Boss difficulties and tips

If you're struggling with defeating the bosses - especially in Hard Mode - this will give you some guidance without spoiling the game completely.

Introduction - Boss difficulties

The boss difficulties fluctuate throughout the game - here's a breakdown of the approximate puzzle and execution difficulty for each boss when the game is played on Hard Mode or NG++ (the final form of each boss).

Level	Puzzle	Execution
1	Easy	Hard
2	Medium	Easy
3	Easy/Medium	Hard
4	Easy	Medium
5	Hard	Extreme
6	Medium	Hard
7	Hard	Hard
8	Hard	Extreme
9	Hard	Extreme
10	Medium	Medium
11	Hard	Easy/Medium
12	Hard	Hard
13	Medium	Easy

Quite a few of the bosses have tight tolerances in their final form, and expect you to be quick and precise, but if a boss is healing through your damage or seems unbeatable it's because you haven't fully understood the fight. Bosses may be difficult but they shouldn't be tedious, they usually only take around 3-4 rounds of properly executing the mechanics properly.

The rest of this guide will give you a series of hints for each boss, highlighting core mechanics that you need to understand to properly execute the fights. Even if you understand a fight it may still take a bit of practice to win, that's where the "execution" difficulty comes in.

Floor 1

Core concept: Rainbows

This is the only boss who has a rainbow, and being hit by it does damage to the player.

Tip 1: Minions heal the boss

Tip 2: Minions are only vulnerable to rainbows of their own color

Tip 3: Block the boss rainbow by placing boxes of the appropriate color near the boss

Tip 4: The boss can be damaged with any color rainbow besides the one he's currently shooting

Tip 5: Once the boss is done shooting his rainbow you have a very short amount of time to shoot the box he's "charged" with blocked shots. If you don't shoot it with your multi-colored rainbow before he starts shooting again, the damage from the charged box is inflicted on you.

Fight summary: Focus on killing the minions, one will respawn every time the boss rainbow color cycles, and they heal the boss very quickly. Your priority should be keeping it down to 1 or 2 minions alive at most - otherwise it will be difficult or impossible to kill the boss.

Place boxes in front of the boss when he starts shooting a new color to block his shots, and when he's done or nearly done shooting, blow up the box to inflict a large amount of damage. It's crucial that you do this quickly - the more damage the box absorbs, the more damage you do when you explode it.

Kiting the minions around the boxes and destroying them is the part of this fight that takes the most precision, and may take a few tries to get right. Good luck!

Floor 2

Core concept: Breaking boxes

Tip 1: Minions break the box color associated with the boss

Tip 2: The more minions that are dead, the faster the boss heals

Tip 3: On ng++/Hard Mode you have to shoot the boss with the rainbow once you've trapped him in the appropriate color box to do damage

Fight summary: Teleporting minions away from the boss is key to this fight. The minions will break the box color that allows you to hurt the boss, so you have to stop their paths from overlapping him by teleporting them away. If you kill them it triggers healing in the boss, and it will be impossible to kill him until they respawn.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to place a red box down and then throw a blue one on top of it to form a vortex and start teleporting enemies away. Each vortex has a limit so you'll need to repeat this process throughout the fight as the vortexes self-destroy.

Once you have most of the enemies gone it's best to place a vortex directly on top of the boss, and the smallest possible blue box in the middle of the vortex, trapping the boss and allowing you to use the rainbow to damage him. Minions will slowly find their way back, but they should be teleported away again by the vortex surrounding the boss.

Floor 3

Core concept: Chasing/movement

This is the first boss you'll encounter that flees from you.

Tip 1: Knowing how to use your freeze damage spell will probably be crucial to this fight, unless you prefer to figure out the fleeing pattern of the boss. Freeze damage allows you to run at full speed even when in-range of enemies.

Tip 2: On ng++/Hard Mode this boss starts out vulnerable to only one color box, and that starting color is randomized.

Tip 3: Once you trap the boss with a color it will take off a third of her health, and then she'll break free and will only be trappable with another random color. The same color will never be used twice, so the second trap has two possibilities, and the third trap is the remaining color you haven't used yet.

Fight summary: You won't be able to run straight up to the boss, even with freeze damage activated, because she detects you at a substantial distance. It's probably best to clear a large area of the level once you understand how she moves, so that you don't get a bunch of enemies on your tail while you chase her down.

