Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
suggests that she's a more seasoned fighter and will behave more aggressively. The alchemist
carries a sword—longer than a dagger, but less brutal than the axe. She prefers to avoid direct
confrontations—her real threat is her fire. And the princess' fencing foil is a class signifier; fenc-
ing is about grace and poise before deadly force. The princess
can kill but would like to avoid
confrontation entirely.
The armored slave carries a long spear and a large shield: the shield provides a context for why
she can only be zapped from behind or from the sides. But a shield doesn't suggest harm, it
doesn't convince me that she's deadly to touch. As a player, I might expect her to push the
queen with her shield before I'd expect her to kill the queen. That's why the long spear reaches
past the shield, to ensure that the front of the slave's silhouette is a sharp point, not a flat
surface.
Character design also differentiates the slaves from the queen—this is more important than it
sounds, because the queen's position is the most important position on the screen. The player
needs to be able to identify it immediately. This would be difficult if she wasn't easily distin-
guishable from all the other moving characters on the screen—and there are usually a lot.
The queen has four legs (when viewed from the side), which makes for a different silhouette
compared to the slave with two legs (see Figure
). Also significant is the color. As with
Zaga-
33
's monsters and items, the queen is depicted with a different color palette than the slaves.
Slaves are yellow, magenta, and red, sometimes white. (The princess wears white jewelry, and
a cocooned slave is wrapped in white.) The queen is red and blue—blue being a much cooler
color than any that the slaves wear. The combination of blue and red, in equal parts, also repre-
sents the most
4.9
contrast on the screen—a natural place for the eye to home in on.
Figure 4.9
Comparing the silhouettes of the queen and slave.
A more subtle difference is that while every slave has a mouth and eyes, the queen's face is
blank. She has a nose and shadows that could suggest cheeks, but no eyes or mouth. This sets
up a dichotomy that reflects the power dynamics in the game's relationships: the primary use
