Blog post #6: Let's talk about Harkness

Our concepting really started from the idea of a mobile game. Simple idea that we made into this story-driven game that we’re now making. When the concepting shifted towards more story-driven game, we made clear line (5 levels) we were going to use. But that’s pretty much a different story, for different post. Now is time to talk about Harkness.

Our beloved main character, Harkness, senior worker in GemFall Wokrforce Inc.

There has been a lot of different Harkness' along the way. First, we have this idea of protagonist being 80's manly man who walks away from the explosion. You know the type if you have seen any of movies with explosions and sweat. Or lately seen Kung Fury. All concept idea was to make the story and setting really over the top. We don't know that happened, but we shifted away from that idea.

Then came the Harkness we have now. Some things from the early concept idea were still there. He is just working there, making his living and his basically sort of lone wolf type of worker. But Harkness became more of an everyday man. This Harkness (Harkness 2.0) has evolved, but not so roughly as Harkness 1.0 (80's hero).

Like, if you look Harkness in our concept designs, he has his priorities straight. Coffee before anything else. (Well, the mug might be from his co-worker or default mug in GemFall Workforce Inc.)

by Dicenete 

So, we have heavily moved for more story-driven game so, like in last blog, we have face the need for more world-building and humane characters. Now we must care about the characters and make sure that player cares about them too. All this affects the pacing of the game, the narrative and even our game design choices. (I'm not saying cool looking hero action isn't cared for and in some cases made so perfectly that they are awesome, it's just a different kind of narrative choice that rely on different things.)

We have to make Harkness’ design that in mind. And we also need to focus on his story arc and try to bring that to the design of his character.

And about that Harkness helmet, that was inspired by Power Rangers. Here are some concept we had for it.

By Dicenete

And finally, you can see Harkness finalized design in GemFall Workforce Inc mobile game. We may do some changes along the way, to sharpen the design and character, but this is what we have now. And it's pretty finalized. And we like him. Harkness is cool.

Harkness starting his normal work day in GemFall Workforce Inc.

_Rx3 Team