Clockworks levels offer a unique aspect in that they are different every time. What if boss areas did, too?

I'm a fan of the Spiral Knights level generation algorithm. I also think it could do some cooler things. But on the whole, it builds levels from a set of puzzle pieces. In the Clockworks, a variety of pre-designed rooms are linked together with corridors.

For boss areas, the idea isn't to radically change the structure so that it's TOTALLY different every time. You'd still follow the same paths, but the rooms you go through along the way might have two or three options to pick from. So you don't know exactly what to expect when you start the run, but once you get used to all of the rooms you'll know what's coming as you get to each area. Even so, each run will be a little different.

Some of the best candidates for this?

- Floor 2 of Jelly. The place where you're collecting four keys to go through a set of gates, and there's one in each corner. Each corner could have a few options to choose from.
- Simlarly, D25 of FSC. Eight rooms with Sprites. If you want, though, you could set up the "rocket puppy room" area as a set of rooms all of which contain rocket puppies. Themes can be preserved.
- In Snarby, there's a place where you collect two keys, one to the left and one to the right. The side rooms are prime candidates.

But beyond areas of "collect these keys/sprites/statues" you could also do this with a lot of areas along the regular path. So long as the entrance and exit are located in the same place, what's between the two could vary. And the overall structure of the boss area remains the same.

All in all, as far as "more content" ideas go, this may be one of the most rewarding for player experience, since boss runs are the most common runs, and this doesn't really require new art, enemies, game mechanics, etc. It just requires some inspired room design and some level generation algorithm work, which isn't trivial but should be realistic.

I will admit that it ruins boss speedrunning a bit, since we would no longer have a fixed path, and payouts could vary if the areas don't contain the exact same enemies. But I feel most people would be willing to give that up for boss runs that don't get stale quite as quickly.