Posted July 25, 2025 by BrukhoLevin
In the previous post, I enclosed this image:
Drawn sometime in September of 2021, approximately a year before even the idea of Kenoma came to be.
This was the first depiction of what would eventually become the player character of Kenoma. At that point it was just a drawing; I never even expected it to have to walk, so practical concerns like animating it didn’t much factor in. But when it came time to choose what the player would control, I had no other options available. So this had to do.
The initial character concept I decided to pursue was simple: there wasn’t one. No name, no dialogue, nothing. Only a player avatar through which you experience the game world. At the time it felt right: a shapeless hero would allow players to more readily be themselves within the world. Reworking the design caused this to shift.
The artistic principles here are fairly basic, yet allow for a significant improvement over the prior design.
It is tempting to create a false narrative of ‘the auteur’ when detailing these things. Were it my aim, I could wax poetic about how the silhouettes compare or how the new design uses more shapes. But that is not my aim. This design was driven by practical concerns first and foremost. For instance: a character with 90% of their body as a single trapezoid makes for very flat and boring animations, so I opened the design up a bit. And I chose to clothe the character in a dress because it would let me avoid a “leg-driven” walking/running animation, which I felt would be impossible to make look good in the chosen style.
The design of the main character echoed through the rest of the art, informing the drafting process of every sprite and on some occasions being used as a literal measuring stick. Sometimes I would forgo this measure, realize something was too large or too small, and have to redo it entirely. In terms of character design, one of my largest takeaways was to avoid arms whenever possible. Draw cloaks, have hands floating, make things too abstract to even need them. This because, like legs, arms are very difficult to work in this style.
It was also here that I decided to make the protagonist a woman. At the time, I did not recognize this as the passing bell of the ‘formless avatar’ phase of her design. Looking back it’s rather obvious. Defining anything about a player-surrogate will inevitably turn them into something else, because they can’t be a surrogate if they have traits of their own. Especially in a game so text-heavy.
As stated above, this character initially had no character. But when a game is primarily composed of a specific character interacting with the world around her, she doesn’t tend to stay that way. Even if you intend to be neutral, a character emerges in the dialogue responses you write. It’s just impossible to avoid. Besides, it would be rather strange for one character out of the entire roster to have no traits. The player would feel a tension, an awkwardness about it. “Why am I so robotic?” or something of the sort.
Once I realized that there was, indeed, a character in my player character, I quickly settled on the classic ‘nosy wanderer’ as an archetype to shoot for. In this game the protagonist needs to be the kind of person who would, sight unseen, choose to throw her weight behind a cause because of the cut of a leader’s jib, or because she has a gut-level preference for one side over another. Someone who would go into a home without invitation to poke around, or examine every corner of an old storeroom looking for anything hidden. And, of course, she must be strange. Strangeness goes hand-in-hand with being a wandering type: to choose or be forced into a transient lifestyle requires a certain detachment. Either as a gateway to the lifestyle, or as a coping mechanism in response to it. That detachment breeds a specific kind of oddity which is often useful.
A happy accident of this characterization is that an odd soul who says strange things is less likely to be seen by players as just an avatar, instead taking on a life of its own in their heads. This is good primarily because if I went to all this effort in characterizing the protagonist and people did not take note of it, I’d cry.
Finally: the name. Names are important, especially in fiction; they’re the first impression and can be one of the most concise, evocative pieces of characterization in your toolkit. In Kenoma you can name the protagonist whatever you want, but a well-defined personality needs a defined name. And what fun is it if there’s no default? I wavered for a while, but ultimately settled on “Ghost”. This because of her transience, existence ‘between’ worlds, and because it has a nice ring to it. Synonyms for ‘ghost’ like ‘phantom’ and ‘specter’ were considered, but they all felt a bit too pretentious. Besides, ‘ghost’ is a much more visceral, much punchier word.
Ghost is, in a certain sense, the most important character in the story. She was one of the first designed, had a major influence on how the rest of the game came together, and as the protagonist none of this happens without her. In another sense, she’s the least important character. You can’t directly interact with her, she’s not subject to a substantive narrative arc, and the player isn’t likely to see her as something separate from themselves, something to be interacted with and explored. This is true of most player characters in most games, and hopefully means that the Ghost I’ve written will perform her function admirably. And who knows? Maybe she’ll still leave an impression.