Character creators are more important than ever: An interview with the team of Witchy Life Story
Video games profoundly benefit from the player’s relationship with the avatar. As an in-game representation of self that facilitates identity, participation, and self-expression, there are few art forms that foster such a direct relationship between artist and audience. In the past several years, as the desire for diverse representation in games has grown, character creators have helped meet the demand, offering a mix-and-match set of visual traits through which the player can make a protagonist of their own choosing, like a game of virtual paper dolls.
One developer making this value a foundation of their game’s design is Allie Ast, founder and creative director of Sundew Studios. Her latest project, Witchy Life Story, is a visual novel that combines elements of dating and crafting sims, with players customizing their avatar from over two dozen options that include everything from pronouns to body type. For Ast and her team, making a game with a diverse character creator wasn’t just a cute way to expand upon the game’s folksy, 70’s-inspired art style. It was also a means to make something they themselves wanted to play, a game that reflected their shared desire to see themselves in the virtual worlds they live in.
“Being a woman, a lot of the time the only time we get to play as women in games, even still, is if you can choose the gender of your character,” Ast tells Game Developer via video chat. Witchy Life Story, she says, had originally been conceived as a Stardew Valley-type farming simulator, but later gave way to more of a narrative-driven format, taking visual inspiration from the folksy plant and witchcraft subcultures on platforms like Instagram. It was also a product of her love for playing dress-up in Barbie
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