Character Research and Concepts
In order for people to actually play our game, they need to have a character or cast of to play as when surviving our environment within our game. A main talking point within our studio is that we want the main character to be a scientist who is navigating the area to find answers to the outbreak and to learn about the new types of creatures that have overwhelmed the population and taken over. I decided to study some of the approaches taken within media when designing characters.
One approach commonly used within films and games is to use stereotypes or character tropes to design their characters based upon. This means that they take different personas or divisions to create classes for their characters or just to create characters as a whole. I wanted to try something like this in order to experiment with different types of character and how they would slot into the world we are trying to create. Our group has unanimously agreed we definitely want a scientist or high intellect character as one of our main focal points within our surviving cast so this is something I will take into account when designing.
I looked into a few games to understand what types of characters they included within their design work and how I can use this for our project.
This is an asymmetrical horror game called ' last year ' where a group of high school students face off against a variety of killers and must work together to escape before they are caught and killed. This game uses tropes you would find within a school setting such as the Jock, The nerd, The social butterfly to create their characters while also giving these characters classes that would connect to the personality traits that come from their trope. For example, with last year, the Jock is assigned the assault class as they would be the best people in a school setting for using force and engaging in combat due to their higher agility and strength from having an active sporty personality. They have quite flashy trendy designs. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the technician class. This class is assigned to the nerds who are depicted to be a lot less attractive by social standards and are far shorter and skinnier than the Jocks. They are dressed a lot less flashy wearing more mature looking clothing that wouldn't link to as popular of a status in a school environment. These characters would not be as good as the jocks at brute strength but would be considered a lot smarter using their brain as their main contribution to the team to work on objectives and escape. Another game that uses a similar concept to this but less direct would be the game for the Friday the 13th franchise. As I mentioned previously, this idea of using tropes for characters is popular in both the game and film industries and is a sure-fire way of ensuring you create a character that everybody from all walks of life can enjoy or relate too.
Bishop, R., 2014. ‘Last Year’, A multiplayer survival horror video game that pits stereotypical teens against a killer [online]. Laughing Squid. Available at: https://laughingsquid.com/last-year-a-multiplayer-survival-horror-video-game-that-pits-stereotypical-teens-against-a-killer/ [Accessed 8 February 2025].
Other games use this same trope system but use it a bit differently through other stereotyping's. A school setting or a summer camp both share similar characters that you'd expect to find there but these character tropes would not work for every theme.
Another game that does this but differently is the revival game to the Left 4 Dead series Back 4 Blood. Instead of using high school tropes they use personality tropes to create their individual characters. The main poster girl of the game is Holly. She sports a fun outfit with a playful backwards cap and has a bat that she names. She's an ex sports star so all her stats and abilities involve her performing well in physically demanding situations. She has a happy playful personality and this is reflected in her design and colours. Another character within this franchise is Karlee. She sports a purple leather punk getup with piercings and slicked dyed hair. Her character is very overconfident and cocky. All of her abilities revolve around her being sly and being able to sneak past the detection of enemies as well as see them coming before anybody else. Her personality and ability set reflects back to her overconfident personality and her rebellious take to life.
Williams, D., 2021. New ‘Back 4 Blood’ trailer explores cast of characters and abilities [online]. NME. Available at: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/back-4-blood-latest-trailer-explores-characters-abilities-2945034 [Accessed 8 February 2025].
Killer Klowns from Outer Space the Game also uses a similar method as the previous two for characters and their roles but instead they use jobs and backgrounds for their characters.
Some of the separate groups included within the many classes within this game are the Punks, The Police force and the Rednecks among others. Each of these classes differ from each other through their visual character design and fashion choices, their personalities and their strengths and weaknesses.
Games, I.A.T., Killer Klowns from Outer Space: The game artbook [online]. Available at: https://archive.org/details/kkfos_artbook/page/n27/mode/2up.
I decided I wanted to try and create a set of 3 characters that were inspired by some of the roles and ideas I had explored within this segment of my research work to help towards the production of our game. I needed to work on an idea for the creation of a scientist as that is the main concept for a character within our project. I also wanted to try and create a Jock style character as well as a rebellious character. These characters could be assisting the scientist with his exploration or simply be joining the adventure for their own motives.
Using what I have learned and what I have taken from the other games I have looked into, I created each character and designed their appearance to match their personalities and the type of character that they are. The scientist I kept very clean and put together wearing clothes that are more mature and grown. He is a less childish character and I wanted his appearance to reflect this so you can immediately tell he is the smarter character of the cast. For the Jock, I put him in jorts and a school sports Jerzy that reflects his personality. I kept him with a simple and clean hairstyle and used bright clear colours to show his confidence. For my last character, I wanted her to contradict the jock and wanted her to be everything he isn't and vice versa. I used duller more muted tones with splashes of colour to show that she is a less socially constricted character.
I created these mock-ups to showcase what these characters would potentially look like featured on a selection screen or upgrade screen that lets the player know their strengths and weaknesses through the usage of stats.
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