A Tomb Raider and Horizon designer breaks down what makes a great boss fight

Marcin Matuszczyk, principal gameplay designer on the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and a veteran of both Horizon Forbidden West and Outriders, gave a boss design masterclass at Digital Dragons this year — walking a room full of aspiring developers through what separates a memorable boss encounter from a forgettable one.

The presentation covered the core principles Matuszczyk has carried across three very different action games. While the article frames his insights with theatrical flair — invoking Michael Caine's magician monologue from The Prestige as a tonal guide — the substance is practical game design thinking aimed at developers who want to build encounters with real weight and craft.

Matuszczyk's background makes him a credible voice on the subject. Horizon Forbidden West is known for its large-scale machine bosses that layer mechanical complexity with visual spectacle, while Outriders leaned into punishing, build-dependent encounters. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, the new Netflix-backed animated series tie-in game currently in development, will presumably demand its own flavour of boss design — though no specifics about that project were shared in the talk.

The article itself is light on hard bullet points and heavy on atmosphere, which means the sharpest takeaways are embedded in the prose rather than laid out as a checklist. If you're building bosses — or just curious how the people who make them think — it's worth reading in full.