnosis: Knowing Too Much: It may claim that the four were passed off as insane just to be silenced.
- An Ice Person: It shoots chunks and spotlights of ice that can temporarily freeze you.
- Matryoshka Object: This boss can shoot four projectiles, with the front one turning into a smaller instance of the four bullets, and so on.
- The Schizophrenia Conspiracy: The boss is likely as clinically insane as the others, yet it thinks otherwise; it thinks they're being silenced and can beg you not to appeal to ignorance or blame the victim.
- Tractor Beam: It can suck you towards its core with these.
Red-Eyed Boss
- all lowercase letters: Practically all of its speech consists solely of lowercase letters.
- Destructible Projectiles: Hitting the blue halves of certain bullets destroy them without damaging you.
- The Eeyore: It has a perpetually glum disposition.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: A variant of its "stop harassing me!" quote has an exclamation mark after every word.
- Sinister Scythe: One large projectile it can launch (and the one that appears upon the boss's death) is shaped like a pair of sickles.
- Token Good Teammate: It can call itself "the good one".
Green-Eyed Boss
- Cloudcuckoolanguage: In its speech, it can replace "You" with "U", "Are" with "R", or "You're" with "UR".
- Evil Sounds Raspy: Its guttural, wolf-like soundbite indicates its crudely aggressive disposition.
- The Mad Hatter: "It's Cool to be Crazy!", this boss can say.
- Malaproper: Even more grammatically incorrect than above, it can replace "I" with "Eye" or confuse "Your" with "You're" or "UR".
- Weaponized Teleportation: It can launch large orbs that can teleport you through them.
Pink-Eyed Boss
- Bling of War: For some reason, the armor it was given has golden ionic columns.
- Broken Record: Can cry at you to "Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave! Leave!".
- Roboteching: Certain bullets, shortly after being fired by this boss, turn to the direction of your position relative to the boss's core's.
Crossfire
Crossfire
Danger on all sides
A horde of organisms that fight the player to test their mettle, in addition to the Roboteching bullets appearing through their stage.In general
- CAPS LOCK: All enemies' speech consists solely of capital letters.
- Endless Game: The goal of the stage they appear in is to survive for as long as possible. This makes it unusually important to take these things out efficiently.
- Lead the Target: After the fourth miniboss's first appearance, the basic enemies can shoot projectiles that home in on where you're moving right to.
- Marathon Level: Getting a gold medal in this stage requires that you contend with its dangers for almost 15 minutes.
- Roboteching:
- The bullets that comprise the main threat of the stage turn 90 degrees to you and speed up once you're to their sides.
- Large orbs that repeatedly move to your position spawn in the stage.
- Shock and Awe: A rotating partial ring of diamonds enclosed by electricity will start spawning over twenty minutes into the stage.
- Villains Want Mercy: The standard enemies and the first two bosses can take back their bravado when their respective cores are attacked.
- We Have Reserves: The basic enemies can exclaim that they will keep coming for you, no matter how many you kill.
- Wrap Around: Kite-shaped projectiles that spawn pass through opposite borders of the arena this way.
Minibosses
- Boomerang Comeback: The first miniboss's aura attracts its otherwise stationary projectiles to it.
- Death Seeker: When its core is under attack, the first miniboss can urge you to finish it off.
- Energy Weapon: The second miniboss can fire one whose range is limited to its aura's radius.
- Grapple Move: The first miniboss (and the second one if most of its armor was severed) can launch a large bubble that can keep you trapped in it until you are pushed out by a wall, another enemy unit, or Cannon recoil.
- Homing Projectile: The fourth miniboss can shoot smaller projectiles that move towards both you and where you try to move to.
- Launcher Move: The fourth miniboss periodically creates a burst that repels nearby objects away from it.
- Lead the Target: The fourth miniboss's homing projectiles accelerate in the direction you move.
- Mini-Boss: Four different single-form bosses present in the stage.
