Hey! I shared these last night on twitter, so I thought I would go over some concept designs and functionality for the characters. ^^

Starting off with the first ever rough sketch of Charlotte and Vanellope (who was previously named Vivian). This was the first ever time I have drawn the characters.

This would eventually turn into a more polished up and clean sketch to define the design a bit better.

Once I had the design down, I started coming up with different gameplay ideas that would suit a reindeer, and eventually settled on a bell collar!

after the Christmas Sage2023 demo, I started to re-design Charlotte. Shockingly, I settled on a new design faster than I thought I would!

Some alternate concepts included:

This Charlotte design that I felt was... not at all fitting for the kind of game I was trying to make, so I eventually went back to the original body design, and just changed up the head shape to fit the world better. (This down here is the scrapped re-design)

Before Charlotte was created, there were different protagonists, these guys were the original intended protagonist for the game, and It was actually before the game was even holiday themed!

When Sophie was created, I originally intended her to be the main villain of the game. So when I sketched out her designs, she always appeared as angry or vicious, compared to her joyful and gentle personality in the current version.

Sophie was also planned to disguise herself as a deer in most of the game, specifically to resemble Charlotte's mother, however my only hint at this not being the case, was that the opposite antler was broken.

Other fun facts:

When I first created SLAY-BELLS, it originally started as a fan remake of PAC-MAN WORLD 2, until I decided to rebrand it into an original IP.

I decided that instead of remaking my favorite 3D platformer, I could try making a brand new game that gives off a similar feeling, and possibly give other people the same experience that I had when I first played PAC-MAN WORLD 2. That is a game that always amused me when I was little, and one of the only video games that made me feel like I was a part of the world at the time, and I hope SLAY-BELLS will give people that feeling too when they play it.

Here are some photos of when it was a PAC-MAN WORLD 2 remake:

and here it is currently:

SLAY-BELLS has been quite the journey so far (possibly even a little more than Pinky-Bash). I hope that when it eventually comes out, people will have a wonderful experience with it. What once started as a remake, to a smaller platformer, to what it is now, I'm very thankful for this journey so far. It goes to show what kind of things you can make, just because you're passionate about something you love or grew up with.

Thank you for reading!