The cheesiest but easiest option is to track her path, and lay down three boxes where she runs, then circle around her and herd her back the way she came - she'll be trapped momentarily by one of the colors, but unless you get super lucky you'll need to rearrange the rest of the colors to trap her when she breaks free.

You can also do this by using freeze damage to run at full speed and chase her down, although this method depends somewhat on the random level geometry - sometimes she backtracks down aisles and this may give you time to catch her, because you probably won't catch up in an outright sprint.

The main thing is that once you catch her you need to get to the location quickly before she breaks out, so you can throw the subsequent boxes and avoid having to catch up to her multiple times to finish the fight.

Floor 4

Core concept: Teleporting enemies

This is the first boss you'll encounter that teleports.

Tip 1: Teleportation is always toward the player, and usually consumes half the distance from the enemy start point to the player, with a small randomization element for unpredictability when close to the player. This same pattern is used by actual enemies later in the game.

Tip 2: This boss damages you in a burst during the teleport sequence, if you're in range of the spot he teleports to.

Tip 3: The boss heals if you fail to trap him before he teleports.

Tip 4: The boss can only be trapped by the color that starts flying around him as he's gearing up to teleport. You'll need to be fast, but once you trap him you'll have a few seconds to move away before he performs his teleport.

Fight summary: It's best to run directly away from the boss until he teleports, but don't get so far away that you can't get back to trap him before he teleports again, it's a fine balance. It's important that you trap him every single time since he heals a large amount if you don't trap him.

Remember that there's a fly-time when you throw boxes, this may be important for you if you're slow switching colors to the one he's channeling before teleport. The closer you are the faster your box is going to reach him.

You may also want to clear out a section of the level so that you can run away quickly without using freeze time, and without being mobbed by enemies during the boss fight.

Floor 5

Core concept: Positional/fearing

This is the first boss you'll encounter that takes control of your character under certain circumstances.

Tip 1: There are two types of minions that you can tell apart by line color - one type heals the boss, the other type fears the player. You can still throw boxes while feared, you just can't control your movement.

Tip 2: To damage the boss you need to throw a red box on top of it, and get into the box with the boss - the damage ticks will happen automatically while you're in the box.

Fight summary: Yellow-Yellow combinations don't work on the minions, so it's best to destroy them with a combination of landmines (Red-Red) and tornadoes (Blue-Blue). You'll need to be fast, the enemies respawn at a pretty rapid rate.

Often you may want to use the Red box on the boss as part of your first landmine when a new wave of enemies spawns, and clean up with tornadoes and a few single boxes here and there to destroy individual enemies that aren't worth a combo.

It's often not worth the time trying to determine which enemies are fearing and which are healing, since the most effective way to destroy them is to take out clusters with the area-of-effect combos. Just focus on being fast and getting back into a box with the boss as soon as possible.

Floor 6

Core concept: Damage reflection

This boss requires you to manage your damage flow, and move to avoid being hit by reflected damage.

Tip 1: Any damage you do to the boss will be multiplied and reflected back at you about 4 seconds later. This will also heal the boss.

Tip 2: Yellow boxes don't do anything to this boss, and landmines on ng++/Hard Mode will get you trapped in a way that makes it hard to avoid the retaliation damage. He's also immune to teleport on higher difficulties

Tip 3: Use fire or rainbows

Fight summary: The easiest way to damage the boss is to use a series of boxes - one to initially trap him, then a fire combo, and then a red or blue to hold him while you get away and his fire damage ticks. There's a red ring around the boss that you need to get outside of to be safe from retaliation damage. Remember, it happens 4 seconds after it's inflicted, so don't go back into range too soon!

This fire damage on its own is a little slow, but if you're careful you can augment it with a bit of rainbow damage once you're outside his range, especially if you trap him and then lay down fire and two more boxes in his path. The boxes themselves don't do any damage, so you need to use combos or rainbows to inflict it yourself, the boxes just allow you some breathing room while he breaks out of them.

Floor 7

Core concept: Multiple bosses, snares, novelty concept

This fight involves three bosses - two of which will flee from you, and one of which will chase and snare you.

Tip 1: The only boss vulnerable to trapping is the one that chases you. Any color box will trap him.

Tip 2: You can't kill the boss that chases you until the other two bosses are gone.

Tip 3: The impact of your rainbow varies depending on which difficulty you're playing on and how many bosses are alive, but it always swaps one boss with another one. You don't need to use colored rainbows for this fight, just the basic multicolored one.

