Hello!
Happy to say that after a lot of experimentation, I now have a "boss" enemy to fight in my game. This is the first of what I am going to call "Barons" in the game - they're bigger and tougher than standard enemies, and have different moves they'll use on the player. This first baron is named Bluestreak, and he's a giant lizard (I named him after one of my favorite rollercoasters at Cedar Point 😁)
In addition to having a lot more health, a visible health bar, and a name tag, this enemy is also set apart by its special moves. Basically, the enemy has a script that draws a random number every few seconds, and that number decides what attack the enemy will do next - either a standard attack or one of his specials. His first special is a rotating laser beam - Bluestreak starts a charge-up animation, which gives the player a little bit of time to prepare (e.g., run for his life), and then Bluestreak will blast out four lasers. As you can see below, it pretty much melts the player's health bar, so the best move is to bail.
Bluestreak's other move is to power himself up and charge at the player, where damage is dealt upon impact. Like with the laser, a few seconds of animation gives the player the ability to get out of the way. With both of these specials, I intend to give the player a good feeling of "ebb and flow" with boss battles, i.e. there's a time to attack and a time to retreat. I think it makes for fun, stimulating gameplay.
Now that I have more variety in enemies, I think I want to touch up the game and create a demo for it that people can download and play. First, I'll need to play-test it a bit and settle on some proper attack, buff, and defense values for the player and the enemies (thus far, I've been throwing random-ish numbers out to get something going). I've never balanced a game before with so many different values, but this is really an essential part of many games and I'm looking forward to this experience.
--Josh