Develop fun and engaging game characters with Milanote

A character might start as a bundle of random ideas, traits and plot points from your game concept, so it’s important to bring everything together in one place. A character archetype can help narrow your focus. There are twelve common archetypes or personas that we recognize across literature, mythology, and the human experience: The Innocent, Everyman, Hero, Outlaw, Explorer, Creator, Ruler, Magician, Lover, Caregiver, Jester, and Sage.

Archetypes provide guidelines for behaviors, gameplay, and even opposing enemies. A great example is the selfless hero—Link from The Legend of Zelda. This archetype helps inform his personality, visual appearance, skillset, and quest to save Princess Zelda.

Just like people, characters are made up of their past experiences, goals, and aspirations. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Dreams are the touchstones of our characters.” Some aspects of their backstory might not make it into the game but will they help your artists and animators make the character more believable.

How does their visual appearance match their backstory and your concept for the game? Consider details such as clothing, facial features, height, weaponry, or even their home environment.

Explore ways to break out of the expected appearance for this type of character. For example, could your hero's weapon be a shovel blade instead of the standard sword? Another approach is to exaggerate certain attributes in order to make your character more interesting, and unique. Could they have longer limbs with greater reach or wild hair that doubles as armor?

Next, start to visualize the look of your character with sketches and reference imagery. Perhaps your character is a wise old man that lives near the sea, symbolizing timelessness and eternity. Or your villain may be decked out in black armor, symbolic of power, doom, and darkness.

There are lots of fantastic sites where you can find great visual inspiration for free, like Dribbble, Pinterest, or Google Images. You can also create a character moodboard at this stage to help explore all aspects of their appearance. See the guide on creating moodboards to learn more.

Now it's time to think about how they move, attack enemies and defend themselves. Consider their weight, speed, and style. Are they heavy or agile, how does their movement match their physical appearance?

Do they have a super-power or can they acquire special powerups that transform their abilities? Consider how they interact with the other characters in the game. For example, if your character is more powerful, perhaps you can balance this by making them slower than their opponents.

Bring your gameplay ideas to life by collecting references of how animation and movement could work. This is the fastest (and cheapest) way to help your team visualize the animation style you have in your head.

Grab some animated GIFs from Giphy, video from YouTube, or even audio from Soundcloud to add motion and depth to the look and feel of your character.

Once you have everything you need, it's time to organize your content into logical topics. The goal here is to present the character to your team in an inspiring and concise format.

After any final tweaks, it’s time to share the character profile with the rest of your team. Invite others to critique and build on top of your ideas. Make sure you stay open to suggestions and improvements and try not to take criticism personally.

It's important not to fall into the trap of giving just one character too much responsibility for the dramatic functions of your game. It's better to create additional characters that compliment and contrast the traits of your main character. You can repeat the above process to develop a whole cast of characters that help bring your game to life.