Fight summary: The key to the start of this fight is getting all the bosses in a relatively close proximity, so it may take a minute or two to get them in the right position by chasing or rainbow-swapping, since red and blue will always be running away from you.

You want to be in a position to trap the boss that's chasing you in a red or blue box, and then immediately hit the opposite color boss with a rainbow. On hard mode when all three bosses are alive, hitting red will swap blue with the chasing boss, and vice versa.

So you'll alternate, trap chasing boss in a blue box, shoot red with a rainbow to swap blue boss into the blue box. The chasing boss will be teleported to wherever the blue boss was, which is hopefully close enough that it will run back to you around the same time the blue boss is breaking out of the box.

Then you want to trap the chasing boss in a red box, and shoot the blue boss with the rainbow, which will swap the red boss into the red box. Continue to alternate red and blue boxes until one of the bosses is dead.

At this point the rainbow functionality shifts slightly, and shooting the remaining boss will directly swap it with the chasing boss. After both blue and red are dead the chasing boss will flee, and can only be trapped with the yellow box. When trapped he'll silence you, so you'll need to chase him around until you're able to cast again.

Floor 8

Core concept: Positional, fear

This fight involves staying close, but not too close

Tip 1: The boss has two rings, if you go inside the closer ring you'll suffer large amounts of damage, and if you go outside the outer ring the boss will teleport directly to you, inflicting inner-ring damage until you get out of it again.

Tip 2: Drop boxes and shoot rainbows through them to damage the boss, but keep yourself in between the two rings, don't stay in one spot too long!

Tip 3: Being damaged by the boss heals her, so avoid the red void zones explosions that appear when you stand still.

Tip 4: The boss periodically spawns three fear minions behind her that will chase you. Destroy them quickly before they get near you, or you'll end up healing the boss to full health again as you're feared around.

Fight summary: You'll probably want to clear a path through the level that you can run around in a large circle without encountering other enemies, it's easy to get distracted for a second and miss the fear enemies spawning, and suddenly have the boss healed up to full health again.

Start by aggroing the boss and staying between the two rings, dropping a box outside the furthest ring while you're running so it expands in between you and the boss by the time you get to the edge of the ring. This will give you the maximum rainbow time before having to move again.

You'll have a little red void start bubbling under you when you stand still - this takes a few seconds to explode, but at the cost of some rainbow time the best way to avoid it is to stand still for about half a second and then move. If you move instantly the void will just follow you, it doesn't "stick" in one place until you've stopped for a moment.

Dodging the void is crucial because you don't want to heal the boss and make the fight take longer. For the same reason you should focus on dispatching the fear minions immediately after they appear. The easiest way to do this is to drop a Blue-Blue tornado in their path when they spawn.

The difficulty in this fight is tracking everything at once, the void, the rings, the minions, and doing damage to the boss when you have a good opportunity. Focus on not getting damaged rather than trying to rush the fight.

Floor 9

Core concept: Timing

This fight involves two bosses that you have to balance equally.

Tip 1: The bosses are only vulnerable to a specific color of rainbow, and this changes every few seconds.

Tip 2: Both bosses have to die at the same time, once you kill the first one you'll have a short amount of time until it respawns if you don't kill the other. Each time you fail the timing gets longer and easier.

Tip 3: When a boss dies the other boss spawns a swarm of minions that chase you and block damage to the second boss. These can be taken out with a carefully placed landmine attack.

Fight summary: It's very unlikely that you'll be able to kill both bosses on the tightest timing - you may want to kill one or two bosses intentionally just to increase the time between respawns. Once you have enough time, carefully damage the bosses down in unison, so that both bosses only have a tick or two of rainbow damage left on their health bar.

Find yourself a good position where the minions from the second boss won't block your shot, or where you can quickly destroy them with a landmine, then kill the first boss. Dispatch the minions if they're in the way, and then kill the second boss before the first one respawns.

Floor 10

Core concept: Escort quest

Rescue the damsel being carried around by one of the three bosses

Tip 1: Reach the safe-zone by the stairs with the damsel on your shoulder to win the boss fight.

Tip 2: The bosses drop the damsel when they get trapped. Run into her to pick her up yourself. Be careful because the bosses can steal her back if they catch you.

Tip 3: Each boss corresponds to one of your box colors, figure out all three before you try to rescue the damsel.

