Game developer-based conference CDEC 2020 took place this weekend, one of the games touched on in several sessions of the conference Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Many of the game’s major developers came from Nintendo to showcase how the team was able to create the game’s favorite, colorful villagers. (Thanks, 4 Gamer!)

Visual design

Animal Crossing: New Horizons There are about 400 unique villagers, and because there are so many people, each player will have their own unique villager to show off to others. However, in order to make the villagers popular with the players, the team needs to design animal villagers so that the players “want to interact with them” and “see what they are doing.” It all starts with diversifying their form.

It all starts with the silhouette. All animal villagers have different silhouettes for the species, and players can easily tell which village they are from, even from a distance.

Although you can find them by knowing the personality of the villager and talking to him, to do this work, the character designers started with a silhouette so that they can only tell superficial information “The villager is a cat. “By limiting the amount of information at the outset, it stimulates the imagination to find out what kind of cat people are.

Silhouettes are very simple, because adding more features like “changing fur” does nothing but limit the number of cats that developers can think of.

As such, developers start with a simple silhouette and create characters from different textures. However, since they are ordinary villagers living a normal life on the island, they need to be visually designed so that they are not too isolated. On the other hand, they add more details in the designs to give each one an individual presence and to give more visual information.

While limiting the silhouette of the characters seems to limit the expression of creativity in the character design, it actually enhances creativity because the developers can create some villains with very out-of-design, yet accept them as cats.

When deciding on the personalities of each villager, the developers look at real life, and see how each of the five personalities is based on vision. It helps to establish a relationship with the villagers because the players can imagine that they are similar to someone they know.

Although all 35 Animal Crossing: New Horizon Different rural species are designed to draw on the distinctive characteristics of their species, one thing you may not have noticed, though, is how one expresses emotions. This is to further enhance the relationship between players and animal caregivers.

Here are some of the different styles that developers have tried before settling into the signature character design style.

Activities

Although character designs and personalities are important, another factor in making villagers popular is the steps they take in gameplay. Players should not feel robotic or formulaic in their actions. As part of this, the villagers have two common activities, which are self-implementing and derived from the current situation.

This includes eating, doing yoga, sweeping the floor, fishing, and more to show that the villagers are leading their lives. Villagers interested in music are seen singing regularly, and villagers who like to read are seen reading more. By adjusting the frequency of actions and patterns, developers can make villagers feel that they have their own will in what they do.

In addition, the villagers will change their clothes to suit what they are doing, which gives more impression.

The actions that the villagers find and do something depend on what the villagers see at that time. For example, if they see a bug, they may follow it to catch it, or it may be on furniture dropped by the player. The transition from “doing it on their own” to “doing something with what they found” happens automatically when they find something. However, if they change what they are doing quickly, it can seem very robotic.

Similarly, in New Horizons, The developers built it so that the villagers would look at the object and think about it, giving the players space to imagine what they were thinking before engaging with any object they found.

By distinguishing the appearance, personality and activities of the villagers and giving enough space to the imagination of the players, the developers were able to make each villager unique and endearing to the players. As players interact more and more with the villagers and see how they work, each player will create their own special memories with the villagers. As time goes on, the villagers realize it without any specifics for the players.