I *very* briefly considered boss battles, one at the top of the mines and one at the top of the tower.
Designing bosses when there's no combat would have been challenging, but the loose idea is that the mines one would have a been a large piece of automated construction equipment that would have required a number of stalactites dropped upon it. The tower would have been a large flying creature that would have swooped down and attacked the players. The players would have needed to dodge at the right time to get the creature to bite some tower-top shrubs instead. With a belly full on shrubbery, it would have been placated and either flown off or slept.
Bosses were scrapped due to being beyond the scope of our already-ambitious game. I scoured notebooks, but I don't think these even made it to the sketch stage.