The Characters

For Spike himself, I wanted him to be cute and likeable for the players and viewers of the game. I also wanted him to be slightly quirky, as I feel quirkiness is an underlying theme which runs throughout the project. Particularly within the art style. To help suggest this quirkiness, I made him a lot smaller than the other cacti and game him a plaster, which also could suggest a big about his personality. Such as being clumsy, which can further entice viewers into the game and who want to know and learn more about Spike.
Although I did not go further into Spikes personality as such, creating him to be slightly different than the other cacti and the players being curious about spike could leaves it open to possible opportunities to further develop the 'Spike' story.

This is final design of Spike I came up with, keeping him within the art style and colour scheme.

Later on in the story, a human character gets introduced. I decided not to give this character a name as I wanted to keep this character androgynous. To help keep the game appealing to both genders from the children who play it. As young children can be quite picky and what character they chose to be when playing a game. If I had more time to develop this project, I would quite like to add in more options for the player to chose, such as chose between which character choses to take Spike home. I also feel this would add even more interaction with the game and make the player feel as if they have created the story themselves.

Below are some character designs of the character. I decided to give the character headwear, such as the bunny ears to again help contribute to the quirkiness of the overall feel to the game. I also think the character looks quite cute and perhaps close to the children's age who would be playing this game.

I decided to go for the top left character design.

The age bracket I am aiming this project towards would be about preschool age of around 3 to about 5/6. Since it is a very simply designed game, which extremely simple puzzles throughout. Any children older playing this game, I feel would quickly become bored. As they would have advanced past the simple puzzles and games by that stage in life.