Hello everyone!

I’d like to share with you a bit about the character design of my first compo entry “15”. Approaching the theme from a minimalist perspective was a design restriction that enabled me to focus heavily on the dynamics of what are the easily overlooked character identities.

(ooh fancy, my original “sketches” of the character design)

In keeping the scope of the game small, I was happy to be able to subtly and purposefully tune more detail-oriented aspects like the monster design. As you can my “scribbled” concept art, I went into it with plans for a large player to contrast against smaller objects– creating a player character that takes up larger-than-normal amount of screen real-estate was an idea I’d been wanting to explore for a while.

The way I wanted the square to express monstrosity was through inescapable aggression and destruction which creates impactful feedback. I weighed both the objective and termination condition in a feedback loop that and rewards and even requires destruction.

Having the feedback loop be so directly linked to user actions is how I hope a perceptive player can pick up on a more sinister presence; because the deaths of the neutral creatures are necessary only under pressure from only decreasing number. So really, the decreasing number “15” is what I intended to be actual monster in this game; the square was a false flag.

While identifying this hidden monster isn’t core to the gameplay experience, it’s just one of the few little things I was able to add in my game to reward a deeply invested player awareness. To see what other subtleties you can pick up on, check out out the convenient link right here!