- Reverse Shrapnel: The third miniboss's core fires rings of bullets that circle back to it. The number of bullets in each volley is equal to the number of guns that shield the core.
- Swirly Energy Thingy: The third miniboss's whirlpool-like aura moves bullets and the player around it.
- Time-Limit Boss: Downplayed. Even waves with minibosses have strictly limited durations, due to your score being based on how long you survive the stage.
- Unrealistic Black Hole: The first miniboss often sucks nearby objects towards it with an energy field at its center.
Ball Pit Server
Ball Pit Server
Avoid enemy balls while keeping your own out of the gutter
A creature similar to the Oracle, moving up and down to throw around ball that act as Ball Pit players' main weapons against each other.- The Announcer: Its speech consists of commentary on the players' development and the game's circumstances.
- CAPS LOCK: Like the similar Oracle, it speaks in capital letters.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Inverted; the unit at the arena's center boundary calls the players by they/them pronouns, presumably referring to the people playing against each other instead of the cycloptic ships they control.
Credits Boss
Credits Boss
A freely moving enemy at the opposite side of various cog-transported contraptions.- CAPS LOCK: All of its speech letters are capital letters.
- Counterspell: I will Erase at any Slice or Omnislice projectiles you fire.
- Laser Sight: It can fire this stage's unique namesake pickup, which causes you to emit a thin beam that deals very light damage and assists in aiming.
- No Item Use for You: Getting hit by its spark projectiles will briefly stun you and forcefully eject all of your droppable powerups.
- Pictorial Speech-Bubble: A heart in a speech bubble follows all whom this boss thanks, and a skull follows its addressment to its opponent.
- Special Thanks: Its hands these out to all who contributed to Chippy's development.
- Thanking the Viewer: Inverted; the last speech bubbles of this boss at the end are an addressment to the Chippy fighting it and a lone skull emoji.
Timebrain
Timebrain
Time waits for you
A boss whose fight allows you to freeze time, by simply not moving.- Attack Drone: The boss can spawn a bullet-firing one on its own, borrowed from Guardian.
- Brain Monster: Its core has a visible brain in place of an eye.
- Destructible Projectiles: Each snake can be destroyed by touching its tail.
- Energy Weapon:
- The boss can shoot short-lived beams all around it, a la Xulgon.
- The toggling and rotating beam fired by Execution can also show up.
- Homage: The unique time-flow manipulation is a whole-stage reference to the main mechanic of Superhot.
- Homing Projectile: The Segmented Serpents and target-leading bullets in this stage move towards you. Homing projectiles orbited by smaller ones from Storm are also found here.
- An Ice Person: Like the blue-eyed Quartet boss, it can fire chunks of ice that can freeze players and bullets around them.
- Launcher Move:
- Knockback-inflicting bubbles can appear in a large drove.
- The rings of knockback-inflicting purple orbs are borrowed from Storm.
- The boss can also launch Sweep projectiles borrowed from the Player Character.
- Lead the Target: The boss can fire a projectile (found in Hermit's stage) that accelerates with your motion. The Tractor Beam in this fight rotates in this trope's manner as well.
- Matryoshka Object: The repeatedly splitting ammo from Anomaly can appear.
- Pungeon Master: Has several lines that use the word "time" outside the stage's context.
- Segmented Serpent: It can spawn shorter versions of the snakes fired by Medusa.
- Self-Deprecation: A rare loading tip being "Finally a use for Dash" is a jab against the Redux update making the game's Dash item more niche.
- Third-Person Person: Uniquely, the boss can say "Timebrain is ticking".
- Time Master: Uniquely, the flow of time is directly proportional with how quickly you move in this stage, allowing you to move through tight attack pattern combinations carefully and think through maze puzzles.
- Tractor Beam: The boss can suck you towards it with one.
- Weaponized Teleportation: Like the green-eyed Quartet boss, it can shoot large orbs that can teleport you through them.
