Designing a set of Stars for the Matchyverse required so many iterations I’ve lost track. We needed memorable shapes that stood out and were distinct and they eventually took on personas and characteristics of their own. Here is some more info on how we did it:
We really started from nothing and got a whole universe. At first we were calling these seven just “gems” or “shapes.” It would take months before we realized they were Stars and the Matchyverse was born. Getting the final shapes for the Matchy Star “Stars” took a lot of design work. The first Star, Matchy was pretty straightforward to put together but we needed a set of 7 which meant color and shape differentiation to make it very easy for players to tell which shape was which. For the colors we started with the color palate from Don’t Shoot Yourself which was designed to be bright and vibrant but not to have the colors clash or compete with one another.
The first step was figuring out a set of spacy out of this world shapes that would both fit the theme and also stand out from one another. After Matchy Star, a crescent Moon was a pretty easy choice and I guess the phrase Blue Moon had entered my unconsciousness so I decided to make this Star blue.
The basic moon shape took 2 iterations. The first one was a bit too thin and my mom pointed out that it should be a bit beefier to be a cuter shape so I tweaked it and got the final version.
The next idea I had was for a space satellite which was originally orange. It required a lot of simplifications before it became a red sputnik. I had a sputnik character in Speedway Heroes which was part of why the iconic lil’ spud was in my brain and I knew it was a great iconic space related shape so it made it into the game.
Once it was clear the Sputnik would be red, I made a ringed planet that was Orange. By Rotating it 45 degrees it seemed much bigger despite not taking up more texture space:
The next Star wasn’t so clearly defined so it needed a bunch of iterations. It was supposed to be a galaxy expanding into space. I figured the spokes and points would make it stand out from the rest of the shapes. Getting the number of spokes and their curves took a lot of fidgeting. Some iterations looked like saw blades, others looked like gears.
I knew I had to have a robot and I guess because of the Android logo I assumed it would be green. We had to compact it a little bit to avoid being too similar to the Android android and changed it to being a “Lander” instead.
The last Star was the most complicated. It was meant to be a space ship before I had the concept of using a set of ships to collect matches:
Similarly there was going to be a UFO to sow chaos and cause all kinds of trouble but the Ship and the UFO would switch places with the UFO becoming a gem and the Ship traveling above the grid. Its possible to tell what direction the Ship is moving in by looking at it and players needed that to help predict which direction the characters would be moving in.
Thus we got the final Star, a UFO:
Even after getting the shapes right, we still had more iterations on the combined colors of everything to make sure different Stars stood out, we would even make the images black and white to see what the different intensities of the colors were to make everything stand out as distinct as possible:
Finally Jimp stylized all the Stars and added faces, giving the complete look and completing this epic design task:
Eventually we punched up each Star to have a set of clothing and a profession based on their outfit and even designed personalities for each one that affect how they work in the various Matchy Verse games. It was a long, complex, and difficult process, but the Matchyverse finally has its Stars!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/782430/Matchy_Star/