Hey everyone!
It’s been a little while since I did a post like this and since chapter four's release is getting a little closer, it’s time to start reminding everyone that My Beautiful Paper Smile still exists by talking about it here. In this post, I’ll be talking about some of the things and characters that inspired the characters you see in my game.
The King
I have to start with the king since this was the very first character that I designed for the game. Many months before I even had the idea for My Beautiful Paper Smile, I had been sketching some random pictures while bored in school. One of the characters was this creepy smiling goat character with a crown. Why? Because goats are weird, smiling goats are weirder, and a smiling goat king just takes the cake. Basically just a strange idea from the mind of a painfully bored student. Months after that when I was trying to get some good game ideas I found that drawing while doing some cleaning and decided it would make a great horror game character.
The Joyous
The Joyous were designed to have some resemblance to the king. I knew I wanted the king to be self-obsessed, and thought it might make him a creepier character if he wanted everyone to look like him. I also had recently learned about the game Sally Face and liked the mystery of Sally always wearing a mask, and never getting to see this character's face. This is where the inspiration of the eternal horned masks comes from. The king wants all his people to look like him. The kids also have goat hooves, but that gets a little more complicated.
The Lost Child
When writing the game's story...
Spider People
I’m making a horror game. People are scared of spiders. Add spiders to a horror game. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
The Hunter
This character was added because of certain events that occur in the first chapter of the game, so if you haven’t played the game short Night in Riverager yet I have very kindly blacked out the rest of this character's origins due to spoilers. You’re very welcome.
Alright, for those of you who have already played through the first chapter and know about the capture of our Joyous friend, this is why the hunter was added.
In the first chapter, I used the friend character as a way to add discussion between characters to help tell the story of the game in a more natural way and to help drive player motivation when he’s captured. But in the second chapter, I needed to somehow keep telling the story and give the player more world context. I figured the best way to do this would be by adding a new companion character to help drive the story and give a little more guidance to how the game's lore is presented. I made the hunter a deer, simply because of the irony that deer aren’t predatory animals. I also liked the idea of having more animal-based characters to give the world a bit of a fantasy vibe.
The Authorities
Early in the writing phase of development, I knew I wanted the king to be a more mysterious character during the first few chapters. But I still needed a way to show the king's influence on the game's world and characters. Plus, every evil king needs a handful of maniacal henchmen to do their bidding. The Authorities are not goats but I did design their horns and facial features to resemble those of the king and the Joyous. I gave them hooded cloaks to make them more mysterious and creepy. The whole goal with these guys was to create characters that feel threatening and unsettling (MBPS is a horror game after all), so smiles, stitched eyes, as well as a tall and broad stature fit the design I was aiming for.
The Body of the Faceless
Five Nights at Freddy’s is the game that inspired me to start making horror games, and in the FNAF series, there are a lot of very ambiguous characters. If you’re familiar with these games you might know about Golden Freddy. This character was mysterious, unexplained, and quite threatening. I really liked the idea of adding some sort of obscure enemy with strange intentions to My Beautiful Paper Smile. The Body of the Faceless is ghostly, has strange abilities, and even the Authorities fear him. Maybe he used to be a kid from Facility 12? Could he have been a weapon from another island? An alien? A glitch in the matrix?? If you look for the answers, there’s a lot to learn about this character in-game that I don’t plan on spoiling here ;)
That ended up being a little longer than expected, but there were a lot of characters to talk about
¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
I hope you all found that interesting, and enjoyed getting a peek into the “Why?” behind how these characters came to be, and why they are the way they are. If you want to talk more drop into the discord.
Until next time! Keep smiling :)
Discord: https://discord.gg/FHrT6za
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