Boss two, the Pen Pal

On September 25 the roadmap for Earfh gained a section headed "Release target." The answer is Steam, PC first. Earfh is a twin-stick shooter for mouse and gamepad at 1280 by 720 in landscape, which also suits the Steam Deck.

The first milestone is Early Access, and it has a condition. It waits until the run has two acts, with act 1 ending at the Comb Overlord and act 2 at a second boss. The stated goal is early revenue and player feedback. That one line turned boss number two from an idea into a requirement.

Leftover art

The second boss already had a body. When the enemy sprites were remodeled on September 24, the new art drew the Comb Overlord as a CEO. His moveset spec sent him back to being a parody caricature, as Meet the Comb Overlord covers, and early on the 25th the CEO art moved to a new name. That became the Pen Pal, an original evil CEO in a navy power suit with a pink tie and a gold fountain pen.

His design spec landed that afternoon. It records that the first pitch for his moveset was thrown out because it overlapped the Comb Overlord's fans, rings, crowd and charges, so boss number two would have played like a reskin. The reworked set leans on things the first boss never does, such as trails, walls, a shrinking room, teleports and a sweep.

The fight

He fights in two forms on 800 health. THE BOARDROOM runs to half. His most frequent attack there is the Fine Print, a short pen jab that leaves an ink puddle slowing the player to 60%. Sign Here scrawls a signature trail that hurts to stand in. Mandatory Meeting raises eight cubicle walls in a ring around the player. Each wall blocks movement and shots in both directions, breaks at 30 damage and sinks after six seconds. Downsizing flashes the arena edge red and then creeps a damaging border in from every wall.

The first time a hit would take him below 75%, he pulls a Golden Parachute instead. He turns invulnerable for a second, flashes a gold shield and dashes away, once per fight.

At half he becomes HOSTILE TAKEOVER, with the same two second invulnerable transformation and banner that the Comb Overlord's Second Term uses. Leveraged Buyout teleports him onto a marker near the player for two strikes, then leaves him winded for 1.2 seconds, which is the punish window. Market Crash sweeps a red stock chart line across the arena with one gap in it, and only the dip is safe. Static Crest chains lightning between markers. Red Ink fires homing bolts. Every attack has a telegraphed wind-up and deals no damage during it, a rule carried over from the first boss.

The code change under him mattered as much as the moves. The Comb Overlord's boss class was generalized so a second boss is data instead of a copy, and the spec required every existing Comb Overlord test to pass without changing what it asserts.

Where he lives for now

His real home is the act 2 level, and it does not exist yet. A separate spec plans it as corporate headquarters, with offices, a trading floor and an executive suite. Until it is built, the Pen Pal is fought only in a debug practice arena, a square room with four pillars reached from a button on the prep screen that appears only in debug builds. He is not in the run a player can reach.

Play against him has already added two findings to the roadmap. His contact damage kept landing inside a Mandatory Meeting ring, because the ring traps the player within 150 pixels and his contact range is 120. Whether that reads as fair is an open question. Bosses also used to lose their target and go idle whenever knockback or the parachute's own dash carried them out of detection range. They now keep a target until the player is gone.

The same day, an audio audit found that all 22 registered sound effects play nothing, because their folder does not exist, and sound effects are on the list of jobs before Early Access. Every number in the Pen Pal's tables is a first guess too, and the roadmap asks for one run against him with each weapon, with each form timed.