Tip 4: The bosses break different box colors, so when they're chasing you to get the damsel back, figure out what order you need to drop boxes so that the other bosses don't break them.

Fight summary: You probably want to clear an enemy-free path from the stairs to the area with the bosses so that you can sprint back easily once you have the damsel. The bosses will periodically teleport the damsel between themselves in an attempt to keep her away from you - just be patient and look for an opportunity to get close to the one carrying her.

Once you have him trapped, run up and touch her, if you run straight into her it should pick her up. Make sure you get away as quickly as possible because the bosses can easily steal her back if they catch you.

As you run away you'll want to cast a series of boxes in the order Blue-Yellow-Red so that the bosses get trapped and don't break each-other out. If you cast in a different order you'll notice that it isn't very effective in keeping the bosses off your back, because one will get trapped but quickly be broken out by another boss running through, rather than having to wait a few seconds for the box to break itself.

Floor 11

Core concept: Multi-class fight

These three bosses interact with each other, and you need to figure out which ones are most important to take out first.

Tip 1: Each boss has unique talents, but in basic terms it's a tank/sniper/healer fight. The tank runs around breaking boxes and stunning the player, the sniper inflicts major damage and casts a vortex, and the healer constantly adds shields to the bosses.

Tip 2: The red vortex will teleport you to a different corner of the level if you're in it when it explodes, so make sure you don't get stunned on top of it by the tank. If you get teleported, hurry back, the sniper boss can hit you across the entire level!

Tip 3: You'll need to use rainbows to damage the bosses. Toss a box on a boss and shoot your rainbow through it. Box color is basically irrelevant for this fight, just keep the tank occupied.

Fight summary: One of the most important elements of this fight is keeping the tank busy by placing boxes a large distance apart. You'll want to drop boxes on top or near the other bosses too so you can shoot them with a rainbow while you keep the tank occupied. If he gets bored he'll come over and stun you.

The order you dispatch the bosses is up to you, but the most efficient way is probably to get rid of the shield boss first, unless you're having a big problem with vortexes or the tank. Once you kill the shield boss you should be able to take the vortex boss out quickly, and then keep the tank running around while you shoot him with a rainbow through a box placed close to your character.

Make sure you keep an eye on the vortex and move immediately after it spawns. It doesn't chase you even if you move instantly, like the void on the earlier boss, so get out as soon as possible so you don't accidentally get stunned in the vortex radius. Once you kill the sniper boss the vortexes will stop appearing.

Floor 12

Core concept: Positional

This is the only boss fight with special animations, she has a couple moves that randomly alternate and require you to move around.

Tip 1: The boss is only damaged by standing within the small circle around her. If you're outside the circle you sustain damage and heal the boss.

Tip 2: She has two moves, a ground-slam attack which requires you to move out of her circle. You won't sustain damage for being outside her circle while the attack is executing. The second attack is a swipe, which stuns you and knocks you back if you get caught in it.

Tip 3: Her ground-slam isn't interruptible, but the swipe can be interrupted by a box that's the same color as the sparkles on the edge of the mattress.

Fight summary: This fight is fully positional, try to stay close to the boss (preferably in the circle) and be prepared to stop or move away if you see the ground-slam animation start. If you see the pull-back for the swipe starting you need to box the boss with the appropriate color as soon as possible, to capitalize on her stun for a few precious seconds of circle-standing.

Floor 13

Core concept: Sound

This is a novelty fight that requires you to be in the circle of bosses.

Tip 1: If you're hearing a buzzer it means you're outside the circle, and the boss won't do the split and rearrange necessary to beat him. If you're in the circle you should hear a series of chimes indicating which boss to throw a box at.

Tip 2: The damage you take if you box a clone rather than the real boss is based on your health when you started the fight. It's a percentage, so having really high vb won't help you in this fight - everyone only has a few wrong answers before they die.

Tip 3: Start counting from the boss/clone with a different shirt color.

Fight summary: This a novelty fight about listening and picking the correct target, but if you've turned off subtitles you may want to turn them back on for this fight if you're having trouble recognizing the sounds. Start counting from the boss/clone with the different colored shirt, and move your cursor around the circle clockwise until you hear the chime indicating the boss position.

If you get the count right and trap the correct one, the circle will reshuffle and the boss will split again, if you pick the wrong one you'll sustain damage, and if you choose not to answer you'll also sustain damage when the boss reshuffles, which happens if you take more than 10 seconds after the final beep/chime.